Cricket Topics.
The first two days of the Cattle Show found the delegates of County Cricket busy at Lord’s, appointing on the Monday their umpires, and on the Tuesday their matches. In the absence of the Australian team, the programme has settled down very much on the usual lines of a domestic English cricket season. Mr. Lacey, the head Secretary of the M.C.C., announced that he was arranging fixtures for a West Indian team that is desirous of playing a series of matches in this country next summer. Mr. Lacey is reported to have said that as the West Indians were coming for the purpose of improving the standard of cricket in the West Indies, and not with the idea of making money, he trusted that he would receive the assistance of the counties in doing all that was possible to make the tour a success.
We have not seen an authentic list of the matches arranged, but we gather that our visitors will play a very mixed card, commencing at the Crystal Palace on June 11th, against a London County team of Mr. W. G. Grace’s.
Other fixtures in chronological order are against Essex, Middlesex, Warwickshire, Wiltshire, Hampshire, South Wales, Kent, M.C.C., Derbyshire, “All Scotland” at Edinburgh, and “All England” at that great centre of gate-money, Blackpool. Then against Yorkshire at Harrogate, and to finish with a burst of alliteration, Norfolk, Notts, and Northampton. This seems a fairly good all-round sample of English cricket, and our visitors ought to get a good look at the game as played in England; and we hope that they will achieve their purpose, insisted upon by Mr. Lacey, of improving the standard of the game in the West Indies.
In 1900, when a team visited us from the West Indies, the Marylebone Club did what they could to discourage our guests and to lower the standard of their play by a proclamation that none of the West Indian matches were to count in the first-class averages. We hope that this time Mr. Lacey will advise his Committee to join in the general note of encouragement by permitting at any rate some of their matches—for instance, those against Surrey, Yorkshire, and Kent, to rank as high as, say, Somerset v. Hants.
There is nothing very interesting about county cricket nowadays, not even in regard to the arrangement of championship matches.
It is worthy of notice that Northamptonshire, who only just wriggled into the first-class last season, have had to struggle hard to maintain their position there, and have only just succeeded in arranging sufficient matches to again qualify. This came through the agency of Notts, who have dropped their matches with Kent, and have taken on Northants instead. For a long time Notts and Kent have been regular antagonists, and it seems almost a pity that their matches should be dropped; but even the best friends amongst the counties sometimes drift apart for a year or so, as has been shown again this year in the coy conduct of Surrey, who again refuse to play with Somerset, the county which has done so much to encourage Surrey cricket, originally by consistently beating her, and then by paying her the compliment of adopting and developing her most promising young players. Apropos of Somerset, we read with regret that Mr. S. M. J. Woods has announced his intention of retiring from the captaincy of the eleven at the end of next season.
Certainly his twelve years of office are very noticeable. In 1894 Mr. Woods took over a team of mixed possibilities and impossibilities, and has kept the concern going up to to-day, with most attractive and varying vicissitudes, and probably “Great Heart,” as he has been styled by his friend Mr. C. B. Fry, is about the only man who could have so long stood the strain of so frequently facing fearful odds. Somerset have now fifteen years’ experience of first-class cricket and have done many brilliant things, but for the second year in succession, and despite the fact that the Australian matches brought them in a nice profit, the club is confronted with an adverse balance well over four hundred pounds. It would almost seem as if cricket, the national game, were a hybrid growth in Somerset, where the natives do not support the game very conspicuously either by play or pay.
The dates of the big matches at Lord’s are: Oxford and Cambridge, July 5th; Gentlemen and Players, July 9th; and Eton and Harrow, July 13th. It will be seen that these games follow one another as closely as possible, so it is to be hoped, for the sake of the Marylebone Club finances, that the weather for that fortnight may prove favourable. For many years the match between Oxford University and M.C.C. and Ground has been arranged at Lord’s as the match to immediately precede the Oxford and Cambridge match, and in order to give the Oxonians a day of rest before the stress and strain of the ’Varsity match, the game with the M.C.C. has been limited to two days’ play, and in an epoch of good wickets this has taken much of the interest out of the game. Common sense has at length prevailed in this matter, and now the Oxford v. M.C.C. match has been moved forward to a week before the Oxford and Cambridge match, and the Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday preceding the ’Varsity match are allotted to Middlesex against Essex at Lord’s.
It seems a pity that the Hastings Cricket Festival should die out, but such would appear to be the case, as no matches have up to now been arranged for it. We hear that the last three years have each proved disastrous financially, and the promoters probably consider that they will be justified in contenting themselves with the week of Sussex county cricket which has been allotted to them by the County Committee at the end of August, when Warwickshire and Essex are to be engaged.
Of benefit matches there are not so many as usual. According to custom, the Whit-Monday match at Lord’s, between Somerset and Middlesex, is given as a benefit to a deserving member of the ground staff of the M.C.C. V. A. Titchmarsh, at one time the mainstay of Herts, and nowadays one of the most reliable of umpires, takes his turn on June 2nd, 3rd, 4th, and we wish him a bumper.
The great match of the year at Old Trafford, is the August Bank Holiday battle with Yorkshire, and this is to be for the benefit of John Tyldesley, who cannot possibly get more from it than he richly deserves, both from his country and his county.
At the Oval, Walter Lees is to have a benefit, and he too deserves well at the hands of Surrey cricketers, and was probably very unlucky never to have actually taken part in a Test Match, after having so often last season been amongst those selected to play for England.
At Lord’s the programme is no more interesting than is usually the case at headquarters in the absence of an Australian team. Middlesex, of course, will play all their home matches there, and, apart from the three big-gate matches already referred to, there is nothing very attractive about the fixtures arranged for Lord’s. Yorkshire, Sussex, Derbyshire, Kent, and Notts play the M.C.C. and Ground, the latter county, as usual, playing the opening match at Lord’s, beginning on the first Wednesday in May. They are quite devoid of interest these three days’ matches between some generally moderate Marylebone amateurs, pulled through by the professional element, against a county team from which the most prominent members are for this unimportant occasion taking a rest.
We wonder if the management at Lord’s will one day be able to devise some better plan of disposing of their dates and their money. To our mind the game between Actors and Jockeys played last September might to advantage be moved forward into the season proper.
It has always been very difficult to gain any reliable information as to the personal profits made by members of Australian teams touring in this country. Our enterprising contemporary the Daily Mail, has endeavoured to shed some light upon the profits of the last tour, by the help of some evidence given in the bankruptcy proceedings of S. E. Gregory. According to Gregory’s evidence as reported, the members of the team were to share and share alike in the profits of the tour. That was tacitly agreed upon. All the members signed an agreement on board the steamer Majestic, between America and London, by which they bound themselves to keep order, to abstain from writing for the Press, and to observe minor conditions. There had as yet been no balance-sheet of the tour prepared, but it was anticipated that the gross proceeds would be about £800 a man. Out of that the players had to pay their travelling expenses to and from England, and while in England. The Melbourne Cricket Club advanced the necessary money to players, and had it deducted from each man’s share.
The players very seldom saw one another except on the cricket field or on the boat coming out. One of the team had told him he had about £50 still to come, which would mean about £500 net for the tour. With regard to his expenses in England, Gregory said: “I had to go very slow not to spend more than £150. That amount went in cab fares, theatres, return “shouts,” clothes, and cricket bats, although most of our bats were presented to us.”
These figures are in a way interesting, and we cannot understand how the Marylebone Club was able to lose so much money over their tour in Australia, when Australian visitors are able to carry away a profit of £800 per head amongst fourteen of them, besides enriching the coffers of our counties to a very considerable extent.
The English team in South Africa succeeded in winning their first match at Cape Town, against the Western Province XI., by an innings and 127 runs. Towards the total of 365 compiled by Mr. Warner’s team, the captain scored 56, Denton 78, Mr. Fane 60, and Relf 61 not out. For the Western Province Whitehead took six wickets for 160 runs, but Kotze, who made such an impression in this country with his extra fast deliveries, proved altogether unsuccessful.
The home team could only accomplish 26 and 142 in their two hands, Coggings with 20 and 43 being their most successful batsman; whilst of the English bowlers who were tried Haigh and Mr. J. N. Crawford have the best figures, getting five wickets each for 31 and 5 runs respectively.
Against the country districts at Worcester in Cape Colony the visitors won by an innings and 52 runs, and apparently the country districts batsmen cannot be of any high calibre, since in their first innings Mr. Hartley took nine wickets for 26 runs, and in their second Mr. Leveson-Gower had five for 14; Mr. Leveson-Gower also scored 82 runs, which constituted quite a successful first appearance for him in the team.
We note from South African Exchanges that Major R. M. Poore, of Hampshire fame, is again busy playing for his regiment, the 7th Hussars, at Potchefstroom. His scores of 44 not out, and 115, prove him to be in good form, so that he is likely to render a good account of himself when he runs up against the English bowlers; as he did against Lord Hawke’s team in 1896, when he took more than one century off the late George Lohmann and some very fair amateur bowlers.