James Lilllywhite's Cricketers' Annual 1880

P A R T I C H A P T E R I. T H EE N G L I S H T E A MI NA M E R I C A . B YOUR SPECIAL CORRESPONDENT . WHETHER cricket tours have been overdone or not , is a subject that would give rise possibly to considerable diversity of opinion . The public has certainly had no reason to be enthusiastic over the doings of the mixed elevens that have of late years visited the colonies . Undoubtedly the reception that English cricket- ers had met in some cases was not of a kind to impress the public mind , and manyexcellent judges argued , and with good reason , that the American tour , happily just over , would be anything but a success . H o wfar the prognostica- tions of failure were realised will be gathered , I hope , from the brief narrative , hastily written , of the doings of the twelve from the time they left Liverpool on August 28, 1879 , until their return to the same port on November 4 last . Let me preface my remarks by a statement that whatever credit is due for the arrangement of the trip belongs to Mr. John Parr Ford , a prominent member of the Nottingham Town Council , a thorough sportsman and a liberal supporter ofour national game , and to R. Daft . Mr. Ford's lot had been cast in Philadelphia for some little time a few years ago, and it was probably due to a desire of his to revisit the States , and at the same time , by offering to Transatlantic sportsmen a chance of witnessing the skill of some of the finest professional cricketers of the day, to promote the noble game of Old England , that our excursion became an accomplished fact . By placing the selection of the players in the hands of Richard Daft , he certainly chose the best road to success , and despite sundry obstacles in the late county fixtures of the year, which at one time seemed likely to be difficult to overcome , Thursday , August 28, found the Twelve with Messrs . Ford and E. Browne, the Assistant Secretary of the Notts County Club, at the Angel Hotel , Liverpool , ready for the voyage . 6 The team was supplied altogether by the two counties of Notts and York- shire , and it is hardly necessary for me in evidence of its strength to do more than enumerate the names of Richard Daft , Alfred Shaw, John Selby , Arthur Shrewsbury , William Oscroft , William Barnes , Frederick Morley , of Notts , with the five Yorkshiremen , Tom' Emmett , George Ulyett , Ephraim Lock- wood, William Bates , and George Pinder . Anything like a detailed description of our seven days ' voyage in the good steamer Sardinian would reveal such an abject state of suffering in some few instances , that in common pity Iam com- pelled to draw aveil over the whole picture . Ulyett's supreme enjoyment was of itself a sight to witness with satisfaction , and I never before realised the full merit of the cognomen that had been bestowed on him of Happy Jack .' Those B