Lives in Cricket No 23 - Brief Candles

75 From 1904 to 1912, Gregory’s name appears spasmodically in reports of cricket matches in Ireland, either for the leading Dublin club, Phoenix, between 1904 and 1912, 118 or for his ‘home’ club, County Galway, from 1909 to 1912. (Although the name of this latter team looks like that of a county side, Co Galway was in fact no more than a club side, though a good one.) He took 15 wickets in a match, eight for 103 and seven for 94, for Phoenix against Dublin University in July 1908, and ten in a match for Phoenix against Dublin University Long Vacation CC in September 1906. He had his successes with the bat too, scoring 47 and 31 for Phoenix against Leinster in July 1905, and making 60* and 63 in his last two reported innings of 1911, for Co Galway v Grammar School CC, and for Phoenix against Leinster, respectively. In 1909 he played for Co Galway in a famous match against Woodbrook Club and Ground at Bray, south of Dublin, in which one bowler from each side – William ‘Budge’ Meldon for Co Galway and Ernest Vogler for Woodbrook – took all ten wicket in an innings. In all Vogler took 16 wickets in this match, and scored exactly 100 in his only innings. Gregory’s contribution was more modest: scores of 24 and four, and none for 37 while Meldon was running through their opponents’ first innings. In that same year an annual match was instituted between Ireland and Scotland, and following an MCC ruling in 1912 these games are regarded as first-class. The 1912 game was due to begin on 29 August at Leinster’s home ground at Rathmines, in Dublin. Three days before that, two of the players selected for the Irish eleven, John Crawfurd and William Pollock, withdrew. In their places, the selectors picked Bill Harrington of Leinster, and Robert Gregory of Co Galway; two surprising replacements, since both were primarily spinners, whereas Crawfurd and Pollock were both primarily batsmen. Gregory was a reasonable ‘form’ selection. He had an established track record over the years for Phoenix and Co Galway with both ball and bat; and in his only other reported matches in 1912 he had scored 59 and taken nine wickets in the match for Phoenix against Dublin University at the end of June, and taken three wickets for Co Galway against Na Shuler late in July. The first day at Rathmines was rained off, which means that Gregory’s first-class career began on 30 August rather than 29 August, as is sometimes stated. On 30th, Scotland won the toss and batted, the wicket being described in the Irish Independent as ‘soft [but] fairly easy till the afternoon was pretty well advanced, when the sun rendered it difficult.’ By the end of the first day of play, both sides had completed an innings; Scotland 147 and Ireland, who ‘had the worst of the wicket’, 98. Gregory 118 Cricket Europe is wrong in implying that he first joined Phoenix in 1912 and was promptly catapulted into the Irish team. In the Wickets Gregory at a County Galway match in 1909.