Lives in Cricket No 37 - William Clarke

57 day matches during the season, the only one from which Clarke is absent is the game at Gainsborough on 26, 27 and 28 May. He played in the matches immediately before and after. John Chapman opened the batting for Gainsborough. Later in her life, Mary Clarke occasionally switched her name back to Mary Chapman. The conclusion I have drawn from these facts is that William Clarke’s marriage broke up and he had little option but to move out of the Trent Bridge Inn and Nottingham. John Chapman, who had married and moved away from the Trent Bridge Inn before 1841, returned to the Inn as soon as Clarke left (as is shown by the notice regarding the Trent Bridge Inn fire), and for three seasons ran the Inn and Cricket Ground and then moved in 1849 to Gainsborough where he set up business as a vet. He was to live in Gainsborough for the rest of his life. Clarke joined the Lord’s staff of ‘ground bowlers’, as they were termed, in 1846, which itself is difficult to understand. He was aged 47. It is most unfortunate (from the historians’ viewpoint) that Denison’s book Sketches of the Players was written in May 1846. It includes a long biography of Clarke. Denison’s essay ends with Clarke’s statistics for 1845, which credit him with 106 wickets at more than eight per match, plus as a batsman 261 runs, average 12.5, making him one of the outstanding all-rounders, but the book is published too early to mention Clarke’s 1846 career move. James Dark had taken over the lease of Lord’s Cricket Ground in 1835, as previously mentioned, and by the time Clarke arrived there, Dark had eight men and six boys employed ‘under his general superintendence’. I assume that Clarke was acquainted with Dark and filled a vacancy as one of the bowlers – the boys were described as ‘scouts’. Clarke’s first recorded Leaving Trent Bridge An overcrowded Lord’s ground in 1842. Clarke joined the MCC bowling staff here in 1846, eventually playing fifty first-class matches at the ground; among other tasks, he umpired the Eton v Harrow match of 1847.