Lives in Cricket No 37 - William Clarke

34 Onward and Upward 1832 match away against Sheffield; he was a member of a well-known family connected to the legal profession in Nottingham. Rothera played in the Ripon game and this time his fellow amateur was George Galloway, a hosiery manufacturer in partnership with his brother, John, and in 1842 a member of the Town Council. Thereafter good, and occasionally not so good, amateur cricketers were sometimes included in the Nottingham team, especially for away matches in order to help with the expenses – this point was to become more evident in the 1840s. Two weeks after the Ripon match there was a game between Nottingham (who went to Ripon) and the Next XXII, which the report notes was arranged because it was felt that the strongest possible Nottingham side had not been picked for the match at Ripon. The report continues: ‘The “metal” of both sides was excited much more than in an ordinary match.’ The XXII won by two wickets. The match was played for £10-a-side. Clarke felt confident enough to expand the horizons of the Nottingham Club and on 2 May 1834 issued challenges to the counties of Norfolk, Cambridgeshire and Hertfordshire – an interesting trio. Norfolk had opposed Yorkshire at Hyde Park, Sheffield in 1833; Cambridge Town Club played the University in two matches in 1833; and Hertfordshire (mainly the Grimston family) played occasionally against MCC, including one in 1835. In the event only Cambridge accepted the challenge. Clarke arranged two very curious ‘trial’ games, as well as the usual Town v County fixture before tackling Cambridge. The first of these was against Bingham, the village being allowed four innings to Nottingham’s two. Clarke dominated the two Town v County fixtures, scoring 26 and 40, the two highest innings in both games, which were single-innings fixtures. These Bingham games were advertised as for £50: Nottingham won both contests. In between the two matches Clarke challenged seven of West Bridgford to a single-wicket match in West Bridgford. Clarke scored 23 and then dismissed all seven for 7 and 10! In the West Bridgford team is S.Chapman, who is most probably Samuel Chapman, the 22-year-old son of Mary Chapman, widow and landlady of the Trent Bridge Inn. The great matches against Cambridge proved an anticlimax, though 10,000 spectators turned out for the first day of play on The Forest. Nottingham won at Cambridge by 152 runs and on The Forest by an innings and 114 runs. As the Forest match ended in a day and a half, a second game between Cambridge and the New Forest Club was played. In this Clarke scored 42 of New Forest’s 121 and Cambridge were 18 for three when the game ended. Despite the fives accident which deprived Clarke of the sight of one eye, he was still keen to claim his expertise at this sport, as a notice in the Stamford Mercury of 14 November 1834 makes clear, though there seems to be no record of a response: ‘Mr Clarke of the Bell Inn, Nottingham, the famous cricket player, has given a public challenge to play any man in England a game at fives for £50.’