Lives in Cricket No 45 - Brief Candles 2

65 the MCC, two of them at Lord’s against future first-class county elevens (Leicestershire and Derbyshire). For MCC he seems to have been selected principally as a batsman, for he batted at number five or six and bowled in only one of the three games; this despite the fact that, from scores in Cricket , he had only made 89 runs in eight innings (including three ducks), and yet taken 33 wickets (including eight in an innings for Incogniti v Horley on 6 June), in six club matches prior to the first MCC v county game. Five MCC players bowled in each of the county matches, and it seems a little strange that one doing so well with the ball elsewhere should not be given any opportunity to bowl in either match. Or perhaps they were aware of his history as a bowler at first-class level, and did not wish to risk one of their players being ‘called’ in a relatively senior match. 41 Coxon’s last appearances in the pages of Cricket were in two matches for Hong Kong early in 1893, in the second of which he scored 45 not out and took ten wickets across two innings in a comfortable eight-wicket win against the Navy. Then all is silent, except that we know that he played one further match for MCC in 1900, his only game in their scorebooks after 1891 being against Rickling Green, 42 in July of that year, when he was 42 years old. Batting at number four he was the second-highest scorer in both MCC innings (and one of only three of their team to make double figures in both innings), but again he doesn’t seem to have bowled - or at least, he didn’t take a wicket. 41 In two more minor matches in which he did bowl for MCC in 1891 he took seven wickets in all, including six in an innings against Hornsey late in June. 42 Rickling Green is in Essex, between Bishops Stortford and Saffron Walden and nowadays adjacent to the M11 motorway. If the name seems vaguely familiar to cricket-lovers, it may be because in August 1882 Rickling Green were on the wrong end of an innings score of 920 made by the Orleans Club - still the highest innings total ever recorded in an organised match in Britain. No-ball! Ernest Coxon’s ‘Seated woman in a hat’ suggests that he was an accurate but unadventurous artist - both in his painting, and in giving titles to his pictures.