James Lillywhite's Cricketers' Annual 1894

1 0 LILLYWHITE'SC R I C K E T E R S' A N N U A L. the feeling expressed and in influential quarters , in favour of Derbyshires ' restora- tion to the place it once occupied as a first class County. For ourselves , the analysis which divided Counties into two or even three grades , has been a little too subtle to be acceptable . The so called County Championship is not a thing of unmixed good in our opinion . That it has be- come, in a way, a public question we are forced to admit. Still the responsibilities it has created and the anxiety it has engendered , and naturally , amongthose most interested , do not tend towards the promotion of the best feeling , or at least the feeling which ought to animate those who play for the pure love of the game itself. This train of thought is the natural outcome of the fierce light which has been thrown on to the series of matches which are now played between the nine leading counties , and which have come to be regarded as a competition for the express purpose of satisfying the public as to which is the best county eleven of the year. To be admitted into the front rank would appear to be a matter of considerable importance to judge by the efforts which have been and continue to be madeon behalf of some of the more favoured of those outside the pale . Technically there is a good deal of course in the contention , that is from the point of view of public attraction , that there ought to be some kind of system which should form a stepping stone for promotion from the second into the first rank. Still this would imply an admission that County Cricket no longer is to be managedon the voluntary principle but rather on the lines of football associa- tions , leagues , or such like bodies . That is where the difficulty is likely to arise . Toacknowledge such a principle would neither be likely to meet with favour amongthe more influential clubs , nor what is of the greater importance , to be beneficial to the best interests of the game. The remedy, if indeed anyone should seriously argue that there has been or is a disease , will be found in the working of the natural laws . It is idle to urge that there is anything like a ring for county cricket . Still , the necessities of their position , demand that for the less wealthy clubs the balance of expenditure over receipts should not exceed a certain amount. The more deserving counties are sure to meet with their proper reward as was the case with Somersetshire , if only there is the same undoubted fitness . Still this digression , though not perhaps irrelevant , has strictly nothing to do with the cricket of 1893. So we must take up the thread of the subject where it was broken- the question of the second class counties . Of these Derbyshire had certainly the better record last year, better at all events than Essex or Leicestershire , though both of them on several occasions shewed really excellent all -round cricket . Each of themhad the same good fortune to beat Surrey on its own ground . Still Surrey itself at its best was not quite the same combination as it was 1891, and in neither case , either at Leyton or Leicester , was the full strength of Surrey in the field . In one respect Essex cricket presented a very notable feature inthe markedadvance of Mr. C. J. Kortright , whojudging by his success in the more important matches was not very far removed from the best fast bowler of the year . Withthe aid of more than one professional who has figured in another county team, Warwickshire was able to put into the field last year an eleven which ought really on its best form, to have been little , if anything inferior to the strongest of the counties , yet on several occasions the cricket was dissapointing , in the better fixtures in particular . All the same, though the bowling was hardly on the whole so formidable as it was a few years ago, the addition of two such batsmen as Diver , the old Surrey player , and Walter Quaife , for several years one of the leading members of the Sussex eleven , is bound to prove a material increase of strength to the run getting capacity of the eleven . Withthe above exceptions the cricket of the Minor Counties presented no very noteworthy incident . Durham though , apparently had, as indeed it has had for the last three or four seasons , by no means a bad working side . Still the remoteness of its position from the centre of cricket civilisation in the South, reduces the limit of its operations to a very great extent . As a matter of fact Yorkshire and Lancashire , of the few counties which are able to arrange a programme without any serious necessity to consider the financial prospect of any particular fixture , are alone within easy hail of the head