Lives in Cricket No 29 - AN Hornby

29 you may have for the sake of playing for your county. Later in the letter, Rowley added: ‘When I am getting up the team to play against Zingari on the 27 th and 28 th of August you will personally oblige me if you will play on those days. With your aid I think we shall be able to give the swells a good licking.’ Rowley wrote a similar letter to Hornby. Rowley was talking about picking the Manchester team (in effect the Lancashire 2 nd XI) to play I Zingari at Old Trafford on those dates. Appleby did play although Hornby wasn’t available. Manchester didn’t, in the event, give the swells a good licking, but they did have the better of a rain-ruined match. In fact, Rowley didn’t set a particularly good example to the stay-at-home amateurs himself, playing in only seven of the county’s first 26 away matches, while his brother Alexander played ten of his 12 matches at home. Hornby’s record was not good, either. He played in only six of a possible 23 away games after his debut at Whalley. By 1870 Hornby may well have taken Rowley’s letter to heart as he played in all four Lancashire first-class matches, two of them away fixtures, and scored his initial first-class century, 132 against Hampshire at Old Trafford on the first day on 21 July. On 19August, playing for the Gentlemen of the North against the Gentlemen of the South at Meadow Road, Beeston in Nottinghamshire, he made 103, and also took four wickets for 40 runs, which was to remain his best first-class bowling analysis. Interestingly, having played in the only first-class fixture staged at Whalley on his Lancashire debut, Hornby’s appearance at Meadow Road signalled the end of first-class cricket at that venue as well. In both 1871 and 1872 he played in both the Gentlemen versus Players matches, scoring 80 at The Oval in 1872. He was rapidly becoming one of the foremost batsmen of his generation – and his growing fame and form was to lead to an invitation to the cricketing wonderland that was North America. Born with a silver spoon