James Lillywhite's Cricketers' Annual 1892

P U B L I CS C H O O LCRICKETIN 1891. 2 3 his English compeers . The batting of the side compares very unfavourably with the bowling, Drakebeing the only one to secure an average of 20 or more, and he, it may be remarked , scored considerably more runs than any two other members of the team. W ehad almost forgotten to mention Fichardt , whose wicket-keeping was acknowledged to be very much above schoolboy form, and decidedly better than McLachlan's , whodid good service for Loretto in the same position . Fichardt is utterly lost to us, as he is now, or soon will be, somewhere in South Africa , so any forecast of his future doings is quite useless . Loretto had a more than fairly prosperous year, as their victories , four of whichwere in school matches ,outbalanced their losses bymorethan two to one. Amongtheir victims was Rossall , who were , however , exceptionally weak last year, andw eshould very muchquestion whether the Lorettonians can be classed as anything like a first -class side . There was no fault to be found with their out-cricket , but their batting was miserably weak, for , Cochran and McLachlan excepted , there was not a batsman amongthem, and the runs of these two com- bined reached as high a total as those of all the rest of the eleven . Pearson failed lamentably with the bat, much to every one's disappointment ; but in bowling he stands second to McLarenonly amonghis Scotch rivals . Several of the others comeout well in the bowling averages , and their offensive strength wasamplydemonstrated by the fact that in no one of their matches did their opponents amass a total of 200 runs. Thesuccess of Fettes in 1890 was chiefly due to the all -round play of their captain , and the loss of Campbell, and, in a lesser degree , of Fleming, left them in rather an enfeebled condition , and when pitted against the Blair Lodge bowlers they made a wretched show. The Loretto match produced a close finish ,butonce again the Fettesians proved incompetent to withstand the attacks ofa goodbowler in the excitement of a school match. Thomsonplayed a fine innings against Merchiston , and on a fast wicket was a really good bat ; but he wasnot a consistent scorer , nor, indeed , were any of the team, and it would have gone badly with them if their trio of bowlers -Scott , Berkeley , and Grant - h a dnot proved almost uniformly successful . Glenalmond could boast of victories over Merchiston and the Academy, but their other school matches proved disastrous , their failure in the Fettes match being absolutely deplorable . Fromwhat we have heard, they were rather a poor lot, though their bowlers seldom failed to dispose of their opponents for m o d e r a t etotals. Onemore school only remains to be noticed , and it mayseem that as Mer- chiston had the honour of being the only eleven whocould compete successfully with Blair Lodge , we ought to have spoken of their doings before . But we knowthat one swallow does not makea summer, nor does one victory , how- ever sensational , prove any team a good one, and the defeats by Loretto , Fettes , andGlenalmondmakethe Merchistonians appear almost at the bottom of the list , and render their Blair Lodge triumph all the more inexplicable . They seem to have had a very fair cricketer in Neilson , who is now at Cambridge; butw emustconfess that we shall be surprised if, even with his football reputa- tion to help him, he ever comes prominently to the front in 'Varsity cricket . Afew morewords, and our task will be done. Before closing we should like to call theattentionof ourreadersto thee n o r m o u sa m o u n tof cricketw h i c h the Scotch boys manageto get through in the course of the summer. Fromtime to time we hear bitter complaints of the grievous waste of time at our English public schools , and masters are often censured for allowing their boys to play som a n ymatches. Well, if cricket matches are a mistake , as some would have us believe , our friends across the border must be blundering most egregiously . Shall wenot rather conclude that they , as practical men, have come to a con- viction that a boy's work materially profits by an abundance of fresh air , andthat the great lessons of self -control and self -respect can nowhere be so thoroughly learnt as on the cricket and football fields of our public schools .