Lives in Cricket No 29 - AN Hornby

106 The Record That Never Was, and Other Fascinatng Facts HORNBY scored 79 per cent of the runs for MCC in their first innings against Sussex at Lord’s in May 1890, with 45 out of 57 in a match during which 36 wickets fell in four hours. Sussex won by four wickets. ***** LIKE many sportsmen and women, Hornby was superstitious. Once, when going out to open the innings, he noticed that he had put his pads on the wrong legs. He returned to the pavilion, where he told his team-mates: ‘I’m going in last instead of first. If I went in now I should have the bad luck to get somebody else or myself out without scoring!’ ***** HORNBY’S brother-in-law Walter Herbert Ingram was a soldier of fortune who is probably best remembered as a soldier of misfortune. He is said to have met a tragic end, at the age of 33, as the result of the Mummy’s Curse, which affected 20 people who are alleged to have died through suicide, accidents and exotic diseases after disturbing the tombs of ancient Egyptian kings in the 1920s. Ingram joined the Gordon Relief Expedition in Egypt in 1885, the doomed military operation to rescue General Gordon from an Islamic uprising at Khartoum. The mission failed but Ingram fought heroically on the front line and escaped with his life. On his way home he bought a mummy case, which was said to have a fearful inscription cursing anyone who might disturb it. Three years later Ingram was trampled to death by a wounded elephant about 40 miles from the city of Berbera in Somaliland. Because of his family involvement with the Illustrated London News , the news of Ingram’s death gained widespread coverage, not least in the ILN itself. Rudyard Kipling also heard the tragic tale and relayed it to his friend and fellow- writer Rider Haggard. ***** THERE is even a Facebook page devoted to Hornby, which states that ‘to interact with A.N.Hornby you need to sign up for Facebook first’. It doesn’t, however, explain what form that interaction might take! *****