Lives in Cricket No 26 - HV Hesketh-Prichard

68 One of the Gentlemen took five for 8 and neither of them bowled in the second innings, in which St Lucia still only managed 46. Against the St Lucia Garrison he bowled five overs for no reward in the first innings but took six for 19 in the second. In a second match against St Lucia again he took four for 17 in the early stages in the first innings, and six for 17 in the second. None of these were first-class matches, of course. On 4 March the Gleaner gave the scores of the matches in St Lucia, expressing some concern at the ‘weakness of the local teams here’. He then fell ill with a fever, which he later described as ‘flu of a strong type’. He did not play in the one-day game against the Barbados Garrison, and when they moved on to play two games against Demerara 37 he did not go with them, being worried about making things worse. While staying in Barbados he wrote to Kate about the ‘great news from Curtis Brown’, by now their literary agents. The Chronicles of Don Q had sold three times as much as any of their other books, and they were now making some serious money. Hex anticipated selling enough in the USA to give them £1,000 a year. Kate remarks that this fell ‘very far short’ of what Don Q eventually did bring in. In St Vincent the games were not first-class, but the local team gave Brackley’s XI some opposition. The fast bowler Richard Olivierre took six for 37 and four for 19: Hex had no such success, taking two for 92 in 25 overs. Olivierre made 99 for good measure. Olivierre’s brother Charles 38 was already playing regularly for Derbyshire, but Richard was blamed for a ‘regrettable incident’ connected with the poor umpiring in this game. As sometimes happened, there was much sucking of teeth in the press without anyone spelling out quite what had happened. The second game against St Vincent was also drawn, Olivierre merely taking five for 93 this time. Hex again bowled only a few overs (9-0-46-1) but for some reason he batted at number four. They should have gone to Grenada, but the island was quarantined for smallpox and they went straight on to Trinidad where a couple of extra matches were arranged. Once in Trinidad, they played Queen’s Park first of all, but it was Thompson who took nine wickets, hitting the stumps eight times. Hex bowled five overs for nine runs. Thompson took seven more in the second innings, with Hex bowling just three overs. For the first first-class match against Trinidad he seemed to be in better form, taking five for 49, his only five-wicket return in the tour’s first-class matches, as Trinidad scored 149. Archie Cumberbatch then took eight for 27 to bowl out Brackley’s team for 92: Trinidad’s second innings was 163, Hex two for 32, which was more than enough as the second innings of Brackley’s team was 100, Cumberbatch taking five for 30. There was now a second game against a West Indies XI at Port of Spain. Brackley’s XI made 181, but Hex made 37 of them in what was to be his 37 Contemporary reports refer to the team as ‘Demarara’ while modern versions of the scorecard show ‘British Guiana’. Demarara was one of the three counties then making up what is now Guyana. 38 They were both born on the neighbouring island of Bequia.