Lives in Cricket No 51 - Rev ES Carter

Ealing 39 well represented. The Carter express again proved irresistible and the rev. gentleman gained the distinction so coveted by bowlers- a new hat.” In a 12-a-side match the Singles lost ten first innings wickets all bowled to Carter, and as a curiosity their eleventh wicket was stumped by him! Did he bowl at one end and wicket keep at the other. In mid-August the Ealing Club were given the distinction of playing MCC at Lord’s (12 a side). Tom Hearne senior and Carter dominated for Ealing in both batting and bowling: Hearne made 43, Carter 36, and then Hearne took four MCC wickets and Carter six. No bowling analysis was printed in the County Times, nor any account of the match given, though Ealing had the better of first innings. The match is recorded in Wisden 1875 as ‘unfinished’, the Almanack adopting the unusual approach of always putting the MCC score first, whichever side had actually batted first. More one-sided matches in favour of Ealing followed before a splendid return match with Uxbridge at Uxbridge, (again 12 a side). Carter was captain of Ealing but was bowled for five. His team made 95. Carter then took seven of the first ten wickets to fall: “10 for 91. Uxbridge wanted four runs to win with five minutes to time when the Rev. J Smale went to the wicket. He made a single, and the next over of Carter’s put an end to the match, for Gardiner in attempting a winning hit, had his stumps displaced by the Oxford representative and Ealing thus won the game by thorough good pluck and generalship by three runs.” The long account – more than a column – referred twice to spells from Carter being with ‘slows’. No further description is given. Though in some brief biographical accounts of Carter he is referred to as being a lob bowler, it seems unlikely that a ‘slow’ could be confused with a ‘lob’. In Talks with Old Yorkshire Cricketers , the writer Old Ebor says that though Carter was ‘originally very fast’, in Carter’s later playing years ‘he could