Lives in Cricket No 26 - HV Hesketh-Prichard

79 The New Chronicles of Don Q, the second collection of Don Q stories – the United States title was Don Q in the Sierra – was published by Fisher Unwin this year. Other things were more contentious. An agent in Canada made off with some of their money and it turned out that Nos Loisirs in France had published a number of Don Q stories before worrying about asking for permission, but this was sorted out. There was also a proposal to translate them into Arabic, but nothing seems to have come of this. * * * * * * * The first thing we know about 1907 is a letter in January from Frederick Selous inviting Hex to the Worplesdon Cricket Club annual dinner. Selous was president of the club: ‘Don’t bring dress clothes,’ he says, ‘we have the dinner in any kind of dark dress. I always put on my London frock coat.’ In May Hex played just the one Championship game for Hampshire, against Middlesex at Lord’s. It was not a success: in the first innings he bowled 12 overs for 58 runs as Middlesex made 367. Hampshire replied with 318, and Middlesex made 249 for seven declared, with Hex bowling only seven overs in this innings for 17. Hampshire drew the game easily enough, making 224 for four in their second innings. Hex played no more first-class cricket in this season, and was not to play for Hampshire again until 1912. There was still cricket, though, much of it for I Zingari. On 22 June Hex took a team down to play against Worplesdon; no score survives. In July he played for I Zingari against the Green Jackets at Winchester, where the regiment was based. This was a lively two-day game with I Zingari scoring 252 and 365 (Teddy Wynyard 97, so this was not one of his 150 plus centuries), the Green Jackets 232 and 333 for nine, with the last two batsmen playing out time. Hex had five wickets in the first innings, two in the second. There may have been other games for I Zingari, whose records are sadly thin, but we know that I Zingari played against Folkestone on 17 and 18 July: Folkestone scored 183 and 295, with Hex taking seven wickets in the first innings and four in the second; IZ reached 439, Hex getting 7*. He then went to Ireland on tour with I Zingari, as he had done the year before, where they played the Military of Ireland and then County Kildare. In the first match IZ scored 231 and 213 (Wynyard 94 and 90); the military 190 and 47. Hex had three wickets in the first innings, six for 22 in the second. Against the Kildare side IZ scored 191; Hex making 34* with ‘a vigorous display’ but was described as ‘very lucky’ having had ‘several escapes’. At the end of the first day Kildare were 23 for five, Hex having taken two of them. IZ went on to win by an innings. But this time he stayed with the rest of the team, captained by Teddy Wynyard, at the Viceregal Lodge and was offered a vacancy as an aide- de-camp by Lord Aberdeen. After some uncertainty he decided to accept the post – predecessors included Arthur Wellesley, later the Duke of Travel with Ball or Gun