Cricket 1911

296 C E IC K E T : A W EEK LY EECOED OF THE GAME. J u l y 1, 1911. A Chat ab ou t th e G lam o rg an sh i r e Team. Glamorganshire Cricket Club is now approaching its majority. Founded to some extent on the old South Wales Club, it owed its inception largely to the brothers J. H. and W. H. Brain, of Clifton, Oxford University and Gloucestershire fame; and no doubt there were people who thought that when the. Brains ceased to play the County would recede into the background. But that has not been the case in spite of the rumours current lately that the present management did not command confidence. The County Club may be troubled by dissensions, but the side which represents it seems full of life still, and may before long make good the claim of Glamorganshire to first-class rank. Mr. T. A. L. WHITTINGTON. It is true that the experiment made in 1910, when three first-class counties were met, was not a great success. Sussex (twice), Worcestershire, even luckless Somerset, all beat the Welsh county. But one is not inclined to lay much stress upon this ; and Glamorganshire’s record in the Minor Counties Championship (1897 to 1910 inclusive) of 139 matches played, 75 won, only 27 lost, and 37 drawn (fourteen of the 25 draws in the last eight seasons counting as wins on the first innings, and only six as losses) is one which suggests that the County’s aspirations have behind them something substantial. Whether Glamorgan has at present a first-class team may be doubtful; but what is quite certain is that she has some first-class players. One can pick out five of them —Messrs. Whittington and Biches, Bancroft, Nash, and Creber—and say with confidence that they would have done themselves credit, and are all still capable of doing themselves credit, though none of the professional trio is in the first flush of youth, in any company. Up to 1897 Glamorganshire belonged to the “ other counties ” class, an inchoate conglomeration ranking below the second-class counties, and having no organised com­ petition. In 1897 the Welsh county took its place in the newly-formed Minor Counties’ Championship, and came out runners-up to Worcestershire that year. Only in one season since (1905) have,wins failed to be in excess of losses in the Glamorgan record; in 1900 and again in 1910 no match in the competition was lost outright ; in four seasons (1897, 1899, 1903, and 1907) only one defeat was experienced. Monmouthshire, a near neighbour, has been the club’s most regular opponent. Wiltshire and Surrey Second have been met in a majority of seasons ; Devon was played for nine seasons in succession, and Berkshire for seven ; and among the sides met less frequently have been Carmarthenshire, Cornwall, Dorset, Durham, Herts., Lan­ cashire Second, Northants, Notts Second, Northumberland, Staffordshire and Worcestershire. Mr. Thomas Aubrey Leyson Whittington, who was born on July 29th, 1881, at Neath, in which town he still lives, fills a somewhat unusual dual office, for he is not only the Honorary Secretary of the Glamorganshire Cricket Club but also the captain of the Glamorganshire Eleven. He stands, if any one man may be said to do so, for the County’s cricket. Mr. Whittington was educated at Merchiston and Oxford, but it is not on record that he did anything at either seat of learning to equal his recent deeds for Glamorgan and the M.C.C. team in the West Indies. In fact, though he first played for the County in 1901, and in 1902 averaged 19’5 per innings, it cannot be said that he made his mark very decisively until 1908. Then he played very fine cricket indeed, averaging 44 per innings, and making his first cen­ tury, a vigorous 188 v. Carmarthenshire at Llanelly. He did well in a smaller number of matches in 1909, and last year had a great season, averaging well over 40 per innings in the minor county matches, and taking centuries against Carmarthenshire both at Swansea and Llanelly. Touring in the West Indies, he proved the batting mainstay of the side led by Mr. A. F. Somerset. His best performances were in the first match with British Guiana, when he scored 86 and 154 by practically perfect cricket, and in the second innings, aided by Mr. B. H. Holloway, set up a West Indian record, with 230 for the first wicket in 160 minutes, and 115 against All Jamaica at Kingston, where, aided by some luck, he carried his bat right through the innings. He aggregated 685, average 36, during the tour. Mr. Whitting­ ton drives well, especially to the off, and cuts finely, late and square. In the field he takes the difficult and respon­ sible position of cover-point. Up to date he has scored over 2,500 runs for the county, with an average of approxi­ mately 25. One is obliged to give round figures everywhere in this article, for Wisden sometimes gives the averages for all matches in the cases of minor counties, and sometimes those for championship matches alone, and does not always make it clear which are being given. Good bat as he is, the Glamorganshire captain has not scored quite as heavily for the county as Mr. Norman Vaughan Henry Biches, who, since his first appearance in 1901—the same year in which Whittington first played for the team—he totalled about 4,000 runs, with an average of (roughly) 33 per innings. Norman Biches makes most of his runs by driving and leg shots. In the field he takes long-off, slip, or the wicket, and is a rare good man in any of these positions. He was born at Cardiff on June 9, 1883, and received his education at Abingdon, a school which has not, as far as we know, turned out any other crack cricketer. But in the person of Norman Biches it unquestionably produced a first-class player—none the less first-class because he plays for a minor county. Only eighteen when he first played for the county, he started modestly ; but it was not long before he began to make big scores, and in 1904 he averaged 43 an innings, heading the batting table. Second to Bancroft in 1905, he made as many as 659 runs with average nearly 29 ; in 1906, when rungetting for Glamorganshire ruled lower, he was at the top, with 25 per innings; in the following season he was first again, with total 613, and average 51 ; in 1908 Whittington headed him, but in 1909 his 59 per innings brought him into first place again, though Sweet-Escott ran him hard ; last year,