Lives in Cricket No 13 - AP Lucas

Our captain must have been delighted with the results, to which he had added no small measure of success. He bats well, tosses well (only losing five out of six of the spins of the coin) and bowls well. Lucas scored 570 runs in seven innings and took ten wickets at 13.90. In the first game of the 1890 Yorkshire tour, ‘Bunny had the “A.P.Luc–” to win the toss against the Gentlemen of Yorkshire.’ It is an indication of the spirit in which Lucas and the Rovers played their cricket that ‘Lusty’ (J.H.Roberts) took two for 4 but ‘looked so frightfully conceited that Bunny soon had him off.’ At Harrogate, a man called Hudson turned up without cricket flannels and played in dark trousers, so had to ask Lucas’s permission to bowl. Bunny ‘was rather obstinate with his ear’ and had to be asked several times, but eventually he agreed and Hudson showed his gratitude by bowling him second ball. Whether this was ‘selective hearing’ or an early manifestation of Lucas’s genuine deafness is unclear. When the party was due to move on to play the North and East Riding, Bunny, with a view to making sure we were all on time, murmured that our train for Malton went at ‘ten to’: I looked it out and found he meant 10.02. Had an excellent breakfast and caught the train. Skipper thoroughly enjoyed himself and notched 142 in his best form. Lucas also took five wickets in an innings win. On 24 July 1890, in the Rovers match at Portsmouth against the United Services, Lucas dismissed Conan Doyle, whose Sherlock Holmes stories were just becoming bestsellers, in a manner that left the author ‘longing to kick oneself for one’s foolishness all the way to the pavilion.’ Doyle recalled the incident in his 1924 autobiography: 29 I was bowled by A.P.Lucas, by the most singular ball that I have ever received. He propelled the ball like a quoit in the air to a height of at least 30 feet, and it fell straight and true on to the top of the bails. I have often wondered what a good batsman would have made of that ball. To play it one would have needed to turn the blade of the bat straight up, and could hardly fail to give a chance. I tried to cut it off my stumps, with the result that I knocked down my wicket and broke my bat, while the ball fell in the midst of this general chaos … . The incident inspired Doyle to write The Story of Spedegue’s Dropper – an improbable, but entertaining, short story about an asthmatic schoolteacher who used a series of such deliveries to win The Ashes for England. 30 34 Uppingham Rovers, 1874-1913 29 Doyle, A.Conan, Memories and Adventures, Oxford University Press [1989 edition], p 283. 30 Curiously, Doyle did not publish the story until 1929, almost forty years later. Perhaps writing his autobiography reminded him of the incident and inspired the story. He had a great affection for the Rovers and wrote a little verse in their honour: ‘You Rovers have the name / I have heard it near and far / That you are a merry family / UR, UR, UR.’