Lives in Cricket No 13 - AP Lucas

At a time when the first-class status of university cricket is under threat, it is easy to forget how important it was in Lucas’s time. Cricket was played at Cambridge University as early as 1755, and from 1848, when the club moved to Francis Fenner’s new ground, its fixture list began to expand with first-class matches against the counties and friendly games against teams like I Zingari. The Varsity match between Oxford and Cambridge was second only to Gentlemen v Players on the Lord’s calendar, and in the 1860s the rise of the university club contributed to the disappearance of Cambridgeshire as a first-class county. In 1878 Cambridge University won all eight of their matches, so were comfortably the best English first-class side, and they remained among the strongest in the country for the rest of the century. In April 1875, Lucas played in the traditional Freshmen’s match at Fenner’s, where the new pavilion had been completed a month earlier. 37 He scored 66 and eight, being twice bowled by R.P.Stedman, who did not go on to make a name for himself as a cricketer. Lucas played two matches for the First XI against the Next XVI without success, but had done enough to go straight into the university side. Against an England XI that featured W.G.Grace, George Ulyett, William Mycroft and C.I.Thornton, he opened the innings and made 47 out of 96. On a high-scoring first day, the Gentlemen of England made 262 and Cambridge closed on 111 for 0 with Lucas on 48, but the next day he had exams in the morning and when he returned after lunch he did not add to his score. With 58 runs and four catches against Surrey, Lucas kept his place for the Varsity match. Twenty years later 38 he recalled: ‘The first match against Oxford in which I played was the one in which we were beaten by six runs, chiefly because of some remarkable bowling by A.W.Ridley. I was out before the exciting part of the match began.’ Ridley, the captain, brought himself on to bowl his lobs with only 14 needed, and took two of the last three wickets. Lucas was a relative failure, scoring only 19 and 5. With 232 runs in ten completed innings but no fifties, he made a respectable but not outstanding start for the university. Once again Lucas batted well for the Gentlemen of the South, this time against the Players of the South; he made 63, his maiden first-class fifty, out of 338 and the Gentlemen won by an innings and 129 runs. Evidently this experience was valuable and in August 1875, Surrey selected him for five games. Against Yorkshire he ‘hit freely’ for 39 and his best score was 50 against Middlesex but, after Nottinghamshire’s Fred Morley bowled him for three and one, he was omitted from the last game. Morley dismissed Lucas 17 times, more than any other bowler. Curiously, the reverse was also true, Lucas dismissing Morley five times and nobody else more than four. Morley bowled left-arm fast-medium, a type of bowling that seems often to have caused Lucas difficulties. Surrey and Cambridge University, 1874-1878 39 37 Details of internal games from C.U. Library: Match Book 1823-1889, CUCC I/2. 38 Chats on the Cricket Field , in The Cricket Field magazine, June 1893.