Lives in Cricket No 13 - AP Lucas

bowled Oxford out for 12, even today the joint lowest score in a first-class match. The Manchester Guardian warned that their prospects were ‘grim’, but F.M.Buckland’s unbeaten 117 took the game away from Cambridge and they lost by ten wickets, before a huge, ‘fashionable’ crowd. Lucas’s 54 in the first innings was Cambridge’s only substantial score of the match: he went in first and was out last. He again topped the university batting averages with 337 runs at 33.70, and also began to bowl his slow round-arm more regularly. This may reflect his more influential role in the club, although he could just have been filling the slot vacated by the departure of the captain, F.F.J.Greenfield, who bowled in a similar style. Lucas had done enough to earn selection for the Gentlemen v Players game at Lord’s, which turned out to be one of the greatest matches in the series. At 20 years 4 months, he and his Cambridge team-mate Alfred Lyttelton, two weeks his senior, were the youngest players in the game. After the Gentlemen took a slender first innings lead of six runs, the Players reached 148 for six and then lost their last four wickets without addition. Lucas had scored only 12 but was the most successful bowler in the Players’ second innings, with a then career-best four for 12 in 17 four-ball overs. After W.G.Grace and Alfred Lyttelton took the score to 64 for one, the Gentlemen collapsed to 97 for nine with Lucas, relegated from opener to No.7, out for two. Then W.S.Patterson joined Fred Grace and, ‘amid great excitement’, they compiled an unbroken partnership of 46 to give the Gentlemen victory by one wicket. Still six months short of his 21st birthday, Lucas was invited to captain a predominantly professional ‘England XI’ against Gloucestershire at The Oval. He had taken eighteen wickets in his previous three matches, but took only one in this game, putting himself on in front of Edward Barratt, Surrey’s professional slow left armer, who was in good form at the time. Lucas was a confident but not arrogant man and he did something similar in his first three-day game for Essex, so it was perhaps his way of leading from the front. A hard-fought, low-scoring game ended in defeat for England by five wickets. In this season Lucas also found his fine form for Surrey. When Middlesex set Surrey 94 to win they collapsed to 42 for five but, opening as usual, Lucas made a typically sound 26 not out and his side won by four wickets, having scored at exactly one run per over. Then, against Nottinghamshire, he produced his then career-best batting and bowling performances; Bell’s Life said he made his 115 ‘in four hours with brilliant hits and splendid cricket’, and he also took eight wickets for 66 in the match. Against Kent he did almost as well, with 110 and match figures of five for 24. Though he played for Surrey for another five seasons, they were to be the only centuries he made for them. At Clifton, scoring against Gloucestershire on a difficult pitch ‘proceeded at a languid pace’ as Surrey took 4¼ hours to make 121: Lucas carried his bat for 36 and his defence was the feature of the innings. Rain on the second day made the wicket almost unplayable on the third, and even Lucas could not save Surrey from a collapse to 53 all out Surrey and Cambridge University, 1874-1878 42