James Lillywhite's Cricketers' Annual 1888

CRICKETIN 1887. 7 Yorkshire and Middlesex punished the bowling severely , there was no small ground for satisfaction in the knowledge, not merely that a defeat was avoided , butthat in each case the hometeam had shown unmistakably their ability to play an uphill game. The return match with Surrey at the Oval was drawn without any apparent advantage to either side , and this was perhaps Kent's best showduring the season . In August, whenthe county was represented by its full strength , the record was not so unfavourable ; but on the true wickets pre- valent during last summer, neither Wootton, although he was particularly successful against Surrey in the match just referred to, Martin , nor Alec Hearne could do very muchwith the ball , and the bowling generally was lacking in sting . Mr. Stanley Christopherson reappeared in the eleven , but had ap- parently not thoroughly recovered from the injury to his arm in the previous year, andthere was an absence of the old fire in his bowling . Mr. W. G. Grace's brilliant performances throughout the year with the bat were powerless , as it proved , by themselves to raise Gloucestershire above the level of 1886. In bowling , as well as in batting , Mr. Grace was the mainstay of theeleven , and it is to be regretted that such excellent all -round cricket was practically unavailing . Things have not gone at all well with Gloucestershire cricket of late years , and in manywaysFortune frowned severely on its managers last season . W o o f, whenhe was able to play in the latter part of the season , found that his bowling wasof little avail on the run-getting wickets , and though Mr. E. Peake, the Oxford fast bowler of 1883, proved of use in the later matches, and some good figures were recorded to another fast bowler, a colt named Roberts , the bowling , as a rule , showed no improvement on the form of recent y e a r s. W h e nMr. W. G. Grace was able to collect his scattered forces , there was certainly no lack of batting in the eleven , but although in the August fixtures the scoring washigher , as a rule it did not comeup to expectations , and, with the one exception of the captain himself , the run-getting was lower than might have been expected from the collective ability of the leading batsmen in the team. Thebatting was, in fact , uneven, and on more than one important occasion sin- gularly disappointing . Mr. Newnham'sdeparture from England in the middle ofthe season deprived Gloucestershire of auseful all -round cricketer , and in the weakness of the bowling he could ill be spared . Mr. W. G. Grace's batting , as already said , was up to the standard of his best day, and he finished the season inbrilliant style with two scores of 101 and 103 not out against Kent at Clifton- a feat , it maybe added, only once before achieved in first -class matches , and that by himself at Canterbury in 1868 for the South against the North of the T h a m e s. Derbyshire's ill -luck of late years culminated in 1887 , and it was hardly a surprise that the county , in the face of such a combination of adverse circum- stances , should have met with frequent disaster . Mr. L. C. Docker , who had played for Derbyshire for several years on the ground of birthright , strangely enough discovered that he did not possess a birth or other qualification , and, to complete the misfortunes of the team, FrankSugg, whohad been residing in Lancashire , on the completion of the necessary probationary period of two years , elected to cast in his lot with another , this time his third master . Withsuch discouraging influences , not to mention others of lesser force , the Derbyshire eleven , it need hardly be said , were not seen to the best advantage . As a matter of fact they only had engagements with three of the leading counties , andevery oneof these six waslost . A tthe sametimeit mustbe rememberedthat up to midwayin the gamethe Derbyshire eleven had, if anything , rather the best of it inthe return match with Surrey at the Oval, and that they beat Essex twice andLeicestershire once . Evennowthere is nothing to show that Derbyshire is not as good as, if not better than , the best of what are termed the minor counties , and therefore we are certainly disinclined to countenance anyaction tending to lower it in the county scale . Ofthe counties not considered to be in quite the front rank, Essex , Leices- tershire , Warwickshire , and Somersetshire seem to be on last year's form the