Lives in Cricket No 11 - CP Lewis

statisticians may have been less willing to class their match against Australia as a Test. He was over six feet tall – big for that period – and, at his peak, weighed 12st 6lb, though his waistband expanded with age, particularly when he gave up rugby and his fast bowling started to fade. As a right-arm bowler, Lewis was described by contemporaries as ‘round-hand fast’, and from the number of clean-bowled victims in his bag he seems to have been particularly accurate. The green Lillywhite annual also once recorded of him: ‘C.P.Lewis has a low slinging delivery when bowling, but the ball gets up quick from the pitch, and as his direction is fairly accurate, he sometimes has success. A hard hitter.’ Lewis had been a fairly successful bowler with Oxford University in 1876 taking, in five first-class matches, 17 wickets at 29 runs apiece. His invitation to join the tour of Australia does not seem to be documented at the time, surfacing years later in his obituary notice, so we cannot judge how accurate the claim was, or whether it was a boastful comment which he had made in his later years. Tradition has it that he was also asked to play against the Australians for a Gentlemen of England side in 1878 or 1880, but was unable to do so: he did, though, play against them for XVIII of South Wales on the first of these tours. He played several times for M.C.C. against various teams – he eventually became of member of the premier English club in 1886 – but it seems he was not much of a joiner-in at high-level sport in England. Indeed, on coming down from Oxford in 1876, he accepted an offer to return to teach at his alma mater , Llandovery College and, in keeping with the custom at that time, played both cricket and rugby alongside his pupils for the College side. With some promising talent emerging in the Llandovery XI, it was no surprise that the schoolboys, together with a gleeful C.P.Lewis, swept aside the leading adult Welsh clubs and in 1881 won the South Wales Challenge Cup – the premier competition at the time which ran alongside the almost identical South Wales Rugby Football Challenge Cup, with nearly equal prestige and rowdy crowds. During his time teaching at Llandovery, Lewis also won five Welsh rugby caps, and led the side in three of his international appearances in the early 1880s. Over a dozen of his charges at the College also went on to win Welsh rugby caps. 8 Introduction