Famous Cricketers No 95 - P.A.Perrin

Perrin also played for the Marylebone Cricket Club in minor matches. He was elected to the club in 1901 and played four ‘out matches’ against schools on a Sussex tour in that season. He did not play again until 1906, but thereafter, except for the War years, he generally played one or two matches in each season, against school and club sides through to 1935, sometimes in later years with his son Meredith. Joining Essex County Cricket Club Perrin was elected to membership of Essex County Cricket Club in September 1895, proposed by George Cashford, a well-known local cricketer. His brother Frederick and other members of the family had joined the club earlier that year, which was the first season in which Essex played in the County Championship. The county played all their home matches at Leyton, about three miles south-east of Tottenham down the Lea Valley, only a twelve-minute journey from South Tottenham station to Leyton on the newly built London, Tilbury and Southend Railway. Shortly before the start of the 1896 season, Cashford, who played for the Dalston Alberts club in Hackney, recommended Perrin to C.E.Green, the Essex chairman, presumably on the strength of his performances for Tottenham in 1895. Green ‘immediately’ asked Perrin to attend the pre-season Essex nets, for which he had engaged J.M.Read and the legendary Bobby Abel, both from Surrey, as coaches. Perrin later admitted, in an interview with W.A.Bettesworth, that ‘he could make very little of the bowling’, particularly the spinners, but despite this was selected for the opening Essex match of 1896, against Surrey at The Oval. No pre-season Press reviews reported Perrin as a prospect for Essex, and it is reasonable to conclude that his selection was a surprise. It is not clear how Perrin qualified to play for Essex. Under the regulations which operated at the time, a cricketer could play for the county of his birth; or for one where he had lived for two years; or for one where his family home was located, so long as it remained ‘open to him as an occasional residence.’ Perrin’s birthplace at Stoke Newington was on the Middlesex side of the River Lea, as was the family pub in Tottenham High Road. The family’s other properties were all in the Tottenham area. Perrin’s father had been born at Ockendon in Essex, but a careful search of relevant directories has not identified a Perrin ‘family home’ where he might occasionally reside. The Wisden summary of the Essex season of 1896 simply says ‘Perrin, who comes from Tottenham . . .’ There is nothing in the reports of the local newspaper covering the Leyton area, The Leytonstone Express and Independent in 1896, celebrating ‘Local boy makes good.’ Indeed reports in that newspaper, which covered local cricket very fully, awarded him the wrong initials several times in the early part of the 1896 season. Appearances in first-class cricket Perrin played first-class cricket for Essex from the age of nineteen until past his fifty-second birthday. He was a regular player and automatic selection for the county side for twenty-seven seasons, especially in the County Championship. Between the start of the 1896 season and July 1926, when he ceased to play regularly because of his position as a Test selector, Essex played 561 matches in the Championship. Perrin appeared in 492 of these, missing only 69. Until the election of J.W.H.T.Douglas as captain in 1911, most of Perrin’s absences from Essex Championship matches are traceable to injuries, illness, or to family matters such as the illness and death of his brother Frederick in 1909. After 1911 he tended to miss three or four Championship games in a season, often in August when the outcome of the season had become apparent. It is probable he went shooting (no doubt taking his Purdeys with him) on these occasions: even so he only once missed an Essex match in his career on the ‘glorious twelfth.’ Although he played in thirteen first-class matches for other clubs or for representative sides, none of those matches coincided with Essex fixtures and he did not, at any time, forego playing for the county in order to play first-class cricket for another team. He 8