Lives in Cricket No 4 - Ernie Jones

Chapter Eight The Legend Sorting out the man from the legend is difficult with Ernie Jones. One story has it that one day in mid-summer of 1896, the massive figure of W.G.Grace bent over his bat as the Gentlemen of England prepared to open their innings against the Australian touring team at Lord’s. Drama and fireworks were expected whenever W.G. took block and this occasion was no exception. The first ball from Jones landed half-way down the pitch, flew high through the doctor’s beard and on and over the keeper’s head to cannon into the pickets. Grace advanced down the pitch menacingly. ‘Heh, Jonah’ he demanded angrily, ‘What the blazes do you think you’re doing?’ ‘Sorry, Doc. She slipped.’, was then given as the bowler’s sheepish reply. This is the best known yarn about Jones and as we have seen, the later England captain Stanley Jackson claimed himself as the source of at least the gist of it. The trouble is only the gist is accurate. The match was not mid-summer but not far beyond mid-spring; the day was 11 May. The Australians’opponents were not the Gentlemen but Lord Sheffield’s Eleven in the opening game of their tour. The side was a mixture of professionals and amateurs. The venue was not Lord’s, but the leafy setting of Sheffield Park. If it was the first ball of the innings, neither it nor any other cannoned into the pickets behind the wicket-keeper. In the Eleven’s total of 195 there were only five sundries, made up of two byes, one leg bye and two wides. According to Simon Rae in his biography of W.G. there were also other accounts by Charles Fry supporting Jackson on the Sheffield Park venue, whereas Lord Harris and Home Gordon both asserted it was Lord’s. Harris’s recollection that: ‘The ball grazed his beard, touched the top of the handle of his bat, ricocheted far over the wicket-keeper’s head and went to the screen for four.’ would explain the bye tally if it was the right match. The best synthesis of the event is an article by B.G.Whitfield, ‘Jonah and The Beard’ which appeared in The Cricketer Annual in 81