Lives in Cricket No 29 - AN Hornby

60 tourists ‘considered the [run out] decision a good one’, according to Royle. It was rumoured that Gregory’s stance had been encouraged by gamblers. Royle, writing in his diary, felt that Gregory had been persuaded by some of the ‘better class in the pavilion’. Royle himself makes no mention of gambling having anything to do with the affair, feeling it was all down to the ‘larrikins’ as he calls them. A ‘larrikin’, incidentally, is Australian or New Zealand slang for what is euphemistically described as ‘a mischievous person’. There is no doubt that Australia between 1870 and 1900 was, in parts, a lawless society. Gangs roamed the streets at night and in the early hours of Sunday morning, a few hours after the Sydney riot, about 400 miles away in the small town of Jerilderie, the infamous Ned Kelly and his cohorts robbed the bank. The gang got away with more than £2,000 after imprisoning the town’s two policemen in their own cell, dressing in their uniforms before strolling down the main street informing the locals they were reinforcements from Sydney. Kelly was convicted of killing three policemen in an incident earlier in the same year when he was hiding out in the bush. In 1880 he was hanged at Old Melbourne Gaol, now a major tourist attraction with the Ned Kelly story its main feature. Meanwhile, back in Sydney, as the two captains talked, some of the angrier spectators started climbing over the low fencing that surrounded the playing area and headed menacingly towards the middle. Harris tried to protect Coulthard, the target of the mob, and was himself struck by a stick although he wasn’t badly hurt. Hornby, displaying more recklessness than fear, armed himself with a stump and waded into the mob, grabbing Coulthard’s assailant before frog-marching him to the pavilion, fighting off blows all the way and having his shirt almost ripped from his back for his troubles. He handed over the man to a member of the local constabulary. ‘He [Hornby] was struck in the face,’ wrote Harris later, ‘and had his shirt nearly torn off his back. He, however, conveyed his prisoner to the pavilion in triumph.’ Later, the Sydney Cricket Association downgraded Hornby’s bravery somewhat, describing the Lancastrian’s prisoner as ‘a supposed offender of very diminutive stature’. It was also reported that Hornby had grabbed the wrong man! Voyage of discovery 2