Lives in Cricket No 38 - Lionel Robinson

52 Chapter Four: Further Successes At Old Buckenham 1913: not Bosanquet again? Having found a winning formula in managing Lionel Robinson’s cricket in 1912, Archie MacLaren made the reasonable assumption that a similar programme of matches in 1913 would also please his employer – providing that the victories continued. Hence he organised a fixture list of eleven matches (one of which was scratched in mid-season so, eventually, only ten matches took place; two less than the previous year), all but one of which were due to be played at Old Buckenham Hall. The players he persuaded to travel to Norfolk performed so well that seven matches resulted in the comfortable or overwhelming victories that Robinson so coveted and victory in another was only denied by rain. The two defeats were both at the hands of elevens raised by Bernard Bosanquet. The season opened with the first loss, by the narrow margin of five runs. Both sides were packed with players who had played first-class cricket, and four regulars had experience of playing Test cricket: Bosanquet, MacLaren, Reggie Schwarz and Jack Mason. It could have been an example of country house cricket at its finest – except that there was no glut of runs on a plumb track in a match played under bright sunshine. Instead, rain before the match meant that the start was delayed on the first day until 2pm to allow the wicket to dry out and an absence of both wind and sunshine left the pitch soft and unreliable for strokeplay. Bosanquet himself made the top-score of 39 in a match in which all 40 wickets fell for just 553 runs. Although Herbert Baker, of Kent, took eight wickets for Robinson’s XI, his haul was matched by that of the Hon Henry Mulholland, the current captain of Cambridge University. Normal service was resumed with a string of comfortable victories over Norfolk clubs. The lower order of the CEYMS XI proved rather obdurate so Archie resorted to employing the ‘lobs’ of the elderly Charles Robson, who was much more used to keeping wicket. The move was instantly successful as Robson dismissed the last three men at a personal cost of a single run. Two of his victims were stumped by Archie in a rare appearance as the ‘custodian’. Chasing only 134 and with time to spare, Old Buckenham Hall batted on once they had passed the CEYMS’ total, as was the custom in those days; this allowed Mulholland, now appearing for rather than against Lionel’s team, to show his credentials as an all-rounder for he pillaged an unbeaten 76 runs in just 45 minutes. Norfolk’s new premier club, Norwich Wanderers, were then thrashed; Roderick Falconer and Conran bowled unchanged to dismiss the visitors for just 190, of which 109 were scored by Norfolk’s premier batsman, Geoffrey Stevens, before Old Buckenham Hall racked up 304 for four. Archie made an unbeaten 150