Lives in Cricket No 13 - AP Lucas

Lucas had no great opinion of his own bowling, telling The Cricket Field : Oh, I never did anything particularly good, but I once in a Gentlemen and Players match took four or five wickets for a few runs. I never remember going on in a match and changing the fortune of the game. He perhaps was undervaluing himself, because for six years he was quite an effective bowler in first-class cricket. In the English seasons from 1877 to 1882 and on the Australian tour he took 143 wickets at 16.51, but in the rest of his career only 12 wickets at over 40. The fieldsman Lucas told Chats on the Cricket Field : I prefer fielding in the country. I remember one terrible miss that I made in front of the pavilion at The Oval. It was in the England v Australia match … when we were beaten by six runs. The only excuse I could give is that the hit was low and hard. As Massie afterwards made 30, the miss made all the difference in the result of the match. I once caught Bonnor off just such another low and hard hit. That drop was a rare mistake but reports on his speed across the ground are variable. According to Green Lillywhite , as a 15-year-old schoolboy he was ‘rather slow in the field, and very slow between the wickets’. He improved in the following year and by the time he left Uppingham was ‘a splendid field anywhere’. When first at Cambridge he was ‘apt to be slow in the field’ but in his last year there was ‘a sure field anywhere’. H.H.Stephenson said that the catch off Bonnor was famous ‘because of the distance he ran and the marvellous way, on getting to the ball, he managed to clutch it while still at top-speed.’ 78 In 1891 W.G.Grace considered him ‘very quick’ but eight years later noted, rather wryly, that ‘like myself, he does not get faster in the field’. 79 Lucas occasionally filled in with some success as a wicket-keeper. In his last year at Uppingham, D.Q.Steel usually kept wicket but Lucas took the gloves when Steel was bowling and was described as ‘a fair wicket-keeper’. Then, at Essex, he kept wicket in several matches in 1892, in three in 1897 and in one as late as 1904, when the professional wicket-keepers were unavailable. His great powers of concentration and his adaptability as a teamman would perhaps have made him suitable for this role, although he preferred fielding ‘in the country’ and did not take it on regularly. He never made a first-class stumping, although he achieved dismissals that way in lesser matches in 1891 and 1892. The man and the cricketer 85 78 Gordon, Home, Some Notable Cricket Bats , in The Windsor Magazine, September 1906, p 453. 79 Cricket, J.W.Arrowsmith, 1891, p 339; and Cricketing Reminiscences and Personal Recollections . James Bowden, 1899, p 137.