Lives in Cricket No 43 - John Jackson

38 Chapter Seven At the Height of His Powers The season of 1860 was a particularly wet and dismal one. Haygarth’s Scores and Biographies says bluntly that: ‘the season was, as regards weather, one of the worst, perhaps, that cricketers have had to encounter’. Match after match was disrupted. For John Jackson, still fulfilling his professional duties at Cambridge University, the season began on 3 and 4 May with the annual encounter between the Undergraduates and the Players engaged to coach them. The Undergraduates won by 81 runs with Jackson taking three wickets and scoring 0 and 10. On 18 and 19 May he played as a given man for XXII of Reigate against the UAEE in a match ruined by rain, which should have begun on 17 May had the ground not been waterlogged. The UAEE were bowled out for 108 with Jackson taking six for 39 in 57 overs, but Reigate were bowled out for 56 by Walker and Grundy. Jackson took two for 20 in the UAEE second innings of 60, but rain returned when Reigate were 51 for five, putting paid to any chance of a finish. Jackson took part in 13 first-class matches in 1860, in which he bowled 751 overs, 308 of which were maidens, taking 109 wickets for 9.20. He took five or more wickets in an innings eleven times, and ten or more in a match on five occasions. The Players won both of their encounters with the Gentlemen in 1860, winning at the Kennington Oval by eight wickets and, rather more comprehensively at Lord’s, by an innings and 181 runs. The feature of the Oval match which began on 5 July was a brilliant innings of 119 by Robert Carpenter who hit one delivery clean out of the ground, a feat never performed before at the ground when the wickets were pitched in the centre of the playing area. He also had another big hit which landed near the top of the pavilion. Jackson’s batting efforts were more modest, 13* and 11, but he bowled 38.2 overs in the Gentlemen’s first innings, taking four for 46. In their second knock he did not take a wicket in 37 overs from which 73 runs were scored. It was a rare occasion for Jackson to remain wicketless after bowling so many overs. Haygarth does mention that the bowling analyses in other accounts differ from his. The Players made 328 and 80 for two, the Gentlemen scoring 160 and 245. In the Lord’s match which began on 9 July, Tom Hayward hit 132 for the Players, with E.Willsher coming in ninth and making 73, and John Lillywhite, eighth, hitting 66. The total reached 394. John Jackson then bowled out three of the Gentlemen’s top six batsmen who made 6 runs between them in taking three for 54 in 35 overs as the amateurs were all