James Lillywhite's Cricketers' Companion 1884

21 B y H on . E. H. LYTTELTON . C OUNTY CRICKET, always interesting, reached its highest point in public estimation during the season of 1883. The reasons • accounting for this are various. The number of counties striving to attain the summum honum, the title of Champion County, is constantly increasing, and there seems to be no reason why the number of competing elevens should not in twenty years’ time be double that in the past season’s list. Another reason for the increase of interest is that there has been a great revival of southern cricket. The writer had occasion last year in these pages to allude to the almost tyrannical superiority of Y orkshire and N otts — producing both of them an appar­ ently inexhaustible supply of professional cricketers—and of L ancashire , which county, in default of production of cricketers, possesses to a wonderful degree the divine art of winning cricketers from other counties. I t is a new revelation, the sight of the famous L ancashire Eleven, with its Scotch, Yorkshire, Nottingham, Bedfordshire, and Oxfordshire mercenaries starting on a southern tour at the close of the season to play three matches with Kent, Surrey, and Gloucestershire, and returning to their different homes in their different counties for the winter with the threefold stain of southern defeat upon their brows. But such was actually the case, and it could not be said that they were the victims of bad luck in these three matches. Cricketers may fancy to themselves the L ancashire Committee deliberating and discussing the problem as to whether a falling off in Yorkshire and Nottingham cricketers is the reason why their own County should suffer, for, if the reservoirs of these counties are polluted, the supply flowing into Lancashire will deteriorate, and a large portion of such supply comes from these sources. This year, however, has seen a wonderful revival of southern cricket, for, in spite of the decadence of G loucester ­ shire , S urrey and M iddlesex have advanced rapidly, i There wras of course this year little to interrupt tlie interest excited by Countjr matches. No A ustralians were here, and it is notorious that many cricketers are far more keen for their County’s success than they are for anv other side they represent. This year, on the occasion ot G entlemen and P layers , both at Lord’s and the Oval, did Mr. W . W . B ead elect to fight for his County in preference to doing battle for the amateurs. That this spirit exists cannot be doubted by anyone who lias watched the almost savage keenness of a match played at Sheffield between N otts and Y orkshire ; and this year, in consequence of the improved form shown by S urrey , the excitement at the Oval during