James Lillywhite's Cricketers' Annual 1885

2 L I L L YW H I T E ' SC R I C K E T E R S ' A N N U A L. C H A P T E R II. C R I C K E T I N 1 8 8 4. B YI N C O G. OPINIONS m a yand do differ on the question of the advantages which some consider accrue to cricket from the nowregular interchange of visits between the players of the old and the new country . Somehypercritical persons , no doubt sensitive and solicitous for the highest interests of the game, are apt to decry everything which savours of the commercial element in connection with our national sport . Their arguments are in some respects specious ; but even if they are a little out of date in someof their notions , the numberof cricketers whoregard the frequent tours as by no means an unmixed good, is very large . Y e tit is quite possible to hold these ideas without being in the slightest degree wanting in respect or good feeling to the Colonial players who have visited us, and of whose pluck and energy no one can write in other terms than of the highest praise . A tthe same time, it is clear that the biennial invasions of our cricket fields byAustralian teams have a very prejudicial effect on cricket of purely homeproduction . Whetherin other ways they do not produce corres . ponding advantages , is a point which would no doubt admit of considerable argument. N o one can deny that certain benefits have accrued to the sport here from their excellent all-round cricket , the thoroughness which has pervaded every part of the game as it has been exhibited on English grounds by the representatives of the new world of cricket , under the shadow of the Southern cross . Whatever, though , the difference of opinion on these tours , the fact remains that last season the doings of the Fourth Australian Teamdid monopolise most of the interest which usually attaches to our principal English matches . It was certain , of course , that such would be the case , and beyond a doubtthe excitement engendered in manyof the chief contests in which the Colonial players figured , was productive of direct good to English clubs and cricketers , and, consequently , of imoral benefit to English cricket . As it is of English cricket alone that it is m yprovince to treat , it is necessary for m eto point out that in some respects it was not seen quite at its best , for the reason named, that is on account of the superior attractions offered by the Australian fixtures . Yet, on the whole, the season was as pleasant and satisfactory a one as anyone could wish . The weather , with the exception of a very brief interval was generally in every wayfavourable . O n some occasions it was indeed oppressively hot , notably when England met Australia at the Oval, in August. Cricketers everywhere , though , had an agreeable time of it, and it is pleasant to think that we can look back at least on one season without any feelings of regret . The Nottinghamshire eleven , only once beaten in 1883, were able to point last season to an uninterrupted succession of good fortune . Of Inter -County matches, ten were played , and of these nine were won, the tenth , that against Surrey at the Oval , though drawn, a moral victory for Notts. The injury which practically closed Morley's career at the end of 1882 , left the County without a really first -class bowler, and it was feared that the want of a capable substitute would considerably prejudice the chances of the eleven in the competition for the foremost place in shiral cricket . The successes of the