Lives in Cricket No 11 - CP Lewis

some extent, to have been “carried on” to the cricket match, the end of all was that on the first and second days the attendances were of such numbers as never before were seen at Lord’s.’ In fact, nearly 15,000 passed through the turnstiles on each of the first two days. ‘Pavilion seats and roof were crowded. The reserved sittings extended north and south of the pavilion were filled to a seat; the grand stand had no standing room, so crowded was it by the rank and fashion of England. The skeleton stand was also well filled; and how they packed the many thousands who sat and stood, ever so many deep, around the roped arena the M.C.C. authorities ... and the police alone know.’ We can imagine that C.P.Lewis must have wished that his mother and father had still been alive and, like the parents of many of the other participants, been able to watch the game and mingle with the great and good of London society. It was, though, not a very auspicious start for the Dark Blues as Oxford lost a wicket to the first ball of the second over and were soon in further trouble at 3 for two. They never recovered and ended all out for a dismal 112. Lewis, still batting at No.10, ‘went in for hitting and, by three singles, a couple of 2’s and two 4’s, he made 15 runs in 10 minutes, when a catch at point finished him’. More spectators poured into the ground while the players took lunch, and by the afternoon restart there was a double row of eager spectators sitting inside the boundary rope. After his lusty blows, perhaps with the adrenalin still flowing, Lewis produced an inspired opening salvo, bowling the Cambridge captain Frederick Greenfield and Irishman William Blacker in his first and third overs. Edward Lyttelton stopped the rot with a brief burst of leg hitting, until Lewis had him caught at point. A.P. ‘Bunny’ Lucas and Douglas Steel then batted sensibly, before an unbeaten century from William Patterson gave Cambridge a lead of 190. Lewis bowled 50 overs and took four wickets, the last when he was refreshed on the second morning. On the first evening ‘the great crowd (which had been sitting and standing under a blazing hot sun that had moved the thermometer up to 147) 10 left the ground as best they could, and as they swarmed along in one crowded continuous stream to the neat little railway station, and elsewhere, the sight seen in St. John’s Wood Oxford and a Lost Cause 28 10 Presumably a measurement in Fahrenheit, on a thermometer left out in the sun! The Times, rather more prosaically, reported a maximum temperature at Kew, in standard measurement conditions, on 27 June of 79.8º F, 26.6º C.