Lives in Cricket No 37 - William Clarke

72 decided to invite the All-England Eleven, there were invitations sent out to the great and good of the area inviting them to become patrons of the club, and the Duke of Northumberland was among those who responded positively to the call ‘in handsome terms’, according to the Newcastle Journal. The same paper gives this amusing description of Alfred Mynn: In Mr Mynn, the spectator beholds a tall, fine robust figure, somewhat corpulent and weighing at least eighteen stone, with feeding qualities, that, but for active exercise, would soon increase to thirty. He has a handsome, intelligent countenance, a noble bearing and commanding aspect. His pecuniary means are understood to be ample and like a true English gentleman, he is fond of the sport. Another note on the match states that the billiard room of the Club was given up as a dressing apartment for the All-England party. The Newcastle match was paired with a game at Stockton-on-Tees during the second half of the same week – Stockton was a much more notable cricketing venue. Perhaps Dark’s comment was made in 1846, not 1847, because the Manchester Courier of 9 September 1846, reporting on the first day’s play of the AEE v Manchester game, states: ‘The All England gentlemen, we believe, would play on Monday and Tuesday at Leeds, whence they will proceed to Newcastle and Edinburgh, at both of which places they have engagements to fulfil.’ Most of the All-England team, though not Clarke, made the long journey from Stockton to Brighton for a four-day game, England v Sussex. It proved to be the final major contest on the ground set out by the Prince of Wales and latterly run by Thomas Box. Part of the ground was sold for building during the winter of 1847/48. Nottinghamshire, led by Clarke, had played their first inter-county match there in 1835. There was a break of a week and the season closed with the AEE match v Stourbridge on 4, 5 and 6 October. William Clarke, as far as can be gauged, steered clear of his native county in 1847. John Chapman continued to run the Trent Bridge ground and was no doubt cheered when on 9 April 1847, the newly formed Nottingham Commercial Club decided to base their activities there. Pedestrian races were staged on the ground on 22 May, but the report notes ‘poor attendance’. A Nottingham XI played Burton upon Trent at Trent Bridge on 29 May – the Nottingham side including Samuel and William Chapman. There are no reports or scores of either Town v County or Gentlemen v Players games at Trent Bridge in 1847. One assumes these two long- standing annual contests no longer commanded the interest of the paying spectators. The major match on the ground was Thomas Barker’s Benefit on 9, 10 and 11 August 1847 when Nottinghamshire opposed England. Haygarth in his notes is very scathing of the visiting side: ‘ … the England Eleven was a very inferior one … in fact it had no right to assume that name … the match was evidently got up by some party at Nottingham who either could not collect the talent of the country, or else wished to secure an easy victory for his own party.’ Incredible Success of the All-England Eleven