Lives in Cricket No 11 - CP Lewis

However, it proved to be a good day for the rest of the Oxford athletes as they defeated Cambridge by six events to three. C.P. had played a very peripheral role in the Dark Blues’ victory, but even so, it didn’t stop him and his colleagues heading off into town to celebrate their team’s success and the particular achievement of the Hon Marshall Brooks. 12 His celebrations also marked the end of his days as an Oxford athlete, and little did he know it at the time, his outstanding success in these sports at Oxford was also to play a major role in shaping the course of the next chapter in his life. Undergraduate Athlete and Rugby Player 37 12 The meeting, attended by 12,000 spectators, (even though, not far away on the Thames, the free spectacle of the University Boat Race was also under way) is best known for the performance of the Oxford athlete, Marshall Brooks, who achieved 6ft 2½in in the high jump, jumping feet-first. The Times described this feat as ‘unprecedented’. This is nowadays recognised as the then world record, although that concept was little developed at the time. Earlier in the year, at Oxford, he had cleared 6ft 0¼in, the first jump over six feet under ‘regular’ athletics-match conditions.