Lives in Cricket No 37 - William Clarke

107 The Last Summers was brought together by that influential and liberal supporter of cricket, the Hon R.Grimston.’ The North scored 103; the South replied with 144. The North’s second innings amounted to 111, leaving the South a mere 71 runs for victory, half their first innings total. Clarke and Bickley opened the North’s bowling and dismissed their opponents for 52! Clarke, now aged 56, sent down 18 overs for 25 runs and took six wickets. He bowled unchanged with Bickley. As Lillywhite notes: ‘A great deal of money changed hands.’ Clarke went to The Oval for the next match – Surrey v England. The match had been arranged by Clarke, and therefore all the United England players declined to appear. The Surrey County Cricket Club had this season taken control of The Oval, William Houghton (the lessee) having decided to leave, so this was the first important fixture under the new arrangement. Clarke and Bickley again bowled unchanged to dismiss Surrey in their first innings for 67 – Clarke four for 43, Bickley five for 24. With George Parr hitting 50, the England team obtained a good lead, being 148 all out. Despite Clarke taking a further five wickets in Surrey’s second innings, England required 87 for victory, but won by only one wicket. Clarke was undefeated with a single run to his name, though smarter fielding by Surrey should have run out Clarke’s partner, Brown, as the winning run was made. Clarke’s cricket continued with nine All-England matches, including a game at Reading when he took 20 wickets, and the match at Trent Bridge with Nottingham Commercial, Clarke taking 19 wickets for 79 runs. The Nottingham Review commented: ‘The slow, dodging peculiars of our old favourite cricketer and townsman, Bill Clark, proved most effective.’ On July 12 Clarke was unable to play for the AEE v Melton Mowbray due to ‘bad eyes’ and missed that game and the six AEE fixtures which followed. One of these was at Bristol against XXII of West Gloucestershire. Clarke, according to W.G.Grace’s biography Cricket , had written to Grace’s father stating that he would not be able to play due to ‘ill-health and failing eyesight’. Clarke did, however, attend the match and was so impressed by the fielding (at long stop) of 13-year-old E.M.Grace, that he presented E.M., W.G.’s older brother, with a bat and, at the end of the match, gave Mrs Grace a copy of Bolland’s book. Clarke had met the Grace family during the corresponding fixture in 1854 and W.G. claims that this latter game was his first memory of watching a major cricket match. The single match involving Nottinghamshire in 1855 was a rather odd contest at Trent Bridge in the middle of August with the opponents described as Five of Kent and Six of England. Lillywhite comments: ‘One might imagine that England was not sufficiently strong to play Nottingham, without the assistance of Kent, or vice-versa.’ Haygarth points out that none of the United Eleven played, except Grundy, because the match was arranged by Clarke, but Lillywhite seems more attuned to the events, pointing out that neither the North Kent group nor those at Canterbury approved of the match and therefore Kent couldn’t field a representative eleven and had, in effect, six given men. The visitors won by seven wickets.