James Lillywhite's Cricketers' Annual 1887

2 LILLYWHITE'SCRICKETERS' A N N U A L. C H A P T E R II. T H EC R I C K E TS E A S O NO F 1 8 8 6. B YM I D-O F F. THESummerof 1886 was looked forward to by cricketers as likely to prove of great brilliancy from a cricket point of view. The fact that the Colonial Exhi- bition was to be held in London, coupled with the visit of what was said to be the strongest eleven that Australia had ever put in the field , led one to expect , if the weather should only be fine , an unparalleled cricket season . Unfortunately the fulfilment has fallen lamentably short of the expectations formed, and the season of 1886 cannotbe rankedas an exciting one. T h ereasons are not far to seek. T h ecelebrated Australian Elevenreached our shores with a flourish , and left them in discreet silence . They played forty matches , commencing in the middle of May, and finishing in the third week in September-a practically unbroken series of 130 consecutive days ! With their four best bats absent , the result of the tour maybe briefly summed up by saying , first , that it has proved conclusively that English cricketers are , at present , very m u c hmorethan their equals at all points of the game, with the exception of wicket -keeping ; and, secondly , that their best all -round m a n, Giffen , has per- formed the truly Herculean task of bowling about 7000 balls for 162 wickets , and at the same time obtaining 1450 runs in 65 innings . This is to establish a record indeed , but a record does not make a cricket season interesting , andit m a ysafely be said that the summerof 1886 will stand out conspicuously as being the year in which there was altogether too much cricket played for a proper interest in the gameto be maintained . Without the forty matches played b y our visitors , a very interesting season might have been chronicled . N odoubt it will be some time before the Australians again payus a visit , so that the surfeit wehave experienced this year may be followed by a healthy reaction . The Parsees have also paid us a visit , but could not succeed in finding any single eleven weakenough to play a proper game with them. This was a great pity and a subject of general disappointment , the object of their visit being a mostlaudable one, andsimilar to that of the Philadelphians in 1884 , although unfortunately with very different results . T oexamine the season's cricket somewhat in detail , let us commencewith our visitors , the Australians . A record of only nine matches wonout of forty cannot becalled anything else than disastrous . Further, that twenty-twomatches should be drawnin a fine summerpoints to something radically wrong, and the results of their matches towardsthe endof the season were met with well- deserved ridicule by the public , as twice a week the papers contained the notice of yet another draw-reminding one of the French audience who at the first performance of Hamlet in Paris were struck by the alarming manner in which the actors killed themselves off one after another at the end of the play, so that w h e nLaertes finally drank his share of the poison , the shouts of laughter knew no bounds, and a shriek was heard from the audience of " Encore un autre ! " Thevictories of the team were over Oxford University , the Gentlemen ofEngland, Derbyshire ,Lancashire , Middlesex , Lord March's Eleven ,Yorkshire , Gloucester- shire , and Mr. Wyatt's Eleven, or, in other words, their only victories of any consequence consist of those over Lancashire , Yorkshire , and Gloucestershire , with one over Middlesex by the narrowest possible margin , and the Gentlemen .