Lives in Cricket No 37 - William Clarke

6 he had already conceived his plan to create the All-England Eleven. I have been unable to ascertain which of these three reasons was the uppermost cause of his departure. However departure it was, for, despite taking part in well over 150 matches between September 1845 and September 1852, Clarke did not play at Trent Bridge in almost seven years. Virtually from its creation in 1787, Lord’s became the centre of the cricket elite, so much so that the most distinguished players, after the demise of the Hambledon Club, rarely desported themselves away from the south- east of England and some hardly stirred from Lord’s itself. The major fixtures, Gentlemen v Players, Oxford v Cambridge and Eton v Harrow, brought together the cricketing greats and, aside from the notable amateurs – drawn of course exclusively from the gentry – who then became members of the very exclusive Marylebone Club, many of the best professionals sought engagements at Lord’s in order to ensure a regular, if not substantial, summer income. A more detailed account of how Lord’s came to dominate cricket is given in Chapter Seven. In a single blow Clarke changed that cosy arrangement. He signed up (as Packer did one hundred and thirty years later) many of the outstanding performers of the 1840s − the names and abilities of his cricketers will be found in the body of this work. His idea of taking his team of stars throughout the United Kingdom, using the rapidly expanding railway network, rather bemused the pundits at Lord’s, but Clarke proved them wrong. The general population flocked to watch Clarke’s cricketers, who were widely recognised to include the best of the time, and the general standard of local players rose because they learned from playing against the leading practitioners. That Clarke himself was the most effective slow bowler of his time as well as the most admired cricket tactician no doubt helped his pioneering enterprise. The esteem in which he was held by his contemporaries was emphasized when his portrait featured in the first edition of The Cricket Field – the only such portrait in the book. The writings of Bolland and Nicholas Felix underline still further Clarke’s stature among cricket’s intelligentsia. W.G.Grace’s memoirs plainly demonstrate the tremendous influence that Clarke and the All-England Eleven had on cricket away from the metropolis and its environs – there can hardly be greater praise than that. I have reproduced in full the 1852 vicious attack on Clarke, and Clarke’s response – both have been alluded to previously, but as far as I am aware, the pieces have not hitherto been reprinted in any detail. In Appendix Two, I have reproduced Clarke’s treatise Practical Hints On Cricket which first appeared in William Bolland’s Cricket Notes : they really are worth reading through! Clarke’s fantastic success naturally bred jealousy and after 1852 perhaps he developed a dictatorial streak, which led to certain players, long after Clarke’s death, telling derogatory stories about him – but similar comments emerged regarding W.G.Grace during the 1920s and 1930s. That’s life. Introduction