Lives in Cricket No 13 - AP Lucas

101.’ In the event, he made 119 out of 229 and then ‘found the spot’ with six wickets in the match. In the next game he made only four but took six for 11 as he and Rotherham dismissed Leicestershire for 25, and in the second innings he took five more wickets. Against the Gentlemen of Lancashire at Old Trafford, ‘Bunny, not having made a century for two whole days, made a century and a half, which was better’. He again bowled unchanged in the first innings with Rotherham, though this time he took only two wickets. The Rovers had won the first three games of their northern tour by an innings. Such was Lucas’s reputation that when Firth, the Wakefield groundsman, bowled him for seven, Firth ‘tossed his cap in the air’ and ‘his delight was something to behold’. Against Castleton, Lucas was first given out caught at the wicket off his pad and then – when he was the Rovers’ only hope of winning a rain-affected game – run out by his partner, but there is no record that he protested at these misfortunes. The Rovers moved on to a short tour of Sussex. Lucas made 85 and took six wickets in an innings win against East Sussex at Lewes, and then ‘we had heard such disquieting rumours of the Devonshire Park lot that Bunny and Rotherham were sent to bed at 7pm on Tuesday night’. Evidently the curfew was effective, for Lucas made 97 and took four wickets, and Rotherham took 14 in another innings win. In the final game of the Rovers’ season, ‘Bunny got himself out for 103’ against Horsham, but the match was drawn. In ten matches Lucas scored 671 runs at 55.91, and played himself back into the form that enabled him, in early September, to share with W.G.Grace the first-ever century partnership in Test cricket. The 1881 season was even better for the Rovers and for their star player. Against the Gentlemen of Bedfordshire, ‘Bunny amused himself all afternoon with bat and ball’, scoring 86 and taking ten wickets with ‘first-class bowling’ in an innings win. Against the Gentlemen of Derbyshire he scored 203 – the only double century of his career: ‘Bunny played grand cricket until he had reached 140, then gave the field practice in catching – and they needed it.’ Against a team styled Gentlemen of Lancashire, but including three professionals to do the bowling, he scored 67 and then took six for 62 in the Lancashire second innings. Johnny Briggs and Alec Watson bowled so tightly that it took the Rovers 106 balls to score the eleven runs needed to win, with Lucas five not out. Back in Sussex, against Priory Park Chichester, ‘Bunny was terribly upset at being bowled [for six] by a youth in a pink coat called Smith’ who, as Sir Charles Aubrey Smith, was to become better known than Lucas. At Horsham the Rovers put on their own ‘theatricals followed by yeomanry in which the audience joined … Bunny was happy the whole time’ and scored 134 in an innings win. For Lucas, the game against Lewes Priory was perhaps more significant for events off the field, where ‘in the evening Mrs Luckraft kindly gave us the opportunity of showing off our steps’ at her rather grand Italianate house Uppingham Rovers, 1874-1913 29