Lives in Cricket No 23 - Brief Candles

11 So, somewhere around 1886 or 1887, Emile McMaster took a gap year, during which he made his first, and life-changing, visit to South Africa. When, a couple of years later, the opportunity of a further visit presented itself – and an opportunity moreover to combine the visit with his continuing love of cricket – he did not let it pass him by. South Africa The idea of an English side visiting South Africa to play cricket was first put forward in July 1888, when an item appeared in the magazine Cricket as follows: It is proposed to take out an English team of amateur and professional cricketers to the Cape Colony about the end of September. South African cricketers have for some time been desirous of meeting a representative English eleven … . The management of the team is being undertaken by Major Warton, who recently served on the Staff in South Africa, from whom full particulars may be obtained on reference to him at the office of this paper. 8 This is not the place to go into the details of the life of Major (later Lt- Col) Robert Gardner Warton (1847-1923), either as a military man (notably in Japan) or as an explorer (notably in Southern Africa), or into his qualifications to lead a pioneering tour to a new cricketing outpost. What is of particular interest from our point of view is the last sentence just quoted, which implies that those wishing to join the tour – particularly perhaps the amateurs – were invited to make themselves known to the Major, rather than being independently selected. An element of selection was no doubt still required; as Jonty Winch has written, ‘there was, of course, some pressure on Warton to select those [amateurs] who could afford the tour’. 9 Some ability at cricket was undoubtedly a requirement too. So what had Emile McMaster been doing to demonstrate this ability? By the summer of 1888 he was back from his ‘world tour’ and, with the pressures of studying for his Bar exams lifted, he was able once again to devote himself to cricket. He was by now a member of MCC – he was first recorded as a member in 1886 – and in 1888 he played five times for them in matches against college and club sides in and around London. His name also appears in the scorecards of eight other matches recorded in Cricket , seven for a wandering side called the Ne’er-Do-Weels and one for another such side called the Peripatetics. And now he showed himself to be a batsman of fair club standard, and still a bowler as well, sometimes; as these performances indicate: 12 May: 46 for MCC v King’s College, top score in 162 all out 21 May: 48 for Ne’er-Do-Weels v Kensington Park, top score in a total of 133 18 June: 43 for MCC v Pallingswick, top score in 212 all out 8 Cricket , 12 July 1888, p 265. 9 Jonty Winch, England’s Youngest Captain , Windsor Publishers, 2003. The Unlikeliest Test Cricketer