Lives in Cricket No 29 - AN Hornby

62 Harris’s letter was published in London on April 1 and it changed the mood discernibly. In an extremely lengthy epistle Harris began: ‘I am not certain whether you will be astonished or not at what I have to tell you, but I know you will be distressed that your friends, a party of gentlemen travelling through these Colonies for the purpose of playing a few friendly games of cricket, should have been insulted and subjected to indignities it distresses us to look back upon.’ Harris, clearly warming to his task, described what had happened to Hornby after he (Harris) had been ‘struck by some larrikin with a stick’. Harris went on: ‘Hornby immediately seized this fellow and in taking him to the pavilion was struck in the face by a would-be deliverer of the larrikin and had his shirt nearly torn off his back. He, however, conveyed his prisoner to the pavilion in triumph.’ Later Harris accused the NSW members of being instrumental in the disturbances. He wrote: ‘The disgraceful part of the business is that other members of the association – one a member of the legislative assembly – aided and abetted the bookmakers in raising the cry.’ The NSW Cricket Association (NSWCA) replied in kind, but at not such length, their honorary secretary J.M.Gibson, expressing regret but accusing Harris of being economical with the truth, claiming that Lord Harris had earlier told a deputation from the NSWCA that he did not hold the association in any way responsible for what had happened. The association also claimed that betting was ‘strictly prohibited by the trustees of the ground’, although they added rather pointedly, ‘so far as it can be prohibited’. The NSWCA added: ‘Large placards [banning betting] have always been kept posted throughout the pavilion and its inclosures [sic]’. In closing, Gibson, clearly riled by the accusation that those betting on the match were members of his association, added: ‘The betting men to whom Lord Harris alludes, and of whom only one or two were present, were not members of this association at all, and it is completely unjust to assign the demonstration to any such agency. Bad as it was, it sprang from no mercenary motive.’ Two men, presumably ‘larrikins’, were subsequently charged with disorder, and several members, including a well-known bookmaker, were booted out of the NSWCA and banned from the Voyage of discovery 2