Lives in Cricket No 11 - CP Lewis

name suggests, a notoriously wet ground. 6 Lewis also bowled the first ball of the match, against Lancashire’s future England captain, A.N.Hornby. However, he ended up as the least successful of the four bowlers, despite having delivered the most overs, 25, which at that time comprised four balls. He conceded just 29 runs, and picked up the wicket of Nottinghamshire’s Frederick Wyld, who was caught at the wicket by A.P.Wickham, at Oxford to read theology and, like C.P., playing his first first-class match. Later, in the 1890s, Wickham played a handful of matches for Somerset each season, when he was rated as one of the leading keepers of the day. Through the accuracy of the Oxford attack, run-scoring was a grind as M.C.C. made just 78 in 72.1 four-ball overs. However, they then bowled Oxford out for 97, with Lewis making a duck on his batting debut. M.C.C. then battled up to 130, with a feisty spell from Lewis who took seven for 35 in 36.3 overs. Wyld and a future England captain, Alfred Shaw, were among four men bowled by the no doubt jubilant Welshman. By now both Shaw and the wicket were unplayable. Oxford went down like ninepins batting for a second time. Shaw, stolidly accurate as ever, took seven for 28, and they were dismissed for just 56, as the game ended in a defeat, inside two days, by 55 runs. Neither Wisden nor The Times referred to Lewis’ seven-wicket return in their reports of the match: as it transpired it was his best-ever first-class analysis, and the best bowling return for Oxford that season. Shaw’s seven wickets were, by contrast, ‘all in a day’s work’ for him; he took 191 first-class wickets in the season, and reached five wickets in an innings twenty-one times. Lewis’ seven-wicket return was, though, a significant achievement: only nine players have taken seven or more wickets in an innings in their first match for the University, three of them before complete analyses were kept. His was the best such return until it was surpassed by H.O.Whitby’s eight for 82 against the Australians on the Christ Church ground in 1884 and then by G.F.H.Berkeley’s eight for 70 against another set of Oxford and a Lost Cause 25 6 This was an unusual match in several respects. The game, despite its first-class status, was twelve-a-side. M.C.C. batted a man short in their first innings, with A.C.Miles, in his first-ever first-class game missing on the first day. Lewis bowled Miles for nought on the second day when M.C.C. followed on, bringing his victim’s career in first-class cricket to an end. He did not bowl in the match. Wisden ’s obituary of Miles, an Old Etonian, assures us, though, that he was a ‘first-rate’ field.