Lives in Cricket No 51 - Rev ES Carter

none of these specific matches did Edmund score too many runs, or take too many wickets, the very titles of the fixtures do suggest that he was already playing in significant cricketing company. Yorkshire County Cricket Club matches against I Zingari in future years were to become especially important, for I Zingari, and the Gentlemen of Yorkshire (or Yorkshire Gentlemen’s Cricket Club) was a team for whom Edmund would play scores of games, and they were a side in whose deeds he would have gained lasting pleasure. The Gentlemen of Yorkshire Cricket Club This Club had only been founded a year earlier on 30 September 1863 at Harker’s Hotel in York and members of the Vale of Derwent Cricket Club were amongst the founders. Indeed it was the colours of the Vale of Derwent Club that the Yorkshire Gentlemen later adopted. This Gentlemen’s Club provided a balance to the also newly created Yorkshire County Cricket Club with its professional side and powerful base in Sheffield. The Gentlemen based at York and a considerable distance from Sheffield offered more refined play to the aristocrats and squires of the county and those who came from middle-class professions. The matches that they played were generally against other teams of similar backgrounds, from other counties, the military, and the more famous schools. The clergy certainly provided a suitable source of gentlemen recruits. Edmund Carter as a young quality schools cricketer who enjoyed being an attacking batsman and fast bowler, and living relatively close to York, and with a clergyman father, would have been an ideal candidate for the Gentlemen’s side. The majority of the Gentlemen’s matches were for many years played at Bootham Stray a cricketing field created at the back of the Bootham Asylum in York with a pavilion and perimeter wall being built soon after the move to this ground. It was through the Gentlemen of Yorkshire that Carter was to meet a man who became critically important to his cricketing life, namely the Vice-President of the Gentlemen’s Club, the first Earl of Londesborough, to be a great patron of the game. Family 13