Lives in Cricket No 51 - Rev ES Carter

Ealing 40 make himself into a fast high arm, a slow round arm, or an underhand lob bowler’. The season ended with more one-sided matches, not least when Ealing played the Reverend G.C.F. J. Morris’s eleven and the Reverend must have been much discomforted when his side were twice out for 19 and 29, with no other detail reported. The question has to be asked as to whether Carter during this year at the very least could have been chosen to play for Middlesex. Middlesex played seven first-class games in 1874, four of which were at Prince’s Ground. Wisden records that ‘their fast bowling had lost in pace and devil a little’. Thomas Hearne senior did play one match for Middlesex, in 1874, as a batsman, and also was used by MCC and Ground as a professional bowler, and if one can equate Carter’s ability at this time as about then equal to that of Hearne, then maybe he might have been used if he had been available. Three of Carter’s batting colleagues in the 1867 Oxford Blues side – E.W.Tritton, T. Case and J. Frederick – all played matches for Middlesex. But Carter, on leaving university, became a young clergyman with a strong leader at Ealing in the Reverend Joseph Hilliard and, no doubt, more than enough to do in a growing parish. It is noteworthy that the only match that Hilliard may himself had played was on an August Bank Holiday Monday, perhaps his only day of true relaxation in the summer. He was not likely to give his young charge time off to play at Lord’s or elsewhere, and indeed the writer has not found trace of Carter for playing any social cricket for any other team in that year. 1875 There are two news items of importance in the County Times for the 29 May that year. The first is specifically of important sporting news, namely the home match of Ealing against MCC in which the MCC side were bowled out in their first innings for just seven runs. Ealing had batted first and were bowled out for 41, Carter making 11. MCC played a man short. The County Times takes up the story: