Lives in Cricket No 13 - AP Lucas

Patterson recalled Stephenson’s coaching methods. He would bowl ‘decidedly above medium but not fast’ so as not to frighten the boys ‘yet fast enough to keep them active in watching the pitch and defending their wicket.’ Mostly he bowled on off and middle stump but he taught them that anything on leg stump should be played firmly off the legs, not in the air but ‘along the ground somewhere between square leg and mid on.’ Stephenson’s teaching was so successful that it became known as the ‘Uppingham stroke’. The great features of Uppingham cricket were thus ‘the forward play and the straight bat’. Lucas was not a tall man, so Stephenson’s methods were particularly important in the development of his technique: It is true that Lucas also showed a great deal of back play, but it must be remembered that Lucas had not as long a reach as some of the others and moreover his back play was as strong and as run-getting as many others’ forward play. As a matter of fact, Lucas played both back and forward well, but it is clear that without Stephenson’s teaching he would have been only a back player. Lucas occasionally returned to play against his old school. In 1880 he brought down his own team and contributed a good share to its win by seven wickets, as well as being an excellent host. For the Old Boys he made 95 in 1878, 56 in 1886 and 34 in 1888, while in 1892 he scored 38 and took four wickets. And as late as 1907, aged 50, he turned out for I Zingari, one of the best amateur wandering sides, against the school. * * * * * Another Old Uppinghamian, Ernest William Hornung, loved cricket but seldom played because of severe asthma. When he sought to emulate the literary success of his brother-in-law Arthur Conan Doyle, he created Raffles, a character whose fame in turn-of-the-century crime fiction is second only to that of Sherlock Holmes. A.J.Raffles attended a public school clearly modelled on Uppingham and was ‘the finest slow bowler in England’, but was also ‘the amateur cracksman’. The nickname of his Watson, ‘Bunny’ Manders, may well have been a sly tribute to Lucas, who was at the height of his cricketing fame when Hornung was at Uppingham. George Orwell argued that ‘In making Raffles a cricketer as well as a burglar, Hornung was not merely providing him with a plausible disguise; he was also drawing the sharpest moral contrast that he was able to imagine.’ 23 Though not referring specifically to Lucas, his comments on style have echoes of Galsworthy’s: 20 Uppingham School, 1870-1874 23 George Orwell, Raffles and Miss Blandish , in Horizon magazine, October 1944.