Lives in Cricket No 29 - AN Hornby

12 me he was holding me in reserve. So I went in eighth man and saw two wickets fall, but I never received a ball. Now here are the facts. Nobody dreamed, half an hour before the finish, that we could be beaten. Fifty odd out of seventy had been made and eight men still to go in. What reason could there be for my nerves being bad as stated by Hornby? Again, if Hornby believed me to be nervous he should have put me in first. This is what is usually done. Studd’s recollection of events at The Oval has not stood the test of time. He, in fact, batted at No. 10 and not No. 8 as he stated and he did face a couple of deliveries, neither of which he managed to score from. England, of course, required 85 for victory and not seventy as Studd had written. Whatever the truth of Hornby’s shuffling of the batting pack, there is no doubt that it was mainly thanks to Charles Alcock and the Sporting Times that from that day hence England and Australia would compete for the Ashes. The Ashes are born C.T.Studd, whose role in the final stages of the 1882 Oval Test remains controversial. He later gave up cricket to become a missionary in China, Africa and India.