Lives in Cricket No 13 - AP Lucas

the ground and knocked back the leg stump. ‘Surely you’re not going, Doc,’ smiled Kortright, ‘there’s still one stump standing.’ It was a brave remark from a young man who was born in 1871, the year that saw some of Grace’s greatest triumphs, and the Champion declared that he had never been so insulted in his life. Jessop was still batting and wrote later: ‘The sense of ill feeling brooding over the game made the idea of losing the match after all that had gone on before supremely distasteful.’ More intense cricket included Korty breaking Edward Wright’s toe with a ball that also had him lbw, and Mead hitting the stumps with a ball that did not dislodge the bail. Finally, Jessop drove Kortright for four to see his side home by one wicket. After the game, Essex’s captain, the normally amiable Hugh Owen, commented publicly: ‘We can take a beating in good spirit when we are fairly beaten, but we have not been fairly beaten in this match.’ Few matches can have done more to dispel the myth of the Golden Age amateur playing for the game and not the result, yet less than two weeks later Grace and Kortright shared a scene that no film-maker seeking to illustrate the myth would have dared to script. MCC had arranged for the opening day of the Gentlemen v Players match to coincide with 122 Bunny, Korty and Fryerning, 1885-1923 The Gentlemen’s side which lost to the Players in W.G.’s ‘fiftieth birthday match’ at Lord’s in 1898. Standing (l to r): C.J.Kortright, J.R.Mason, A.C.MacLaren, J.A.Dixon, W.A.J.West (umpire). Seated: S.M.J.Woods, A.E.Stoddart, W.G.Grace (capt), C.L.Townsend, F.S.Jackson. On the ground: E.G.Wynyard, G.MacGregor (wk).