Lives in Cricket No 23 - Brief Candles

67 Ninety-six not out overnight on your first-class debut. ‘Did you sleep well?’ ‘Absolutely’ says Stuart. ‘If you had said to me at the start of day one that I would be on 96 not out overnight, I think I’d have bitten your arm off. I at no point felt under any pressure – it was just a fantastic day.’ And it carried on in the same vein on day two. He reached his century with an on-drive to the boundary off the very first ball of the day, bowled by Dalrymple, and by lunch had reached 169 off 192 balls, with 17 fours and five straight sixes. But now, unexpectedly, there was pressure. During the lunch interval, Stuart was told that he was approaching the highest debut-score ever in England. 105 ‘All of a sudden, it’s a bit like a round of golf when you think you are in danger of scoring a good card, and you start thinking about it’ – and first ball after lunch he was, on his own admission, plumb lbw to Australian medium-pacer Ben Vonwiller. His 169 had come out of 317 in 264 minutes. 106 Cambridge were finally bowled out for 604, at the time a record for this fixture, with Dalrymple taking four for 152 in 52.4 overs. They then bowled well to dismiss Oxford for 224, who were 388 for five (Dalrymple 137) in the follow-on when the game ended as a draw. Stuart did not get his name on the scorecard in any other capacity. He took no catches, and although his medium-pacers had taken a few wickets in his age-group days, a back injury early in his rugby career had already pretty much called time on that aspect of his game. 107 It was a nine-minute wonder at the time that Stuart had made 169 in what, because he was at the end of his university career and was about to join the pro rugby ranks, was likely to be his only first-class innings. The Times even suggested that this was why he was able to bat as he did: Ivo Tennant happily described him as ‘batting with all the freedom of one who is no longer tied to his inkwell or batting practice.’ Stuart would not disagree. So it was back to rugby, and for the next six years Stuart made this his career, with cricket getting only a very occasional look-in. Two games for Grange C.C. in the Scottish National Cricket League (SNCL) in 2003, and a duck in his only innings, were his only top-level appearances until 2009. Meanwhile his rugby career had its highs: he won three caps in November 2002, scoring a try on his debut against Romania at Murrayfield, and playing his part in Scotland’s famous 21-6 victory over South Africa a week later; and an unexpected recall for a fourth game against Australia in November 2004. But there were lows too – an acrimonious departure from Glasgow at the end of the 2003/04 season, a brief unhappy spell with Castres in 2006/07, and a loss of form after his first three internationals 105 At the time, there had been only six higher scores on debut in England than Moffat’s 169, the highest of all being Tom Marsden’s 227 in 1826, or in more recent times Hubert Doggart’s 215* in 1948. 106 This remains the only Varsity Match century for Cambridge by a Scot. The only other century in the fixture by a Scottish-born cricketer was by Lord George Scott for Oxford in 1887. Paul Gibb, of Scottish extraction but born in Yorkshire, made a century for Cambridge in 1938. 107 Stuart returned to bowling in a couple of matches for Grange C.C. in 2011, taking five wickets in the process. Runs Aplenty