Lives in Cricket No 38 - Lionel Robinson

38 point out that that Robinson would almost certainly have known Archie’s in-laws in Melbourne in the 1890s where Archie had married Maud Power, daughter of Robert Power, a wealthy landowner and businessman and a fellow member of the Melbourne Cricket Club and Victoria Racing Club. Lionel duly installed Archie, Maud and their two children in a property in the village known as ‘The Manor’, from where they moved to ‘The Warren’ (now ‘Warren House’) by 1916. There are three aspects of MacLaren’s cricket that require a few words of consideration: his status as a player, his competence as a manager of men and his ability to organise an operation such as that required by Robinson. As a player, MacLaren more than fitted the bill. He was one of the greatest batsmen of cricket’s ‘Golden Age’. Clem Hill stated that he was the finest batsman ever to visit Australia and two innings (of 109 and 50 not out) played at a Sydney Test in 1897-8 produced the following piece of purple prose: ‘the sheer magnificence of his batsmanship ... caused Sydney cricketers to talk about it, dream about it all, over again, for years.’ On a tricky wicket at the Lord’s Test of 1905 he played an innings of 79 that C.B.Fry described as: ‘Regal and Incredible.’ Though he preferred to play off the front foot, he was more than competent with the hook shot and is well known as the first batsman to hit a quadruple century in first-class cricket; playing against Somerset at Taunton in 1895 he amassed 424 at a rate of 50 runs an hour, hitting one six and 62 fours. He was one of the great stylists of the ‘Golden Age’, as has been expertly documented by Michael Down in his biography, Archie . He was almost as noted a fielder as he was a batsman, being a stylish square-leg and a Putting Old Buckenham on the cricketing map Lionel Robinson, very much the country squire, relaxing in the grounds of Old Buckenham Hall. (Ian MacLaren album, courtesy of Michael Down)