Lives in Cricket No 23 - Brief Candles

12 23 June: 51 for Ne’er-Do-Weels v Henley, top score in a total of 204 11 July: 63 for Peripatetics v Ealing, top score in 157 all out; the next highest score was 17* 20, 21 July: eight wickets, five in the first innings, three in the second, for Ne’er-Do-Weels against Eastbourne; he also scored 24. In the 13 matches in which he is known to have been involved in the summer of 1888, McMaster scored 356 runs at an average of 32.36, and took 16 wickets. In his five MCC matches he scored 122 runs at 30.50 and took one wicket. With these cricketing credentials, and an affection for South Africa already in place, it is not surprising that Emile McMaster was one of the first to offer his services to Major Warton. And he clearly found early favour with the Major. On 23 August his name was included in an initial list of four professionals and three amateurs named for the tour, 10 and although the listed personnel changed a little in subsequent reports, 11 McMaster’s name was always included. Indeed, not only was he an early selection for the tour, but he made such an impression that before the tour started he was appointed as one of the members of the three-man Committee of Management for cricket matters on the tour, the others being the tour organiser, Major Warton, and the captain, Aubrey Smith. 12 The tour itself lasted from 21 November 1888, when the ship carrying the tourists, S.S.Garth Castle , left Blackwall, until its return to London on 16 April 1889. McMaster joined the ship at Dartmouth on 23 November. The party that left in November was made up of twelve cricketers – six amateurs and six professionals – plus one ‘social member’, the mysterious A.C.Skinner. 13 Between 21 December and 26 March they played 19 matches, all scheduled for two or three days. All but two of these games were played as ‘odds’ matches, their opponents fielding 15, 18 or even 22 players while Major Warton’s side always stuck with 11. Of the twelve bona fide cricketers on the tour, McMaster was the one rested for the first match; instead, he acted as one of the umpires. After that game one of the amateurs, J.H.Roberts, a Cambridge man whose only first-class match was a single game for Middlesex in 1892, had to return to England following the death of his mother. The team played a further seven games before his replacement – the professional George Ulyett – was able to join them. McMaster was therefore an automatic choice for these seven matches, but once Ulyett arrived McMaster and Hon C.J.Coventry usually alternated as the rested player. In all, he played in 13 of the 19 official tour 10 Cricket , 23 August 1888, p 361. 11 Cricket , 6 September 1888, p 393; The Times , 26 September 1888. 12 The Cricketer , 30 April 1955, p 121. 13 Skinner played in four of the tour games, scoring just one run and earning an ironic reference as ‘England’s greatest cricketer’ in Cricket , 25 April 1889. At this stage I have been unable to discover any more about him. The Unlikeliest Test Cricketer