Lives in Cricket No 46 - George Raikes

101 Norfolk’s Bowling Goes AWOL With all their major players continuing to be available, Norfolk would have looked forward to the 1911 season with confidence and arranged 12 fixtures. Alas, their bowling attack had a collective: loss of form: whilst the batting was almost as successful as in 1910 (averaging 22.88 runs per wicket as opposed to 23.09 in the previous year) the bowling fell away disastrously and wickets were almost twice as expensive to take in 1911 (up to 26.50 runs per wicket from a mere 14.30). All the bowlers suffered and, though Raikes’ average rose from 10.67 to an unacceptable 20.40, he topped the averages once again. He was also comfortably the leading wicket taker, snaffling 48, which was 20 more than Eric Fulcher who finished in second place. It was no surprise that the team fared badly, losing six of its first nine matches outright and the other three on first innings. The tenth match, against Hertfordshire, at last saw Norfolk gain first innings points but, even then, they would surely have been defeated if the opposition had but half an hour longer to bat. Victories were finally achieved in the last two matches but they could not disguise a rotten season. Having laid the blame on the bowlers, it has to be admitted that the first match was cast away by the batsmen. Visitors Durham were twice dismissed cheaply by a combination of Raikes and Allsopp (with figures of ten for 109 and nine for 87 respectively), the former taking the ‘cherry’ and obtaining at least one wicket with his ‘fast ball’, but Norfolk’s batting was derisory. Stevens played innings of 69 and 22 whilst Gibson made two not out and one not out, whipping in, but the other nine batsmen were dismissed 18 times in making 66. Apart from Stevens only two other batsmen reached double figures. It looked as if things could not get worse but, for Raikes, they did. Norfolk’s trip to St Albans to play Hertfordshire turned out to be, perhaps, the second most disastrous match of his career for Norfolk after his second match for the county back in 1890 when he was an ‘iron gloves’ who couldn’t catch a cold. As discussed in chapter seven, the Hertfordshire batsmen used their feet to reach the ball on the full. It may have been a coincidence but Raikes’ bowling for the rest of the season was a little ‘below par’, his leg-spin having more of a whiff of stock tweaking than of match-winning. After 100 years, one can only hazard a conjecture but it may be that word had got round on the Minor Counties ‘bush telegraph’ that the best way to play him was from down the wicket or that his confidence had taken a little dent. The former is perhaps more likely as the Raikes family were a rather self-assured bunch; whilst researching the family one member, Robert Jennings, has commented that it was often said: “The trouble with the Raikeses, they always think they’re right.” A bore draw against Bedfordshire followed, notable for another century by Stevens and an innings of 66 by Raikes, his only half-century of the season. Norfolk’s next fixtures were the games of the northern tour, against Northumberland and Durham. Both games saw Norfolk well and truly trounced with Raikes nobly shouldering the burden and conceding plenty of runs. Against Northumberland he returned match figures of 28.3- Raikes’ Third Spell For Norfolk: The Championship Won Again