James Lillywhite's Cricketers' Companion 1885

were twice defeated by S urrey , and this is a feather in the cap of S urrey , considering the performances of S ussex . It was during the season of 1883 that the Southern Counties first began to make themselves more conspicuous. It is, of course, owing to the amateur element that this success is to be attributed, for in a representative professional Eleven there would not he found more than one Southern professional. In S iiaw ' s Eleven, now in Australia, there is only M aurice R ead from the South. But there are symptoms of some good young players in the South, J esse H ide , A bel , H enderson — should the latter recover his health— W ood , R ead , amt L oiimann , W ootton and the two H earnes , and F ainter and W oof , would not be a strong Eleven now, but they may be in two or three years. It has been suggested that a salutary new rule might be introduced with advantage with regard to the toss for choice of innings. It has been said, and there is a great deal to be said in its favour, that in home and home matches, such as County matches, it would be fairer and more equitable if the visiting eleven should in every case be allowed choice of innings. Of course the case of D erbyshire playing ten matches and only once winning the toss is an anomaly that will not often occur. But there is no doubt that in the case of a County which generally plays the same team, there is a great advantage in playing on its own ground. Would it not be a great recommendation, simply on the ground of courtesy, to give the visiting eleven the choice? The courtesy would be purely reciprocal, for there is always a return match. The only injustice, and that there is a slight injustice in this cannot he doubted, is that one match is played on a true and hard wicket and the return on a soft difficult one, which remains difficult during the whole match. In the first instance the value of going in first is tremendous. If N otts were to play D erbyshire on a hard, true wicket, and go in first, the odds would rise from being 2 to 1 on them to 4 to 1 on them if this took place on the Trent Bridge Ground. But on soft, difficult wickets the toss is not so much advantage, and that a slight injustice has to he faced cannot be denied. But the element of luck is an element that ought to be minimised as much as is reasonably possible. The question, therefore, is whether this great reform is to be recom­ mended or not. It is impossible for any cricketer, however good a judge of the game, to say at the end of a match what the result of a match would have been if the toss had fallen the other way. It would be a great gain if, in discussing the season’s County Cricket, one could say that no great amount of luck or ill-luck has persistently stuck to this or that County. At the meeting of County representatives at Lord’s in December, Lord Harris brought forward a motion that in County matches the side losing tlie toss in the first match should have choice of innings in the second, but as he only obtained a majority of three— theie being ten votes for and seven against—he allowed the question to drop for another year.