James Lillywhite's Cricketers' Annual 1878

18 o f Middlesex was the more surprising considering that an eleven containing such players as Hon. A Lyttleton, Messrs. I. D. Walker, R . D. Walker, W . H. Hadow, A . J. Webbe, H. R . Webbe, F . M. Buckland, M. Turner, R. Henderson, and C. K . Francis, ought to be able to render a good account of itself. Sussex had even a less favourable budget to announce at the end of the sea­ son, as seven out of eight matches were lost— most of them decisively. An accident in the spring deprived Sussex of the aid of Mr. Arthur Smith, a left-handed, slow round-arm bowler, who had been very successful for the county the previous year. Mr. J. M. Cotterill, who proved himself in the matches between Gentlemen and Players to be, as he has been for years, one o f the very best batsmen of the day, too, was unable to play more than twice, and otherwise the eleven were neither well organised nor individually in good form. The batting was at times feeble in the extreme, the fielding never bril­ liant, and neither Lillywhite nor Fillery were in anything like their bowling form of previous years. Kent, Lancashire, and Gloucestershire were victori­ ous both out and home, w’hile the one source of satisfaction was the drawn game with Surrey at the Oval, in which, wTith the best of the weather, Sussex would in all probability have been easy victors. Four of the eight matches lost show a margin of more than an innings to the winners, so that the outcome o f Sussex cricket in 1877 has been gloomy enough, in all truth. The season produced at least one new cricketer, Mr. R . T. Ellis, w'hose excellent score at Clifton.against Gloucestershire augurs well for the future. Hampshire, a county whose fortune seemed to have been made in 1876, in the course of a year, has fallen wofully from its high estate. To explain the successes of Hampshire in 1876, is mainly to record the notable achievements of Mr. A . W . Ridley both with bat and ball, and to account for the reverses of 1877 is, on the same ground of reasoning, merely to call attention to the great falling off in the value of that gentleman’s services in comparison with the preceding season, especially with the ball. W ith Mr. Ridley only able to get rid of opposite batsmen at a heavy average of nearly twenty-three runs per wicket, Hampshire bowling was considerably weaker than that of any other county, and the fielding of the eleven was much below the standard of first- class cricket. Nor was the batting generally of a kind to atone for the obvious shortcomings in the two other important departments of the game. Mr. Booth played better cricket than ever, and with Mr. Ridley more than once worked a wonderful change in the aspect of affairs by the long stand they made with the bat, but "with Mr. G. H. Longman in nothing like his University form, and Mr. D. Duncan, the only other really sound batsman in the eleven, it is hardly a matter for wonder that the scores of Hampshire were, with the ex­ ception of the second innings in each meeting with Kent, small, and that all the four matches should have resulted in signal defeats. Still with Mr. Booth’s energy and the support of the chief cricketers in the county it is to be hoped that Hampshire will return next season to the form it showed in 1876, and to do this the first step will be to effect an improvement in the fielding, which was the ruin of the Eleven last year. The honour o f the longest innings in a county match fell to Middlesex, and the 400 made by that county at Nottingham was remarkable for two scores of exactly 100 by the Hon. A . Lyttelton and J. AVebbe. The smallest innings of the county year was the 39 made by Sussex against K en t at Tunbridge Wells, and the largest individual score was Mr. F . Penn’s 148 (not out), for Kent against Surrey, at the Oval. To Kent, too, belongs the distinction of the greatest number of wickets in the 96 obtained by George Heame, while Surrey had also the satisfaction of a best-on-record in a county match, in the great ex­ ploit ofMr. W, AV. Read and Jupp, who in the return match with Yorkshire