Cricket 1908

402 CRICKET : A WEEKLY RECORD OF THE GAME. S e p t . io , 1908. confirmed by so good a cricketer as Jack Sharp.” “ You never attained much celebrity as a player yourself ? ” “ I never had the opportunity of playiog much cricket after my teens as I went into the drudgery of journalism in preference to the study of medicine. Possibly had I been a doctor life would have been just as galling. One never knows. Anyhow, I am sure that I should never have been much of a player, even allhough cricket is not a game invented by giants for giants. Preachers and teachers are men of words, not often of action. I have inherited the family failing for juggling with words. However, to revert. I remember my father at breakfast saying to my mother : ‘ Good gracious, Emma ! how much longer is old George Parr going to play cricket ? ’ Little did I think that 1 should ever know George Parr. It's a small world. Prom 1883 to 1891 I dwelt in Nottingham and became completely absorbed in Notts cricket. One of the sweetest and most fragrant recol­ lections of that timo was my friendship with ‘ Dicky ’ Daft, who had a comfortable home and a brewery at Radcliffe-on-Trent. Harry Daft was then a youth who stored the inter­ national caps of the Football Association under a glass case in his bedroom, and both he and his brother, 1 Young Dick,’ used to play at cricket for the Notts Amateurs. But at eve I did sit out in Bichard Daft’s garden with George Parr on one side and Dicky Daft on the other, and both of them talking of their cricketing days. Folks used to say that George Parr was a surly old man. But he was like Jack Jones, the Covent Garden porter : ‘ He’s all right when you know him. But you’ve got to know him fust.’ ^ t that time George Parr used to walk about with dogs at his heels and a gun under his arm, for Lord Carnarvon allowed’ him to shoot over his Notts estates. He was sutliciently modest to say that if he had not been a cricketer he would have been the best shot in the world. Truly he had a wonderful eye, even as a round-shouldered, grey-haired man. I asked him why he became a cricketer. His answer had the merit of frankness, as he said : ‘ Because I did not like work.’ The primeval curse weighs more heavily on some men than on others.” “ Once he told me how he took the first English team to America in 1859. The players all shared alike—£50 apiece and first-class expenses for five matches. Old George’s words as near as I can remember them were:—“ We landed at Quebec, and we appeared at Montreal, New ; York, Philadelphia, Rochester, and Hamilton. The Yankees could not play a bit, and we won all our games. Wisden, the ‘ ‘ Little Wonder,” was so cold in one match that he played in three shirts and two pkirs of trousers, and he bowled in wicket-keeping gloves. But he bowled six out with con­ secutive balls. He was the straightest bowler of his time. At Philadelphia Tom Lockyer would have me bowl, as I had taken nine wickets out of eleven at Montreal and ten wickets against twenty-two of New York, but erysipelas set in my elbow, which had been hit by a ball from John Jackson, and I had to give up bowling against the Yanks. But at New York I tossed in a slow screw- break from the leg, and it took my man’s off-stump. The American said it was the wind that had turned the ball but he did not think the wind could have turned a ball so much as that. There was a good deal written about a leg-hit I made. I occa­ sionally hit to leg in those days. But the American reporter said that when the ball was last seen it w a s,travelling fast towards the North Pole and that a fielder was sent after it in a balloon. The year but one after that we went to Australia. Lord, how sea­ sick we all were! We found there better cricketers than we thought. The settlers played against us, but we never lost a match. The Aborigines were the ugliest people I ever saw, and I should have been frightened to play much against them. We found some cricketers in New Zealand, especially at Christchurch. But I don’t think they knew more about the game than the folks in some parts of Cornwall when the All England Eleven went touring. I had a curious experience at Dunedin, where we played against a Twenty-two. The Queen of the Maoris was at the match, and she sent for the captain of the English team and his players. It was explained to me that the Queen wished to give me a kiss. Now, I did not like the job, as she was a very tattooed lady. So I turned round to John Jackson, and s a id :— ‘ Here, Jack, you kiss her. You’re a gipsy.’ But our fast bowler was nervous. So I said that if there was any dirty work to do it always fell to me. And I went up and kissed her. She gave me a green stone, and told me that so long as I kept that in my pocket it would act as a charm, and that I should never have to work. I have carried this green stone ever since, and I have never had to work; so that I ’m glad I kissed the Queen of the Maoris.’ As the son of a farmer who lost his money, and one of a family of nine, George Parr was a lucky man to avoid work throughout life. He had his opinions of cricket. He thought there never were such bowlers as Hillyer, Wisden, Buttress, and William Clarke, while he never saw a better fielder than Caft'yn. He held that W. G. Grace was the best cricketer of all time, but he had a measure of admiration for Arthur Shrewsbury and William Barnes as batsmen. Shrewsbury had a style of his own aud could not be compared with any of the old school.” “ You have some reminiscences of Richard Daft and other Nottinghamshire cricketers? ” “ Daft used to grow garrulous and remi­ niscent in our chats and he declared in favour of the ancient cricketers when compared with the modern. He said that if the batsmen of latter days had to face men like Willsher, Jackson. Wisden, Freeman, Hillyer, J . C. Shaw, and Wootton, their scores would have been smaller. For one season, H. H. Stephenson, of Surrey, was more difficult to play than any man he had ever seen. As batsmen, he had tremendous admiration for the Walkers, R . A. H. Mitchell, E . M. Grace, Reginald Hankey, Joe Makinson, and C. G. Lane. The best innings he (Daft) ever played were 118 at Lord’s for North against the South in 1862 for the benefit of Jimm y Grundy, 1 17 at Lord’s in the match in which George Summers was killed, and 16 1 against Yorkshire at Trent Bridge in 1873. “ D icky” Daft was a fearless kind of potentate in his way. He would never hesi'ate to express his opinion to either Lord Harris or a mere journalist like myself. When Daft assisted the Players against the Gentlemen at Lord’s in 1872 he was bowled by a rare ball from Appleby in the first innings before he had scored. Dick Daft told me that next day Mr. W. H. Knight—the cricket critic of The Daily -Telegraph I think —said it was high time Daft retired. But in the second innings Daft scored 102 without the least blemish, and then he told W. H. Knight a bit of his mind so to speak. Yes, “ D icky” Daft was just the sort of man to say what he thought whether addressing lord or com­ moner. I think I may say that I'had some­ thing to do with persuading Daft to write his reminiscences entitled Kings of Cricket. I sold the manuscript for him for £325 to a well-known firm of publishers and I re-bought the first serial lights for The Athletic Newt for £170 . ‘ Dicky ’ Daft was largely assisted iu this work by his son, ‘ Young Dick,.’ a charming boy, who afterwards wrote ‘Seventy- one Not Out,’ the career of William-Catl'yn, and I revised the proofs for Messrs. William Blackwood & Sons, the Edinburgh publishers. Yes, I spent some happy years at Notting­ ham, and fragrant as are my recollections of George Parr and ‘ Dicky ’ Daft, a most com­ panionable man, but unfortunately not worldly-wise, I shall never forget the quiet geniality of Arthur Shrewsbury, the glory of William Gunn, the thoughtfulness of that o il yeoman Alfred Shaw, and that bundle of merriment Mordecai Sherwin, who at 17 stone could turn a somersault, staud up, and sing “ Oh! dem Golden Slippers.” The most mentally acute man of any professional cricketer I ever met was Arthur Shrews­ bury, although John Tyldesley runs him very close. When we saw Shrewsbury bat we saw the man—calm, intellectual and artistic. He was never woiried about luck. If he was wrongly given out he used to declare that sometimes he was given ‘ not o u t’ when he ought to have retired. ‘ The one evens up the other. You must take the fat with the lean in this world and in cricket, too ’ said Arthur Shrewsbury, who once told me that he had to be careful of bis eyes. That may seem strange when we read his scores again. B ut as a young man he was very delicate, and I have no doubt that his sea voyages and trips to Australia prolonged his life. If he read a, book or a newspaper very long the type used to swim in front of his eyes. Hence lie never was a great reader. In the winter he was fond of watching football, and of enjoying a quiet rubber of wjjist, while he gave great attention to his business when he was not abroad. A more even-tempered man I never met. That was one of the reasons why he was such a cricketer, for success in the great game is very much a matter of temperament.” “ You must have seen a lot of good cricket since 1870.” “ I never watched finer bowling than that of Hugh Trumble in the Test match at the Oval in 1902, when England won by one wicket, unless it was that of Tom Richardson at Manchester in the Test match of 1896, when Australia won by three wickets. For sustained power and artifice in -the face of odds their bowling was never equalled in any match that I saw. W. G. Grace I leave out of all comparison with anybody. He never had an equal as a cricketer, but I hold that K. S. Ranjitsinhji, Victor Trumper, and A. C. MacLaren have charmed me more by their batting than any men it has ever been my fortune to see. When well set and making a long score, I think MacLaren was the most majestic and stylish of the three. Watching MacLaren as I have done, day in day out, I say, in defiance of all other op'nion, that I gained great admiration of his powers as a captain, while as a fielder he was just as thrilling at short-slip as on the edge of the boundary. People forget how he fielded on the confines in Grace’s Jubilee match at Lord’s ten years age. But they never should. The most dramatic incidents I ever saw were Jessop’s 104 in the Test match at the Oval in 1902, Jack Hearne’s hat-trick against