Lives in Cricket No 51 - Rev ES Carter

Ealing 30 Neither of those clubs was considered to have the social cachet or position to attract the attention of the middle-class families seeking sporting interest and gentility amidst the new Victorian villas of the growing Ealing. Yet Ealing Dean Club remained competitive until 1969 and then faded away. So Edmund Carter and the Reverend Joseph Hilliard and yet more clergy (including also the Reverends G.B.Coulcher, and A.Carter future Ealing cricketers) and others from their congregations created this new club, in the summer of 1871. The Reverend A. Carter could well have been Arthur Carter, one of Edmund’s brothers perhaps staying for a while in Ealing. Early matches With the club in business, the Middlesex County Times , a paper initiated in 1866 and centred in Ealing, now starting containing reports of the 1871 matches. An early match scorecard that contained Carter’s own name (not yet described as a clergyman, though another team member was so described) was against Bute House, Petersham. Bute House (once the home of a Scottish-born British Prime Minister – the third Earl of Bute) were demolished for 41 and, following on, 25. A bowler named as W.B. Hervey caused havoc in the first Bute House innings and Carter caused the havoc in the second innings. The Middlesex County Times reported: “Mr Hervey unexpectedly developed into a star of the first magnitude in the bowling line, having taken four wickets with the last four balls of one over, and another with the first ball of the next, thus becoming entitled to a new hat and various other decorations. In the second innings of Bute House, Mr Carter showed himself a regular Teuton among the minnows, and committed fearful devastation among the sticks.” The bowling analysis was expressed for Carter in this way: ‘Balls 75, Maidens 9, Runs 9, Wickets 7’. By September that year Edmund Carter was doing especially well. The County Times report for the match against Somerset