Lives in Cricket No 13 - AP Lucas

lower orders pass like extras across Patterson’s stage, seldom referred to as ‘Mr’ or given a Christian name, unless perhaps they were ‘men of a higher class’. His account of Thring’s last days is extraordinarily powerful, if slightly bonkers: after suffering a stroke in the school chapel, the headmaster walked slowly ‘down the aisle between the kneeling rows of his boys, and passed bravely and silently to his death’. Patterson’s book is dedicated ‘to Charles Ernest Green, the “father” of Uppingham cricket, to whose wise generosity and sound judgment are mainly due whatever cricketing fame the school has attained’. Though Green was a fine schoolboy cricketer, his most lasting contribution to Uppingham cricket was not made on the field. After his departure, cricket at the school declined and the batting, in particular, was ‘decidedly below what might have been expected from a school of our standing’. By then it had become customary for the public schools to have professional cricketers to coach the boys, but Uppingham employed them only in alternate years. Green, ‘with characteristic enthusiasm, and with his charming powers of persuasion, set himself to remove what he saw were the hindrances’ to … winning a reputation in the cricket world. He saw coaching as the key, and was looking for a man who understood the game and possessed ‘the high character which would have weight with the boys’. The coach would teach them cricket ‘by living among them permanently and establishing a correct and sound style which would percolate throughout the school.’ Green was greatly impressed by Stephenson, first when playing against him and then when Uppingham visited Rossall, the Lancashire school where he was coach. He had in 1859 gone on the first overseas tour – George Parr’s to North America – and in 1861/62 had led the first English team to tour Australia. As batsman, bowler and wicket-keeper he ‘was a good authority on the game, and had for half his life been in the front rank of cricketers. He came of good stock – his father was a doctor – and he had good manners, a high sense of honour and a generous heart.’ The 1861 census listed Stephenson as a professional cricketer, but in 1871 he was shown as a huntsman: even though he went on to play a full season for Surrey, he evidently felt some uncertainty about his position. Shortly after witnessing an inept batting performance by his old school, Green learnt that Stephenson, near the end of his playing career, was looking for ‘a more secure employment and home’. Employed in the winter as a huntsman by the exiled Orleanist French royal family, he planned to use his cricket and hunting reputations to set up in business in London. Green invited Stephenson to settle at Uppingham for the start of the 1872 season and made a generous offer to pay his salary for an experimental first year, but it took all of Green’s persuasive powers for him to change his plans. The headmaster, too, had reservations, confiding to his diary on 28 May 1872: ‘I do not want cricket to get too powerful in the school here, and to be worshipped and to be made the end of life for a considerable section of the school.’ Ironically, he was worried that the coaching was proving too Uppingham School, 1870-1874 17