Lives in Cricket No 19 - Frank Sugg

his season as a whole: he scored 31 in the Players’ first innings of 231 but, on a good wicket with the Players on course to a match winning total of 363 in their second innings, Frank holed out in the deep for a duck. Wisden ’s verdict on Frank Sugg’s season was harsh but eloquent: ‘Sometimes his cricket was such as to make the judicious grieve.’ Frank Sugg must have had some concerns for his place when the players assembled for the start of the 1896 season. But in terms of runs scored it was to be the most successful of his career. After losing their first championship match, Lancashire won eight matches in succession and seemed odds-on favourites to win the title. However injuries, the most damaging being the hand injury suffered by Mold, and late in the season some bad luck with the weather, spoiled their chances and they finished second to Yorkshire with 11 wins out of their 22 matches. MacLaren was again able to play little part until the end of term at Harrow, the captaincy in his absence devolving to Ernest Rowley or Hornby. Not only because of the injury to Mold, Lancashire’s bowling was less penetrative than in the previous season, but their batsmen were much more productive in 1896. MacLaren, who played in only ten championship matches, headed the averages with 54.84 and a highest score of 226 not out. Behind him came Frank Sugg who played in all the county’s championship matches, further testimony to his fitness, and scored a total of 1,278 runs at an average of 39.93. Third in the averages was George Baker with 35.69. Frank had three centuries in 1896, the first of which was 110 against Sussex early in the season, ‘an innings which was remarkable for all the vigour for which he has made himself famous,’ 75 the second 220 against Gloucestershire, and the third 151 against Leicestershire. Sugg almost reached another hundred in a high-scoring match against Derbyshire but fell four runs short. The double hundred at Bristol, towards the end of June, was to be the highest score of Sugg’s career. After Gloucestershire had been dismissed for 133 with Baker taking six for 18 off 22.1 overs (and Mold, through injury, able to bowl only two overs), Lancashire replied with 389. The weather was very hot and the boundaries at the Bristol ground set very deep. Sugg, opening the innings with Albert Ward, hit his 220 runs, which included 35 fours, in only three hours and 40 minutes. In the pre-lunch session on the 80 Lancashire Stalwart 75 Cricket , 21 May 1896.