James Lillywhite's Cricketers' Annual 1889

1 6 L I L L Y W H I T E ' SCRICKETERS' A N N U A L. Cambridge , his defence and steadiness must be improved . Badeley , another of last year's team, is also nowat Cambridge, and some people fancy him to be the more likely manof the two. Their careers will be watched with great interest , and we look to them to prove us right in adding Oundle to the list of schools , whoseexploits are specially noted in these pages of Lillywhite . W ewere taken to task so severely by an O. R. last year for daring to find fault with Radley cricket , and for suggesting that it was impossible for a school of its numbers to hope to excel on the cricket field as well as on the river , that w e feel somewhat diffident in saying anything about the eleven of the past season . W eknowhowever that the remonstrance was madein perfectly good faith , and we trust that our correspondent and all other O. R.'s will believe that our remarks were entirely free from spite , and that we were actuated solely by a desire to improve the cricket at their old school . Let us glance at the doings of the Radley eleven . They were badly beaten by a North Oxford team , which , by the way, included Jellicoe and Bassett ; but , without fear of contradiction , w e m a ystate that they were infinitely more successful than their immediate prede- cessors . Theyhad no bowler of the calibre of Moss, who did themsuch service in '86, but Bathurst and Grayson were two capital all -round men, and their batting averages are considerably in advance of any Radley averages for some years past . Bathurst did exceedingly well in the Bradfield match, and practi- cally wonthe gamefor his side . Against Pembroke Grayson knocked up a long score , but he was not so consistent a run-getter as Bathurst ; and the latter , with increased punishing powers , should be really good . Two charges are brought against the Radley team by their own friends -first , that they wasted valuable time ; and, secondly , that they were slow between the wickets , and miserable judges of a run. Thefirst fault is , alas ! almost universal now, and it mustbe put a stop to with a high hand. Some penalty must be exacted , but the nature of this we will leave to the judgment of the powers that be. Bad running also is not confined to Radley boys, for to be a good judge of a run is one of the last things a cricketer learns in fact , manynever learn it at all ; still , bycareful coaching boys can be taught to improve in this respect , and we should soon see a general improvement if school mentors devoted more atten- tion to this particular branch of the game. F r some years past Repton has been xtremely fortunate in her elevens , andw ehave no hesitation in saying that no school of the size , with the single exception of Uppingham, has had such a succession of good teams as she has placed in the field for the last seven or eight years . It seemed however as if long -continued success was beginning to tell unfavourably on the morale of the boys, and in the last " Annual" wehadoccasion to find serious fault with several of the team for their general slackness . This was only a temporary madness , w e are thankful to say, the fit passed off , and whatever other failings the eleven of '88 mayhave had, they were not slack . Onthe contrary , they deserve great praise for their constant and consistent energy ; it was this and nothing else which enabled them to reach even the standard of respectability . The material wasnot by any means first -rate , and if there had been any neglect of steady practice , lamentable failure must have ensued . As it was they had only once to put up with defeat , and in several of their engagements the team appeared in a very favourable light . Thoughit mayseem paradoxical to say so, bowling wasthe strong and yet the weakpoint of the side the strong , in that there were four bowlers at least , of fair average merit ; the weak, in that these bowlers were all of the same stamp, and so the change from one to the other was practically no change at all . The fielding on the whole was satisfactory , and the batting fairly even ; the majority were capable of getting runs , but no one of them proved a regular scorer . Theaverages of the first four are practically identical , butit wouldbe wrong to conclude that they were all of equal merit . Burney is a distinctly useful cricketer , and especially excelled in the school matches , and Tomlinson, bad though his style m a ybe, generally got runs ; but neither of them could compare with L. Palairet , when at his best . For two or three weeks in the middle of term he was quite off colour , but wethink it morethan