Cricket 1911

248 CR ICK ET : A W EEK LY RECORD OF THE GAME. J u n e 17 , 19 1 1. Tonbr idge Cricket. It is not many years since, as the result of a suggestion on the part of Mr. Tom Pawley, the Tonbridge “ Week ” was inaugurated. The venture was assured of prosperity from the start, for Mr. Pawley is a man who, when he under­ takes a thing, sees it through. The same remark holds good concerning the Kent “ Nursery” at Tonbridge, with which Mr. Pawley, who has received excellent assist­ ance from Capt. McCanlis, has been associated since its foundation. Wisden records that this most valuable asset of Kent cricket was born half-a-century or so ago ; but, if the maxim that a man is only as old as he feels is true, Earl did not preserve details of the individual scores, for the match would then have ranked as the earliest fully- recorded. Although the game continued to be popular in Ton­ bridge, many years were to elapse before the County authori­ ties saw fit to recognise the town as a cricket centre of sufficient importance to allocate an important match to it. Not, in fact, until 1869 was an inter-county fixture given to Tonbridge. Then Notts went down and, chiefly through the bowling of .1. C. Shaw and a not out innings of 116 by Bignall, won by an innings and 25 runs. The best cricket of the match, however, was shown by Mr. 0. I. Thornton, who alone reached double figures in the second innings of Kent. The total, including 5 extras, was 114, and Mr. Photo by] [Hawkins dc CoB righton. MR. S. h. DAY. Mr. Pawley can safely put his age down at thirty-five, for he possesses the vigour and enthusiasm of men twenty years his junior and, judging by appearances, should prove capable of continuing his services, to the satisfaction of all, for very many years to come. But cricket had been associated with Tonbridge long before Mr. Pawley’s time. As far back as 1723 the Earl of Oxford, whilst journeying through Kent, recorded the following in his diary : “ At Dartford, upon the heath as we came out of the town, the men of Tonbridge and the Dart­ ford men were warmly engaged at the sport of cricket, which of all the people of England the Kentish folk are most renowned for, and of all the Kentish men the men of Dart- ford lay claim to the greatest excellence.” A pity the Photo by] [Hatckins & C oB righton. MR. A. P. DAV. Thornton obtained as many as 76 of them off liis own bat. Only twenty other runs were made whilst he was in, and whereas there were as many as thirteen 3’s among his hits there were only nine singles. The match was played ‘ ‘ at the back of the Angel Hotel.” Three years later— in 1872, that is—-Sussex visited Tonbridge and beat the hop county by 148 runs, and then twelve seasons passed ere the town was the scene of another inter-county match. Again Sussex were the opposing side, and again they proved successful—on this occasion by 113 runs. Since then Tonbridge has, with the exception of 1889, been given at least one first-class match yearly by the County C.C. To refer to these games in detail would prove wearisome to the reader, and therefore a table summarising