Lives in Cricket No 23 - Brief Candles

28 month later that Hyland ‘did quite well’ in this game. 42 The Echo ’s match report does however remark on the bowling of one Needle, ‘who took four wickets for 21 runs’ in the trial game. And then one looks at the scorebook, 43 which shows ‘J.F.Hyland’ as a did- not-bat, at twelve in the order, for Alec Kennedy’s side and, at first sight, as taking just one wicket (Brown b Highland [sic] for 4), while Needle has, indeed, four. But for two of Needle’s victims (Newman and Boyes), the name ‘Hyland’ has been written, spelled correctly and in a different hand from the rest of the card, above the original bowler’s name ‘Needle’; and in the bowling analysis, Needle is now given figures of only two for 21, while Hyland’s are raised to 8-2-34-3; not a bad three victims either. In addition, ‘Highland’ also caught out Tennyson. If these details are right, and it seems reasonable to assume that they are the correction of a case of mistaken identity by the original scorer, then Hyland had indeed done ‘quite well’ in the trial match. 44 He was now firmly in the county’s mind. So when, just over a month later, Ronnie Aird, W.G.L.F.Lowndes and Alec Bowell were all unavailable for the match at Northampton due to start on 11 June, their places went to three of the less experienced players from the trial match. These were opener Thomas Smith, who had appeared in eight previous county matches in 1923 and 1924; and first-class debutants Norman Bowell, son of Alec, and Hyland, reported by the Southern Daily Echo as ‘a right-hand medium-pace bowler from Ringwood’. Although over 30 years old, he was in the side on merit, albeit a little fortuitously. And so he turned up at Wantage Road on the morning of Wednesday, 11 June, to take his place in the side of his adopted county, alongside the likes of Lionel Tennyson, George Brown, Philip Mead, Alec Kennedy and Jack Newman. But 1924 was one of the wettest summers of the twentieth century. 45 Two county matches due to start in May had already been abandoned without a ball bowled, and the round of fixtures starting on 11 June was another to be decimated by the weather. Of the nine first-class games scheduled for 11 to 13 June, only five got under way on the first day, and only one of these, at Dudley, where around 70-75 overs were bowled, had anything approaching a full day’s cricket. There was no play in five of the games on the scheduled second day, and similarly none in five (but not exactly the same five) on day three. Just one of the nine matches ended in a definite result, and in only one of the other eight games were both first innings 42 In the newspaper’s report on 10 June 1924, just ahead of Fred’s first-class debut match. The same words appeared in the same paper the following day, this time without the qualifying word ‘quite’. 43 County Record Office, ref 10M89/3. 44 But if the original scorer was right, perhaps Hyland made his first-class appearance under false pretences: but no, we can’t countenance that! 45 The third wettest, after 1931 and 1912, according to the article Cricket Season Weather, 1890-1993 by David Jeater in The Cricket Statistician , 89 (Spring 1995), pp 26-29; and the second wettest, after 1903, according to the essay 1903 - The Wettest Summer of Them All? by John Kitchin in Wisden 1986, pp 77-80. The differences result from the different locations chosen by the authors as their sample sites. Of the Late Frederick J.Hyland, again