Lives in Cricket No 23 - Brief Candles

9 His fine performance against I Zingari was not enough for Emile to force himself into selection for any of the three remaining games of Harrow’s 1877 season. But he was back in the side at the start of 1878, scoring 0 and 0* respectively, batting last on each occasion, in matches against Mr E.E.Bowen’s XI on 25 May, 4 and Oxford Harlequins on 8 June. His bowling, however, did not achieve the same success as previously. He took two wickets against Bowen’s XI (again, both were first-class players, one of them – G.F.Vernon – a future Test player), but none against the Harlequins. He may not have been called upon to bowl in the latter game, as the visitors collapsed to 35 for six in reply to Harrow’s 54 all out in this twelve-a-side match. One other oddity from these games deserves a mention: in the Bowen game, Emile took the one and only catch of his recorded career for the Harrow eleven, the batsman concerned being P.F.Hadow, who later that summer was to become the second winner of the Men’s Singles at Wimbledon. Whether through lack of success in these games, or injury, or the demands of study, or the appearance of more promising players, Emile did not play in any of Harrow’s seven further recorded matches in 1878. And that was his last chance for a regular place in the school side, for he left the school at Easter 1879 – before the cricket term – to head to Cambridge. You might think that, as a promising cricketer from Harrow School, Emile would have had a chance of making an impression on the cricket fields of Cambridge; but no. He went up to Trinity College in 1879 but did not play in the Freshman’s Match at the start of the following summer, nor in any senior matches, let alone first-class matches, during his three years at the University. He wasn’t even a regular in his college eleven. The Sportsman gives the scorecards of 20 Trinity matches during his three summers at Cambridge, of which Emile played in only six – one in 1880, two in 1881 and three in 1882. In case his scoreless performances with the bat at Harrow and in his Test match conjure an image of a Chris Martin-like rabbit, I am pleased to be able to record that Emile produced a number of modestly useful scores in some of his matches for Trinity, the highest being an innings of 35* against Magdalene College in 1882. But here’s an unexpected thing: he took no wickets in any of his three games in 1880 and 1881 – did he even bowl? He was, though, rather more active with the ball in 1882, taking ten wickets in his three games including five for 13 against Magdalene when, according to The Sportsman , he bowled ‘remarkably well’. Meanwhile he was moving up the batting order, up to No. 5 in 1881, and even opening the batting in his last recorded match for Trinity, in June 1882. 5 So was he now seen mainly as a batsman who bowled a bit? As we shall see, that certainly seemed to be the case only a few years later. If cricket wasn’t occupying as much of his time at Cambridge as you might 4 Edward Bowen – coincidentally (or perhaps not) of Anglo-Irish extraction – was a housemaster at Harrow, where he taught from 1859 until his death in 1901. 5 That is, assuming that the batting orders given in The Sportsman can be relied on. The Unlikeliest Test Cricketer