Cricket 1914

gz THE WORLD OF CRICKET. M a y 2, 19 14 . B u t the balance has been restored as far as this latest loss is concerned b y the return to England from British Columbia of G ilbert Curgenven, who is expected to play regularly for Derbyshire this season. According to the Victoria (B.C.) Daily Times he will appear as a professional. T h e Australian team which toured the States and Canada last year regarded Curgenven as the best all-round man they met. He has kept up his cricket in British Columbia, and should be quite a tower of strength to a county side which can do w ith a little stiffening, and which especially needs a forcing batsman or two. C u r g e n v e n last appeared for Derbyshire in 1910, and headed the batting averages, though he only played in half a dozen matches. He scored a dashing level century in about an hour and a half against Essex at Leyton in May, and against Notts at Blackwell in August hit 6 sixes and 11 fours in his brilliant 109. O n ly in one season-— 1904— was he a regular member of the county side. Then in all matches he totalled 822 with an average of over 24, his highest score 124 v. Surrey at Derby. He was a useful change bowler, too, though his wickets were never cheap. H e and his brother, H. G., w ith whom he is often confused, are a cricketer’s sons. Dr. William Grafton Curgenven, their father, played for both Derbyshire and Devonshire some thirty to forty years ago. T h e r e is trouble in the New Zealand cricket camp over the recent N.Z. tour in Australia. The leading associations helped to finance the tour b y a guarantee of £75 each. Now they are getting is. gd. in the £ back on their guaran­ tees, and some of them are objecting to the manner in which the money has been used, more especially to a grant of five shillings per day made to each player for out-of-pocket expenses. T h is grant is wholly reasonable. The Otago C .A .’s proposition th at every player should contribute £10 to the fund was one th a t could not be expected to find favour. Australian and South African teams are not run on these lines, and it is safe to say they never will be. But there may be something in the contention that the various contributing associations should have been told beforehand b y the N.Z. Cricket Council that the out-of-pocket expenses payments would be made. The O tago authorities say that had they known of this their guarantee would not have been forthcoming. M a c a r t n e y ’s five centuries in first-class cricket in Aus­ tralia this last season is not an absolute record. No one has yet scored six ; but five were1made by A. D. Nourse in 1910--1, b y W . W . Armstrong in 1907-8, by J. R. M. M ackay in 1905-6, and by C. Hill and A. C. MacLaren in 1897-8. F o u r in a season have been registerd b y the late J. T. Brown in 1894-5, A. C. MacLaren in 1901-2, R. A. Duff in 1902-3, George Gunn in 1907-8, V. S. Ransford in 1908-9, and Rhodes in 1911-2. T h e most curious thing about Macartney’s chain of cen­ turies is that all were made on the Sydney ground. Further than that, every one of the thirteen centuries he has regis­ tered down under has been made on that enclosure ! In all 552 centuries have been made in first-class cricket in Australia up to date. This includes all inter-colonial and inter-state matches, as also the leading matches of the m any English teams, the two New Zealand sides, and the one South African combination. A few scores may be included which some would reject on various grounds ; but the more logical plan seems to be to treat all representa­ tive cricket as first-class, w ithout any of the occasionally finnicking distinctions which render it very hard to say a year or two afterwards whether a match in this country just on the border-line (e.g., Scotland v. Northants last year, Yorkshire v. Liverpool and D istrict in bygone days, or Cambridge University v. Dublin University) was or was not so reckoned, no uniformity of practice being observed. C lem H i l l tops the list with a total of 29, followed bv M. A. Noble (23), W . W . Armstrong (22), V ictor Trumper (21), S. E. Gregory (14), D. R. A. Gehrs and C. G. Macartney (13 each), G. Giffen and A. C. MacLaren (12 each), Warren Bardsley (11), and J. J. Lyons (10). P. A. M c A lis t e r and Vernon Ransford have made 9 each ; J. Darling and R. A . Duff, 7 each ; H arry Graham, A . J. Hopkins, Tom Horan, F. A . Iredale, J. R. M. Mackay, and Rhodes, 6 each ; E. P. Barbour, H. Donnan, George Gunn, Hobbs, F. Laver, E. R. Mayne, P. S. McDonnell, A. D. Nourse, and Arthur Shrewsbury, 5 each. I t may be as well to say here that the Editor is not re­ sponsible for any of these statistics. He does not like figures ; but he recognises that a considerable proportion of his readers may differ from him in that respect. The figure-fiend is another man who need not be named. His appetite for this sort of thing is insatiable. B y quite an accidental oversight no reference was made in the last number to the projected testimonial to that good fellow and good cricketer, Charles McGahey. It has our best wishes, and we hope that the readers of the W o r ld o f C r ic k e t will support it, one and all. McGahey has done great service for his county, and has won the esteem of all who know him. We hope to have an interview with him in an early number of this paper. T h e absence of Vernon Ransford from the later matches of the Australian Team in New Zealand was due to the fact that he had been recalled in haste to Melbourne, to take charge of the business of his father, who had to go abroad. E v e r y cricketer will sympathise w ith Mr. Frank Foster and his fam ily in the heavy loss th ey have sustained. Mr. William Foster was never, one believes, a cricketer of any great pretensions, but he was a keen supporter of the game, and the Warwickshire C.C. owed him a debt of gratitude on more scores than one. The deceased gentleman was a man of the world in the best sense of that phrase ; he had seen life in many aspects, but it had not hardened him as it hardens many. Few men were better judges of a horse than he, and on questions of breeding his word carried great weight. H e r e is a story he used to tell of his son Frank, in whose cricket prowess he took high pride. When Frank was about six, his mother, looking out of an upper window one day, saw the youngster throwing a ball up against a wall and catching it as it fell. She watched for some time, unseen b y the boy, and gradually came to apprehend that there was more in it than appeared on the surface, for the child’s eyes were full of tears, and at length she heard him mutter : “ I will do it ! I will do it ! ” L a t e r she discovered what it was that he was deter­ mined to do— a hundred successive catches w ithout a miss— no small task for a child of six. He did what he was resolved to do, and the old adage that the boy is father of the man was well exemplified here, for determination is one of the most marked traits in Frank Foster’s character. „