Lives in Cricket No 13 - AP Lucas

Chorus The same old game, The same old game, To forget it or forgo it were a shame. When we are past and gone, The young ones coming on, Will carry on the same old game. An Intercepted Letter from a Lady Rover was an amusing spoof letter from ‘Florence’ to a female friend, recorded in The Doings in 1881. In it, ‘Florence’ could get no more sensible explanation than that Bunny referred to ‘the “rare-bit” of batting Lucas always shows when he goes to the wicket.’ The early Rovers deliberately kept the reasons for their nicknames a secret at the time, and now they are long ‘past and gone’ we are unlikely ever to know why Lucas became Bunny. The 1877 northern tour was ‘the most successful tour ever’, and Lucas, now aged 20, played an important part. In an innings win against Birkenhead Park, he scored 58 and took six wickets, and against Castleton he ‘made them bite’ for seven wickets. After he was caught in heavy rain at York ‘a Turkish bath was nearly the end of poor Bunny’, but 57 against the Gentlemen of Yorkshire showed that he had recovered from any ill-effects. Another match in 1877 possibly sowed the seeds for one of the most significant changes, not only in Lucas’s cricket career but in his entire life – his move to the county of Essex. For him, as for all the Rovers, the social aspects of the tours were at least as important as the cricket, and their chronicler was unusually effusive about the new Essex club, which had been formed the previous year: In former times when our vagrant band went east from Shoreditch it was to Navestock Common that they wended their way. But things have changed since those days. The county has banded together and set up its cricketing tabernacle on a capital piece of turf at Brentwood, and thither the Rovers proceeded to encounter the might and chivalry of the whole shire. Rumour had been heavy with pleasant tales of the new club and its matches, and rumour was no deceiver in this instance, for the reality quite came up to the fondest expectation. Pleasant company, and plenty of it; charming toilets; music, tea, talk, tennis; general hospitality and the heartiest of welcomes. What more could a Rover ask for? He could perhaps have asked for a decent game of cricket, and he got that too. Essex recovered from a poor start to draw the twelve-a-side match, Lucas taking 12 wickets with his ‘loblollies’. C.E.Green, who was born in Essex, later became chairman of the club and persuaded Lucas to qualify for them by residence; it may be that their shared memories of this and other matches against Essex helped Green encourage Lucas to make his life-changing decision. Essex and the other non-first-class county sides the Rovers played in this period were mostly made up of good amateur Uppingham Rovers, 1874-1913 25