Famous Cricketers No 95 - P.A.Perrin

at Hove, Perrin captained the side when Douglas was invited to play in the Scarborough festival. He took the then unorthodox decision of putting Sussex in to bat on a good wicket, but won the match by ten wickets, enabling the side to finish in the top half of the Championship table. Own Team O M R W Opp Ct Total Total 533. Essex v Oxford University, New Writtle Street, Chelmsford, June 22, 23, (24) (Match drawn) [capt] [6] c and b L.R.Serrurier 1 414 201 1 534. Essex v Somerset, Garrison Ground, Colchester, July 6, 7, 8 (Match drawn) [7] b W.T.Gresswell 0 139 116 [9] c R.A.Ingle b J.C.White 1 141-7d 57-7 535. Essex v Sussex, Hove, August 31, September 1, 2 (Essex won by ten wickets) [capt] [8] st W.L.Cornford b E.H.Bowley 10 411 317 did not bat - 18-0 111 1 SEASON’S AVERAGES Batting and Fielding M I NO Runs HS Ave 100 50 Ct County Championship 2 3 0 11 10 3.66 - - 1 Other Essex match 1 1 0 1 1 1.00 - - 1 Season 3 4 0 12 10 3.00 - - 2 Career 535 914 91 29607 343* 35.97 66 151 290 1928 Wisden described the Essex season as ‘very depressing’. With the highest bowling average in the competition, Essex fell to sixteenth in the Championship, and this eventually led to the dismissal of J.W.H.T.Douglas as captain in December 1928. The county fielded 38 players in 32 first-class matches, with only eight of them appearing regularly for the side. The remaining three places were re-cycled match by match, indicating a state little short of disarray. Perrin filled in on three occasions, although he had not been listed by the Daily News Cricket Annual as likely to play. In his first match, in June, Perrin captained the side against Oxford University. Batting ‘with much of his old ease and power’, he added 109 for the sixth wicket with Jack O’Connor, son of his Margate College coach over thirty years before. He lost his record as the oldest Essex player when, also in June, F.H.Gillingham, the former curate at St Mary’s, Leyton, was brought back at the tender age of 52 years 287 days to play in C.A.G Russell’s benefit match there. In early September, in the last match of the season against Sussex, and with Douglas playing at a Scarborough festival match, Perrin captained the side against Sussex, but in his only innings he scored a duck, the seventy-fifth of his first-class career, on a perfect Leyton pitch. The captaincy had not been awarded to him for this match to mark his retirement, nor was the match treated as a special occasion, to judge from local newspaper reports. He thus slipped away from county cricket, on a warm September afternoon at Leyton, almost unnoticed. The season had been his twenty-ninth in Championship cricket: at the time only W.G Grace, A.N.Hornby and W.G.Quaife had played longer in the competition. The Essex annual report covering this season made no reference to this being the end of Perrin’s career, nor did it thank him for his huge contribution to the Essex cause. Own Team O M R W Opp Ct Total Total 536. Essex v Oxford University, Garrison Ground, Colchester, June 23, 25, 26 (Match drawn) [capt] [7] b R.I.F.McIntosh 51 316 337 1 did not bat - 177-1 537. Essex v Northamptonshire, Kettering, June 30, July 2, 3 (Northamptonshire won by nine wickets) [7] c A.D.G.Matthews b A.E.Thomas 7 165 267 2 [7] b E.F.Towell 44† 138 37-1 69