Famous Cricketers No 95 - P.A.Perrin

Both sides were up to their strength for the season. Derbyshire, led by E.M.Ashcroft, fielded a side with all its eleven players who played regularly in 1904. Essex had nine of their most regular players, with the remaining places taken by F.H.Gillingham and R.P.Keigwin, amateurs of high standard both playing well at the time. At the start of the match Derbyshire were eighth in the Championship table and Essex eleventh, so both sides had, by then, limited expectations as to the season’s outcome. It can therefore be thought of as a routine county match. Derbyshire had a psychological advantage over Essex. They had won at Leyton in mid-June by thirty-nine runs, when on the last day their last four wickets in the second innings had added 157 runs, and A.Warren had quickly taken six Essex wickets to secure an unexpected win. At Chesterfield, the Essex captain, F.L.Fane, won the toss and took the orthodox decision to bat first. With the second ball of the fourth over, and the total on twelve, W.Bestwick bowled H.A.Carpenter, bringing Perrin, in his regular position at three, to the wicket. Perrin sent the fifth ball of the over for four, and simply continued that way for the rest of the day. His second wicket partnership with Fane added 120 in seventy minutes, so that by lunch Essex had already reached 179 for 3, with Perrin on 74 not out. In the afternoon session, Perrin had a second century partnership, of 121 for the fourth wicket with Gillingham, before the latter was caught and bowled by Warren. With his score on 152, Perrin was dropped by Bestwick off Warren, a straightforward catch at mid-on. In that same over, Warren secured two quick wickets so that at tea Essex had reached 351 for six, with Perrin on 180. After tea, the Derbyshire fielding deteriorated and three half chances given by Perrin were missed. He had a third century partnership, with J.W.H.T.Douglas for the eighth wicket, which produced 130 runs in seventy-five minutes. At the close of play, Essex had scored 524 for eight off 119 overs, with Perrin on 295 not out, including 58 fours. At the time this was the highest individual total scored in a single day of first-class cricket. Fane had been the only other batsman to pass fifty. Some years later Perrin said of the day’s play: ‘I strolled a few singles, trotted a few twos, and just leaned on the bat and watched the rest.’ Essex continued batting on the second day for another 19.1 overs, which were sent down in fifty minutes. Perrin reached his 300 off the first over of the day, from Bestwick. He added in all 48 runs, including ten more fours, to his overnight score before the last Essex batsman, C.P.Buckenham, was lbw to Bestwick with the Essex total on 597. There are a couple of numerical uncertainties about Perrin’s innings. Gerald Brodribb reported in his book Hit for Six , published in 1961, that Perrin’s sixty-eight fours included ‘fourteen hits which pitched on to or beyond the cinder path which surrounds the turf.’ After 1910 these hits would have been worth six runs each. In a later book Next Man In , in 1985, Brodribb attributed this information to the scorer, presumably Joe Armour. Perrin himself had a more modest view of his hitting, telling The Field magazine some years later that only six or seven hits would have counted as sixes after 1910. The second uncertainty is the length of the innings, reported by The Times and the Daily Telegraph as lasting ‘about five and three quarter hours’, which would put the length of the first day’s play, rather implausibly, at little more than five hours. The speed of Perrin’s scoring, and the frequency of his boundaries moved W.A.Bettesworth, writing on the front page of Cricket magazine of 21 July 1904, to compare Perrin with W.G.Grace. He concluded that there was no doubt that Grace was the better batsman, and that he enjoyed his batting more than Perrin. The only photographs of the match show Perrin bustling off the pitch at the end of his innings: they convey determination rather than excitement. The young Perrin was a very serious cricketer. Derbyshire’s response, according to the Daily Telegraph , was ‘undismayed’. After surviving some initial difficulties against the new ball, L.G.Wright and C.A.Ollivierre scored 191 for the first wicket, and W.Storer and Ollivierre added another 128 for the second. Taking full advantage of the visitors’ 12