James Lillywhite's Cricketers' Annaul 1897

C R I C K E TIN 1 8 9 6. 5 9 The presence of the Australian team reduced the numberof Inter- County engagements in comparison with the previous . Withthe con- gestion which generally obtains in the fixtures when Australian cricketers are inEngland it was not possible for some of the counties to play as many matches . Hence, for this year only , the minimumto qualify for the first- class CountyChampionship had to be lowered from sixteen to twelve to allow of Essex and Leicestershire competing . Still , all told there were 126 matches for the County Championship . Of this number91 were brought to a definite conclusion . Thehigh scoring was responsible for a goodly proportion of the thirty -five drawn games . This wasthe explanation in the early part of the season, and it was only quite at the finish that rain interfered with the completion of matches to any great extent . In this connection it m a ybe interesting to add that the opportunity of declaring the innings was only utilised fifteen times . In only four of these fifteen cases was the moveattended with success . Withone exception- and that was at the end of June, when Surrey beat Hampshire at Southampton -all were in August after the weather had broken up and the side declaring hadall the best of the luck. Asa consequence of the fast wickets , mostly prevalent , the scoring was above the average. In M a yrun-getting was abnormally high. It was in the first weekof M a ythat Yorkshire treated the Warwickshire bowlers at Birminghamto a record for first -class cricket , in the shape of a total of 887 . T h enext best belonged also to the Yorkshire Eleven, who scored 660 against Leicestershire , at Leicester , in the middle of August. These figures refer to our o w ncricket . The highest innings of the Australian teamwas625 against Derbyshire . Besides , in addition to their 584 against Leicestershire ,they had five innings of over 400 andten over 300. Thebiggest total outside County cricket was M.C.C. and Ground's 583 (for seven wickets ) against Oxford University , at Lord's . The honour of the highest individual score again fell to W. G. Grace . His 301 for Gloucestershire against Sussex in August, at Bristol , was the best for any class of match. Abel, Brown, Davidson, G u n n, Hayward, A. McLaren, W. Newham, L. C. H. Palairet , Peel , Sugg (F. H.) and Capt . Wynyardalso got scores varying from 268 to 201. That the wickets generally were in favour of the batsmancan be judged from the fact that there were 116 scores of 100 in County cricket , an increase of 38 on the previous year. In four Countymatches the aggregate was over 1,200 runs. Therecord for the year in this particular respect , was shared by Sussex and Gloucestershire . In their match at Brighton at the end of M a y1,288 runs weremadefor 30 wickets . In 27 matches there were over 1,000 runs scored . In onecase M.C.C. and Groundv. Oxford University , at Lord's , only two days were allotted to the game. The match between York- shire and Warwickshire , at Birmingham, produced more than one record . The second was represented by the fact of four scores of 100 in York- shire's innings . Three have been got on manyoccasions in first -class cricket , and, indeed, there were four instances of the kind in 1896. Bnt the performance of Peel , Lord Hawke, Wainwright and Mr. F. S. Jackson at Birmingham last May is , it is believed , unique in Inter -County matches . Sixteen batsmen got over 1,000 runs (three of those over 2,000 ), which number is five in excess of 1895 .