Lives in Cricket No 37 - William Clarke

74 fixtures gap between the Gentlemen v Players match at Lord’s and Kent playing England at Canterbury. (The Public Schools matches were staged at Lord’s during this time.) AEE opposed West Kent at Gravesend and Surrey at The Oval. It was perhaps an over-optimistic indulgence to allow Surrey in the latter contest, to field 14 men against the England Eleven, especially as Surrey fielded several of Clarke’s players – Martingell, Sewell, Felix and Hinkly. On the other hand the new Surrey County Cricket Club had only begun to play matches in 1846 and was to an extent an unknown quantity. The county duly won by eight wickets. Immediately before the Surrey game, Clarke’s team opposed Fifteen of West Kent, with two given men, at Gravesend. Haygarth states the match was on the Bat and Ball Ground, but Howard Milton in his history of Kent grounds notes that the Bat and Ball ground was not opened until the following year. To add to the confusion, the match is not connected to the long-established West Kent Cricket Club, which was based at Chislehurst. Clarke maintained his commitment to MCC by playing as part of the England side, organized by MCC, against Kent during the Canterbury festival. Directly after that event there was a clash of fixtures. Nottingham played Sheffield at Trent Bridge on the same dates as the All-England Eleven played Twenty-Two of Coventry. Guy and George Parr turned out for Nottingham, whereas Clarke stayed with the All-England Eleven. Nottingham were beaten; All-England won by two wickets, Clarke taking ten wickets in the first innings and a further six in the second. A little- known cricketer called Belsom played for England, batting at No.11 and failing to score in each innings. It would appear that he was a last- minute replacement, perhaps for Parr. However Clarke was seemingly not upset by Parr’s absence, for he returned to the England side in the game the following Monday at Derby and made the highest score, 25. The press commented that Parr batted six hours, which even in those slow- scoring times might have created a record, but on checking the detail, the time included long stoppages for rain. The match was a benefit for Sam Dakin, who was the professional for the local club and had played once for Nottinghamshire in 1845. A number of the All-England matches were arranged as benefits, though I have been unable to discover exactly how the money was divided between Clarke and the beneficiary. It would seem most unlikely that Clarke would provide his services and those of his players free of charge! The final AEE game of the season was another such benefit, for Daniel Day, on the ground he ran at Itchen, Southampton, when England opposed fourteen of Hampshire. In the previous week the Incredible Success of the All-England Eleven Clarke, now fifty and looking well fed, by Felix in 1848.