Lives in Cricket No 24 - Edgar Willsher

64 City for the tour’s opening salvoes. About 1,200 attended, well short of capacity, and most of them preferred to stand rather than pay the unannounced charge for seating – a further dent to the St George’s Club’s already tarnished image. According to an unreferenced report from the Philadelphia Cricket Club scrapbook: About one hundred of these were women. There were half a dozen buxom English girls with fine, fresh faces and magnificent heads of hair, and the remaining females were those who had come to America early in life and were since domiciled but not naturalized in this country. Of the men, perhaps three-fourths were English-born and had English manners and ways about them. As it turned out, the ‘United States’ team initially promised had become ‘Twenty-Two of New York’, and even that was made up of players from only three clubs. Naturally, St George’s dominated with 14 members, the remainder of the team coming equally from the New York and Willow clubs. Names to watch out for included former Kent fast bowler Fred Norley, and the brothers Harry and George Wright. The Wright family had emigrated from Sheffield to New York in 1836, and by 1857 Harry, then aged 22, was earning $12 a week as a professional at St George’s. Both he and George played in international matches against Canada, but talents such as theirs were inevitably poached by baseball. By the time of Willsher’s visit, they were regarded as the finest exponents Captain of England Harry Wright, English-born professional at the St George’s Cricket Club in New York, pictured with his father, Sam (at left) in 1864. Harry later turned to baseball.