Cricket 1913

520 C R ICKE T : A WEEKLY RECORD OF THE GAME. August 16, 1913. Months ago I cut from a New Zealand exchange an account o f C od y , Vedrmes, and others p lay ing cricket on Salisbury Plain. I had meant to use it; but matter o f more importance crowded it out. L u ck ily I preserved it, however; and it will be fou n d on another page. It w ill interest a 1 housand now where it m ight on ly have interested a score six months ago. W . H . B. Evans was poten tia lly a very great cricketer in d eed ; actually, because the lines o f his life were cast in places that d id not allow him to p la y regular first-class cricket after his O x fo r d days, a fine one who never rose to admitted great­ ness. I saw the first innings he ever p layed in first-class cricket. He was a boy at Malvern then. The year was i QOI ; the match Worcestershire v. Sussex at Worcester. I think everyone on the ground was anxious to see him succeed. He had been d oing such b ig things fo r the school, and one liked the look o f him. In the first innings he was c. and b. to that o ld war-horse, F red Tate, after making on ly 2 . He scored 53 in the second ; but I cannot remem­ ber much about that. Ic was a game which W orces­ tershire just sa v ed ; they saved it by p lay ing Vine, then at his best, with their le g s ; and I never en­ jo y e d an a ftern oon ’s cricket less. I f I remember righ tly, Evans used his legs less than most o f the men— some o f them d id not trouble to use their bats at all fo r several balls together !-—but I can’t be sure. He d id little in several matches after that; but just when it had begun to look as though he might have been overrated he scored a sp lendid 107 v. Gloucestershire. I saw that, to o— an innings worthy o f all praise. R. E. Foster w ill remember it ; he, too, scored a century. So with W . W\ Lowe, who made the third o f three— how he hit, t o o ! W hat Evans d id later is to ld , though briefly, on another page. Tha t was his last match for W orces­ tershire. Th e rest o f his county cricket— no great amount in all— was p layed fo r Hampshire. A ll the first-class counties wtere engaged twice during Bank H o lid a y week, though in the case o l the Lancashire v. Derbyshire match the finish was le ft over till M onday . In the fifteen and a h a lf games I find that 14,176 runs were scored fo r the loss o f S°7 wickets— average per wicket just on 28 , which is pretty high. Four o f the fifteen completed matches realised over 1,000 runs, fou r more over goo, five between 800 and 900 , and two between 600 and 700 . Du ring the week J. W . Hearne tota lled 328 runs, W . H . Denton 318 , B ow ley 300 , H a yw ood 294 , D ipper 2 g 3 , C. S. Barnett 248 , K in g 248 , Hayward 237 , and Bowell 228 . I f any o f our enterprising contemporaries had offered a prize to anyone who should include in a list o f twenty the ten batsmen to make the highest aggregates o f the week, it is extremely unlikely that any single list w ou ld have held all these nine. H itch was easily first among the bowlers. He took 20 wickets during the week. F riday, August 8 , was notable by reason o f feats performed by bowlers who are not accustomed to achieve signal success in first-class cricket. W h ile Robson and J. C. White fa iled , B ridges took 6 wickets fo r Somerset. Brown, who had hitherto bagged on ly one wicket this season, had 4 for Leicester v. Surrey. W illiam Qua ife took 6 in the Warwickshire v. Yorkshire game. James T y ld e sley had 5 fo r Lancashire v. Derbyshire. Years ago, when a list was drawn up o f bowlers whose delivery was considered dou b tfu l, W illiam Quaife was scheduled thereon. The comment made by Mr. A . N. H ornby was reported somewhat thu s: “ T h ey call B illy Quaife a chucker ! W h y , the chap can ha rd ly get the ball the length o f the w ick e t!” Th is was hyperbolical, o f course. In the season before the ban was pronounced, Quaife had taken 44 wickets. In 1905 he took 48 , in 1906 46 , and in 1912 4 1 . Last year his captures were quite cheap, too— under 18 each. His fu ll bag to date in first- class cricket is over 450 . But, until I look ed up the records, I was quite under the impression that his 6 for 78 the other day was his most pronounced success. It is not, how­ ever. In 1901 he had 12 fo r 127 v. Worcestershire at Edgbaston , 7 for 76 in the second inn ings; and five years later he took 7 fo r 84 v. Northampton­ shire at Peterborough. He has taken 6 in an innings v. Leicestershire, M iddlesex, and Sussex, and in each instance at a lower cost than his 6 v. Yorkshire. A nd he has had 5 in an innings v. the Australians, Cambridge U n i­ versity (fo r L ondon County), Derbyshire, Essex (twice), Gloucestershire, Lancashire (twice), Leices­ tershire, Northamptonshire, Somerset, and W orces­ tershire. The attendances during Bank H o lid a y week d id not give much encouragement to the croakers. Over 150,000 must have paid gate in the eight first-class games during the first three days, and Edgbaston had quite a run o f five figure gates. Th is is all the more welcome news because some people said that on ly continued success b y Warwickshire wou ld keep the Birmingham public fa ith fu l. Foster and his men have been gu ilty o f in-and-out “ running ” this year; but Brum, it seems, is staunch ! Tasmania has had such difficulty in getting matches, ow ing to her insular position, that a pro­ ject that her men should p lay Queensland at Sydney after the Northern State had met New South Wales,