Lives in Cricket No 29 - AN Hornby

55 Three days before arriving in Galle, Royle notes that Hornby’s wife Ada was ‘not at all well’. Hornby and Lord Harris were the only members of the touring party who were accompanied by their wives. Unfortunately, Hornby’s reaction to his wife’s condition is not recorded. Despite the scourge of sea-sickness, the journey must have been a true voyage of discovery with Royle reporting that they saw flamingos, pelicans, porpoises, sharks and whales. One day the ship was followed by a flock of albatross. But despite all these distractions and attractions, the tourists managed to play improvised games of cricket on board – whenever sea-sickness permitted. On reaching Ceylon, now Sri Lanka, the tourists switched to another vessel, the S.S.Assam and en route to their first sight of Australia, they once again encountered heavy swells. Royle’s first glimpse of Australia came at around 7 am on Thursday 28 November when the Assam was 100 miles off King George Sound. They finally made land at 4.30 that afternoon. They sailed on to Adelaide which they reached on Monday 2 December, disembarking at Glenelg, seven miles from Adelaide, at around midnight. It was here that Royle noted that they ‘left Hornby and Harris with the ladies at the Crown and Sceptre’. Having regained their land legs the touring party played their first real game on Thursday 12 December when, fielding twelve men, they took on Eighteen of South Australia at the Adelaide Oval. Nine days earlier Harris had sent a cable from the ship asking whether it would be possible to play twelve men as this was the first game of the tour. The South Australians had no objection, not surprisingly as they themselves fielded eighteen – three more than the originally agreed fifteen. There was another pre-match problem when South Australia’s Surrey-born medium-pace bowler James Goodfellow demanded the sum of one guinea per day for his services. The South Australian Cricket Association told Goodfellow they could only offer him half that figure, the amount he had previously been granted. Goodfellow refused to play and was banned for the rest of the season. There were more problems when a planned dinner to mark the arrival of the tourists was cancelled when none of Adelaide’s Voyage of discovery 2