Cricket 1909

J une io , 1909. CR ICKET : A WEEKLY RECORD OF THE GAME. 185 H o b b s made bis runs thus:— 1 12 Surrey v. Northants, at the Oval ......... . ... j gg ,, v. Hampshire, at the Oval .................... 205 ,, v. Warwickshire, at the Oval ........ j ,, v. Australians, at the O v a l.................... | ,, v. Warwickshire, at Edgbaston............ j „ v. Essex, at the Oval ............................ 99 England v. Australia, at Edgbaston .......... | Surrey v. Notts, at Nottingham .................. j „ v. Worcestershire, at the Oval ............ { 6 1 * Signifies not out. Thus in sixteen innings, one of which was unfinished, he scored 1,000 runs with an average of 67’26. O n the same day — Monday — Blythe was the only bowler credited with as many as fifty wickets, and he had obtained 68 at a cost of 10’08 runs each. Smith, of Surrey, with twenty-two wickets for 6'04 a-piece, headed the averages. U n d e r the title of “ The Swoop! or How Clarence Saved England,” Mr. Alston Rivers has published a skit on the invasion scare, written by P. G. Wodehouse, an old Dulwich cricketer, and illustrated by C. Harrison. The Germans were the first to land, or rather to get the first press notices. But it so happened that on that summer afternoon “ Surrey were doing badly,” and in doing so absorbed all the national interest in affairs. The consequence was that England was soon fast in the grip of the invading armies. Ominous mutterings began to make themselves heard. Other causes contributed to swell tbe discontent. A regiment of Russians, out route-marching, had walked across the bowling-screen at Kennington Oval during the Surrey v. Lancashire match, causing Hayward to be bowled for a duck's-egg. A band of German sappers had dug a trench right across the turf at Queen’s Club. The mutterings increased. Nor were the invaders satisfied and happy. The late English summer bad set in with all its usual severity, and tbe Cossacks, reared in the kindlier climate of Siberia, were feeling it terribly. Colds were the rule ralher than the exception in the Russian lines. The coughing of the Germans at Tottenham could be heard at Oxford Street. Those cricketers who were playing during the latter part of last week will be able thoroughly to appreciate the remark concerning the “ usual severity ” of the English summer. R e s u lt s of matches played between Cambridge University and the Aus­ tralians :— Cambridge University won by an innings and 72 runs. Cambridge University won by six wickets. Australians won by an innings and 81 runs. Drawn. 1878. 1S82. 1884. 1886. 1888. 1890. 1893. 1899. 1902. 1905. 1909. Australians won by 117 runs. „ j» by ten wickets. ,, „ by an innings and 183 runs. ,, „ by 109 runs. Drawn. Of the eleven matches played the Aus­ tralians have won five and the University two, the remaining four having been un­ finished. All the above games took place at Cambridge with the exception of the first, which was played at Lord’s. I t is officially stated that the match between Cambridge University and Essex, provisionally arranged to be played at Cambridge on June 14 and following days, will not take place. In the match at Mount Wise, Devon- port, on May 2nd, between 1st South Staffords and 1st Leinsters, the former made 153 and the latter had lost seven wickets when the scorers announced that the game had been won. Accordingly stumps were drawn and the players re­ tired to the pavilion. It was soon found, however, that a mistake had been made, and that the Leinsters still wanted 3 runs to win. So the stumps were re-pitched, the players returned to the field, and the South Staffords got rid o f the last three wickets fo r a single and pulled off the game by a run ! P la t in g in a Paddington and District League match for Crescent v. Willesden Druids, J. E. Tassell took all ten wickets for 19 runs, nine batsmen being clean bowled. R e f e r e n c e in Gossip deserves to be made to the remarkable batting of Quaife last week. In the match at Worcester he made 83 not out and 96, and against Yorkshire at Edgbaston 80, batting altogether 625 minutes—almost ten hours and a-half—for 259 runs and being only twice dismissed. His rate of run-getting for the whole time he was in was there­ fore 24-86 per hour. Such cricket may be useful occasionally, but if indulged in at all frequently cannot fail to affect the finances of the County Club, for it is not reasonable to expect persons to flock in their thousands, or even in their hundreds, to see such spiritless play. T h e good people of Worcester, I am given to understand, were thoroughly bored by his painstaking methods, and have been able to talk of little else since. Some of the newspaper comments were made in a serious vein, others were of a sarcastic nature, and a few treated the matter with levity. One of the evening papers published the following:—- EFFECTS OF THE CRICKET. Sir,—Cricket being proverbially a nice quiet game, I took a friend who was a “ bit run down ” along with me to see it. I thought it might do him good. But gradually, as batting operations proceeded, he became wildly excited, and wanted to fight a gentleman in blue spectacles. As I wear blue spectacles, and he is a biggish man, I promptly obtained assistance to get him home. On the way he was very violent, and snatched another man’s baby out of a mail- cart and tried to bite it. Of course, tbe other man gave trouble, but became quite sympathetic when I explained to him that the cricket had engendered in my poor friend a spirit of cannibalism. He had been to see the cricket himself, he said. Arriving home, we tied our patient to the bedpost; he then became offensively vituperative. However, by abstaining from verbal retaliation and “ heaping coals of fire on his head ” as a sedative, he eventually calmed down into melancholia. His last act before retiring to rest was to present me with Ihe following nightmare : If Dick weighs a t6n and a half, and Billy a pound and a half, and Billy scores a run and a half in a day and a half, while Dick bowls for a year and a half, how long will it take Warwickshire to win the County Championship ? Answer to be given in eons, generations and years. My poor friend is working for the Excise, and appears to have tangled his arithmetic with cricket. “ Dick ” is, of course, burly Dick Burrows, the Worcestershire fast bowler. A n o t h e r very unenterprising display was that by Vine for Sussex against Gloucestershire at Bristol last week. He carried his bat through the innings of 160 for 37, batting three hours and a-half, making thirty singles, and at one period being in for half-an-hour without adding to his score. U n lu c k y Sussex! Bain robbed them of victory at Derby, and they played only two days v. Notts, one day v. Middlesex, two days v. Gloucestershire (at Brighton), one day v. Hampshire, and five hours and ten minutes v. Gloucestershire, (at Bristol). A c o r r e s p o n d e n t writes : “ I have just been reading Dr. .Grace’s new and very interesting little book. The genial Doctor is, however, strangely misinformed as to. the present-day accommodation for the press. He describes the press boxes at Lord’s and the Oval as ‘ almost palatial.’ I do not know much about palaces, but I understand that there is plenty of room in them, and I should very much like to see the Doctor sitting in the press box at Lord’s with one of the representatives of the Daily Express trying to get past him ; it would make a beautiful and pathetic subject for a sketch by ‘ Rip.’ I f the Doctor had been relegated to one of the palatial press seats (out of doors) in the front row at Edgbaston during the Test match, he would simply not have been able to sit down at all, even if by any possibility he could have ever reached his seat.” A r n o ld S e it z , the Victorian Rhodes scholar, scored 154 for Merton College v. Malvern College on the latter’s ground on Saturday. On Monday he made 167 against Wadham. “ T h e invention of the off-breaking leg- breaker is commonly ascribed to Mr. Bosanquet,” says The Morning Post , “ but Dr. W. G. Grace used occasionally to bring the ball back from the pitch when his action suggested that he had intended it to turn from leg. The break which he put on, whether it developed itself expectedly or unexpectedly, was nothing like so great as that which Mr. Bosanquet and his South African imitators can command; but it was sufficient to dismiss the Nottinghamshire eleven on one occasion for just over a hundred runs. The