Lives in Cricket No 45 - Brief Candles 2

90 Tragedy is very different from a cello bow; maybe he had switched instruments, or maybe (unusually) he was proving himself adept at both cello and violin; or maybe the officer who filled in the disciplinary record thought that ‘violin bow’ covered the situation well enough, without going into the detail of precisely which instrument’s bow had suffered. But either way, we can be fairly sure that John Boys played one or more stringed instruments while in the Army, and probably to a pretty good standard. It is possible that he had to play a more traditional military instrument as well, but of that we have no record. Failing to report damage to his bow was far from being the only misdemeanour recorded against the name of Musician Boys. Within a month of signing on he had been whipped for ‘violently striking a boy of the band’ [evidence that Boys was a musician from the very start of his military career], and the Battery Defaulters’ Book continues over the years to 1876 with a series of misdeeds - unauthorised absences, slovenly behaviour, behaving disrespectfully to the bandmaster, lying, and breaking out of barracks - for which he was variously confined to barracks, subjected to periods of hard labour, or to periods of solitary confinement; and once he had his cricket leave stopped … … which is the only time the word ‘cricket’ appears in the surviving papers of his military career. But Musician Boys was evidently a formidable cricketer as well as a more than capable musician. Other sports are also mentioned in other sources - he was ‘a leader in the football matches, and a champion prize winner at the garrison sports’ according to Jackson’s Woolwich Journal - but it was cricket above all at which he excelled. Less than two years after signing up, and still a week short of his 18th birthday, in August 1874 he was opening the innings for the full Artillery eleven against I Zingari, eight of whose team had already played first-class cricket, or would do so. His opening partner was George McCanlis, who played 17 first-class matches for Kent between 1873 and 1878. Boys’ performance suggests that he was already not out of place in such exalted company - he scored 11 in his only innings (one of only three of the top six to reach double figures), and took a catch, though apparently not as wicketkeeper. His promise was such that on 4 May 1875 he was a member of the 14-strong team of Kent Colts that took on the county side (including Lord Harris and John Shuter, in his pre-Surrey days) at Catford. Scores of four not out and four don’t look much on paper, but he must have caught the eye of those who mattered in Kent cricket. A month later he made his first appearance at Lord’s and scored 44 (top score in 162 all out) and 21 (third highest in 169) for the Royal Artillery against MCC. Two weeks later, on 17 June, Kent began their second first-class match of the season, against Hampshire at Catford. One of the four changes from the previous match against Sussex was the inclusion in the side of J.J.Boys, at the age of just 18 years and 304 days. He definitely did not keep wicket (that was the role of E.F.S.Tylecote, who made his Kent debut in this match), but he still took two catches, one in each innings, as his side won by an innings. Batting at number seven, his score of eight