Cricket 1914

No. 13, V o l . I. SATURDAY, JUNE 27, 1914. P r ic e 3 d . Hampshire’s Captain. ^ I n his forty-third year, his sixteenth season of first-class cricket, and his twelfth campaign as captain of the Hamp­ shire eleven, E. M. Sprot has played in successive matches a couple of innings equal to anything he has ever accom­ plished ; and th at is saying a good deal. The innings referred to are, of course, his 86 v. K ent at Tonbridge and his 131 v. Surrey at the Oval. The latter is his thirteenth century for the county and his first since 1911. A t Tonbridge he and Philip Mead stood in the breach when a complete collapse seemed likely, and added 149 for the sixth w icket after five had fallen for 54. A t the Oval matters were worse, for Mead had gone for a duck, and five were down for 43. Sprot found helpers in Haigh Smith and the lengthy Jaques ; but th ey merely stayed while he made runs, and his 131 bulked more than common large in a total of only 239, of which 12 were extras. Probably no other amateur who has played so much county cricket as E. M. Sprot has played so very little first-class cricket outside his county’s games. He has appeared (up to June 20) in 259 matches for Hampshire, and in exactly three matches (South v. Australians, 1902 ; Gentlemen of South v. Players of South, 1903 ; and Hamble- don v. England, 1908) ranking as first-class besides ! Seldom, too, has any cricketer stepped into a county team and done well from the start who was so little known to the general public as was Sprot in 1899. He was in the A rm y then (the 85th Regiment, now the 2nd Battalion Shropshire Light Infantry), and had been making runs in plenty for the United Services’ team at Portsmouth ; he scored 176 for U.S. v. Hampshire Hogs in 1898. In the red Lilly/white bis name appears in the Century List as “ Sprolt ” ; and for some seasons after he had become well known the scorers would occasionally give him the " tt ” to which he does not lay claim. B y the way, he aroused one particular scribe’s facile enthusiasm b y pointing out that he was not “ Major E. M. Sprot ” ; additional cause for admiration m ight have been found, possibly, in his dis­ pensing w ith an affix as well as a prefix to which he was not entitled ! Born at Edinburgh on February 4, 1872, Edward Mark Sprot was at Harrow in the days of A. C. MacLaren and the Hon. F . S. Jackson ; but his cricket did not develop early, Photo by] , [ Messrs. E. Hawkins & Co., Brighton. and, like H. P. Chaplin (another ex-Army man), in M r . E . M . S p r o t . later years he failed to get his flannels.