Part 14

Twelve of the principal wicket-keepers of the last fifty years were all efficient Batsmen; namely, Hammond, Searle, Box, Wenman, Dorrington, C. Brown, Chatterton, Lockyer, with Messrs. Jenner, Anson, Nicholson, and Ridding.

“How would you explain, sir,” said Cobbett, “that the player’s batting keeps pace with the gentleman’s, when we never take a bat except in a game?”--Because you are constantly following the ball with hand and eye together, which forms a valuable practice for judging pace, and time, and distance: not enough certainly to teach batting, but enough to keep it up. Besides, if you practise too little, most gentlemen practise too much, ending in a kind of experimental and speculative play, which proves--like gentleman’s farming--more scientific than profitable. Amateurs often try at too much, mix different styles, and, worse than all, _form conflicting habits_. The game, for an average, is the player’s game; because, less ambitious, with less excitement about favourite hits, of a simple style, with fewer things to think of, and a game in which, though limited, they are better grounded.

Amateurs are apt to try a bigger game than they could safely play with twice their practice. Many a man, for instance, whose talent lies in defence, tries free hitting, and, between the two, proves good for nothing. Others, perhaps, can play straight and fairly Off;--and, should not they learn to hit On also? Certainly: but while in a transition state, they are not fit for a county match; and some men are always in this transition state. Horace had good cricket ideas, for, said he,

“_Aut famam sequere, aut sibi convenientia finge._”

Either play for show off, and “that’s villanous,” says Hamlet, “and shows a most pitiful ambition in the fool that uses it;” or, adopt a style you can put well together--and _sumite materiam--æquam viribus_, adopt a style that suits your capabilities; _cui lecta potenter erit res_; try at no more than you can do--_nec deseret hunc_,--and that’s the game to carry you through.

“A mistake,” said an experienced bowler, “in giving a leg ball or two, is not all clear loss; for, a swing round to the leg often takes a man off his straight play. To ring the changes on Cutting with horizontal bat, and forward play with a straight bat, and leg-hitting, which takes a different bat again, this requires more steady practice than most amateurs have either time or perseverance to learn thoroughly. So, one movement is continually interfering with the other.”

CHAP. XI.

CHAPTER OF ACCIDENTS.--MISCELLANEOUS.

William Beldham saw as much of cricket as any other man in England, from the year 1780 to about 1820. Mr. E. H. Budd and Caldecourt are the best of chroniclers from the days of Beldham down to George Parr. Yet neither of these worthies could remember any injury at cricket, which would at all compare with those “moving accidents of flood and field” which have thinned the ranks of Nimrod, Hawker, or Isaac Walton. A fatal accident in any legitimate game of cricket is almost unknown. Mr. A. Haygarth, however, kindly informed me that the father of George III. died from the effects of a blow from a cricket ball. His authority is Wraxall’s Memoirs:--

“Frederick, Prince of Wales, son of George II., expired suddenly in 1751, at Leicester House, in the arms of Desnoyèrs, the celebrated dancing master. His end was caused by an internal abscess that had long been forming in consequence of a blow which he received in the side from a cricket ball while he was engaged in playing at that game on the lawn at Cliefden House in Buckinghamshire, where he then principally resided. It did not take place, however, till several months after the accident, when a collection of matter burst and instantly suffocated him.”

A solicitor at Romsey, about 1825, was, says an eye-witness, struck so hard in the abdomen that he died in a week of mortification. There is a rumour of a boy at school, about eighteen years since, and another boy about twenty-eight years ago, being severally killed by a blow on the head with a cricket ball. A dirty boy also, of Salisbury town, in 1826, having contracted a bad habit of pocketing the balls of the pupils of Dr. Ratcliffe, was hit rather hard on the head with a brass-tipped stump, and, by a strange coincidence, died, as the jury found, of “excess of passion,” a few hours after.

The most likely source of serious injury, is when a hitter returns the ball with all his force, straight back to the bowler. Caldecourt and the Rev. C. Wordsworth, severally and separately, remarked in my hearing that they had shuddered at cricket once, each in the same position, and each from the same hitter! Each had a ball hit back to him by that powerful hitter Mr. H. Kingscote, which whizzed, in defiance of hand or eye, most dangerously by. A similar hit, already described, by Hammond who took a ball at the pitch, just missed Lord F. Beauclerk’s head, and spoiled his nerve for bowling ever after. But, what if these several balls had really hit? who knows whether the respective skulls might not have stood the shock, as in a case which I witnessed in Oxford, in 1835; when one Richard Blucher, a Cowley bowler, was hit on the head by a clean half-volley, from the bat of Henry Daubeny--than whom few Wykehamists _used_ (_fuit!_) to hit with better eye or stronger arm. Still “Richard was himself again” the very next day; for, we saw him with his head tied up, bowling at shillings as industriously as ever. Some skulls stand a great deal. Witness the sprigs of Shillelah at Donnibrook fair; still most indubitably tender is the face; as also--which _horresco referens_; and here let me tell wicket-keepers and long-stops especially, that a cricket jacket made long and full, with pockets to hold a handkerchief sufficiently in front, is a precaution not to be despised; though “the race of inventive men” have also devised a cross-bar india-rubber guard, aptly described in Achilles’ threat to Thersites, in the Iliad.[2]

[2] Hom. Il. II. 262.

The most alarming accident I ever saw occurred in one of the many matches played by the Lansdown Club against Mr. E. H. Budd’s Eleven, at Purton, in 1835. Two of the Lansdown players were running between wickets; and good Mr. Pratt--_immani corpore_--was standing mid way, and hiding each from the other. Both were rushing the same side of him, and as one held his bat most dangerously extended, the point of it met his partner under the chin, forced back his head as if his neck were broken, and dashed him senseless to the ground. Never shall I forget the shudder and the chill of every heart, till poor Price--for he it was--being lifted up, gradually evinced returning consciousness; and, at length, when all was explained, he smiled, amidst his bewilderment, with his usual good-nature, on his unlucky friend. A surgeon, who witnessed the collision, feared he was dead, and said, afterwards, that with less powerful muscles (for he had a neck like a bull-dog) he never could have stood the shock. Price told me next day that he felt as if a little more and he never should have raised his head again.

And what Wykehamist of 1820-30 does not remember R---- Price? or what Fellow of New College down to 1847, when

“_Multis ille bonis flebilis occidit_,”

has not enjoyed his merriment in the Common Room or his play on Bullingdon and Cowley Marsh? His were the safest hands and most effective fielding ever seen. To attempt the one run from a cover hit when Price was there, or to give the sight of one stump to shy at, was a wicket lost. When his friend, F. B. Wright, or any one he could trust, was at the wicket, well backed up, the ball, by the fine old Wykehamist action, was up and in with such speed and precision as I have hardly seen equalled and never exceeded. When he came to Lord’s, in 1825, with that Wykehamist Eleven which Mr. Ward so long remembered with delight, their play was unknown and the bets on their opponents; but when once Price was seen practising at a single stump, his Eleven became the favourites immediately; for he was one of the straightest of all fast bowlers; and I have heard experienced batsmen say, “We don’t care for his underhand bowling, only it is so straight we could take no liberties, and the first we missed was Out.” I never envied any man his sight and nerve like Price--the coolest practitioner you ever saw: he always looked bright, though others blue; and you had only to glance at his sharp grey eyes, and you could at once account for the fact that one stump to shy at, a rook for a single bullet, or the ripple of a trout in a bushy stream, was so much fun for R. Price.

Some of the most painful accidents have been of the same kind--from collision; therefore I never blame a man who, as the ball soars high in air, and the captain of his side does not (as he ought if he can) call out “Johnson has it!” stops short, for fear of three spikes in his instep, or the buttons of his neighbour’s jacket forcibly coinciding with his own. Still, these are not distinctively the dangers of cricket: men may run their heads together in the street.

The principal injuries sustained are in the fingers; though, I did once know a gentleman who played in spectacles, and seeing two balls in the air, he caught at the shadow, and nearly had the substance in his face. The old players, in the days of underhand bowling, played without gloves; and Bennet assured me he had seen Tom Walker, before advancing civilisation made man tender, rub his bleeding fingers in the dust. The old players could show finger-joints of most ungenteel dimensions; and no wonder, for a finger has been broken even through tubular india-rubber. Still, with a good pair of cricket gloves, no man need think much about his fingers; albeit flesh will blacken, joints will grow too large for the accustomed ring, and finger-nails will come off. A spinning ball is the most mischievous; and when there is spin and pace too (as with a ball from Mr. Fellowes, which you can hear humming like a top) the danger is too great for mere amusement; for when, as in the Players’ Match of 1849, Hillyer plays a bowler a foot away from his stumps, and Pilch cannot face him--which is true when Mr. Fellowes bowls on any but the smoothest ground--why then, we will not say that any thing which that hardest of hitters and thorough cricketer does, is not cricket, but certainly it is anything but _play_.

Some of the worst injuries of the hands occur rather in fielding than in batting. A fine player of the Kent Eleven, about three years ago, so far injured his thumb that one of the joints was removed, and he has rarely played since. Another of the best gentleman players broke one of the bones of his hand in putting down a wicket: but, strangest of all, I saw one of the Christchurch eleven at Oxford, in 1835, in fielding at Cover, split up his hand an inch in length between his second and third fingers: still, all was well in a few weeks.

Add to all these chances of war, the many balls which are flying at the same time at Lord’s and at the Universities, and other much frequented grounds, on a practising day. At Oxford you may see, any day in the summer, on Cowley Marsh, two rows of six wickets each facing each other, with a space of about sixty yards between each row, and ten yards between each wicket. Then, you have twelve bowlers, _dos à dos_, and as many hitters--making twelve balls and twenty-four men, all in danger’s way at once, besides bystanders. The most any one of these bowlers can do is to look out for the balls of his own set; whether hit or not by a ball from behind, is very much a matter of chance. A ball from the opposite row once touched my hair. The wonder is, that twelve balls should be flying in a small space nearly every day, yet I never heard of any man being hit in the face--a fact the more remarkable because there was usually free hitting with loose bowling. Pierce Egan records that, in 1830, in the Hyde Park Ground, Sheffield, nine double-wicket games were playing at once--TWO HUNDRED PLAYERS within six acres of grass! One day, at Lord’s, just before the match bell rung after dinner, I saw one of the hardest hitters in the M.C.C. actually trying how hard he could drive among the various clusters of sixpenny amateurs, every man thinking it fun, and no one dangerous. An elderly gentleman cannot stand a bruise so well--matter forms or bone exfoliates. But then, an elderly gentleman,--bearing an inverse ratio in all things to him who calls him “governor,”--is the most careful thing in nature; and as to young blood, it circulates too fast to be overtaken by half the ills that flesh is heir to.

A well known Wykehamist player of R. Price’s standing, was lately playing as wicket-keeper, and seeing the batsman going to hit Off, ran almost to the place of a near Point; the hit, a tremendously hard one, glanced off from his forehead--he called out “Catch it,” and it was caught by bowler! He was not hurt--not even marked by the ball.

Four was scored at Beckenham, 1850, by a hit that glanced off Point’s head; but the player suffered much in this instance.

A spot under the window of the tavern at Lord’s was marked as the evidence of a famous hit by Mr. Budd, and when I played, Oxford _v._ Cambridge, in 1836, Charles, son of Lord F. Beauclerk, hitting above that spot elicited the observation from the old players. Beagley hit a ball from his Lordship over a bank 120 yards. Freemantle’s famous hit was 130 yards in the air. Freemantle’s bail was once hit up and fell back on the stump: Not out. A similar thing was witnessed by a friend on the Westminster Ground. “One hot day,” said Bayley, “I saw a new stump bowled out of the perpendicular, but the bail stuck in the groove from the melting of the varnish in the sun, and the batsman continued his innings.” I have seen Mr. Kirwan hit a bail thirty yards. A bail has flown forty yards.

I once chopped hard down upon a shooter, and the ball went a foot away from my bat straight forward towards the bowler, and then, by its rotary motion, returned in the same straight line exactly, like the “draw-back stroke” at billiards, and shook the bail off.

At a match played at Cambridge, a lost ball was found so firmly fixed on the point of a broken glass bottle in an ivied wall, that a new ball was necessary to continue the game.

Among remarkable games of cricket, are games on the ice--as on Christchurch meadow, Oxford, in 1849, and other places. The one-armed and one-legged pensioners of Greenwich and Chelsea is an oft-repeated match.

Mr. Trumper and his dog challenged and beat two players at single wicket in 1825, on Harefield common, near Rickmansworth.

Female cricketers Southey deemed worthy of notice in his Common-place Book. A match, he says, was played at Bury between the Matrons and the Maids of the parish. The Matrons vindicated their superiority and challenged any eleven petticoats in the county of Suffolk. A similar match, it is noted, was played at West Tarring in 1850. Southey also was amused at five legs being broken in one match--but only wooden legs--of Greenwich pensioners.

Eleven females of Surrey were backed against Eleven of Hampshire, says Pierce Egan, at Newington, Oct. 2. 1811, by two noblemen for 500 guineas a side. Hants won. And a similar match was played in strict order and decorum on Lavant Level, Sussex, before 3000 spectators.

Matches of much interest have been played between members of the same family and some other club. Besides “the Twelve Cæsars,” the four Messrs. Walker and the Messrs. B Ridding have proved how cricket may run in a family, not to forget four of the House of Verulam.

Pugilists have rarely been cricket players. “We used to see the fighting men,” said Beldham, “playing skittles about the ground, but there were no players among them.” Ned O’Neal was a pretty good player; and Bendigo had friends confident enough to make a p.p. match between him and George Parr for 50_l._ When the day came, Bendigo appeared with a lame leg, and Parr’s friends set an example worthy of true cricketers; they scorned to play a lame man, or to profit by their neighbour’s misfortunes.

In the famous Nottingham match, 1817, Bentley, on the All England side, was playing well, when he was given “run out,” having run round his ground. “Why,” said Beldham, “he had been home long enough to take a pinch of snuff.” They changed the umpire; but the blunder lost the match.

“Spiked shoes,” said Beldham, “were not in use in my country. Never saw them till I went to Hambledon.” “Robinson,” said old Mr. Morton, the dramatist, “began with spikes of a monstrous length, on one foot.” “The first notion of a leg guard I ever saw,” said an old player, “was Robinson’s: he put together two thin boards, angle-wise, on his right shin: the ball would go off it as clean as off the bat, and made a precious deal more noise: but it was laughed at--did not last long. Robinson burnt some of his fingers off when a child, and had the handle of his bat grooved, to fit the stunted joints. Still, he was a fine hitter.”

A one-armed man, who used a short bat in his right hand, has been known to make a fair average score.

SAWDUST.--Beldham, Robinson, and Lambert, played Bennett, Fennex, and Lord F. Beauclerk, a notable single wicket match at Lord’s, 27th June, 1806. Lord Frederick’s last innings was winning the game, and no chance of getting him out. His Lordship had then lately introduced sawdust when the ground was wet. Beldham, unseen, took up a lump of wet dirt and sawdust, and stuck it on the ball, which, pitching favourably, made an extraordinary twist, and took the wicket. This I heard separately from Beldham, Bennett, and also Fennex, who used to mention it as among the wonders of his long life.

As to LONG SCORES, above one hundred in an innings rather lessens than adds to the interest of a game.

The greatest number recorded, with overhand bowling, was in M.C.C. _v._ Sussex, at Brighton, about 1844; the four innings averaged 207 each. In 1815, Epsom _v._ Middlesex, at Lord’s, scored first innings, 476. Sussex _v._ Epsom, in 1817, scored 445 in one innings. Mr. Ward’s great innings was 278, in M.C.C. _v._ Norfolk, 24th July, 1820, but with underhand bowling. Mr. Mynn’s great innings at Leicester was in North _v._ South, in 1836. South winning by 218 runs. Mr. Mynn 21 (not out) and 125 (not out) against Redgate’s bowling. Wisden, Parr, and Pilch, Felix, and Julius Cæsar, and John Lillywhite, have scored above 100 runs in one innings against good bowling. Wisden once bowled ten wickets in one innings: Mr. Kirwan has done the same thing.

IN BOWLING.--The greatest feat ever recorded is this:--that Lillywhite bowled Pilch 61 balls without a run, and the last took his wicket. True, Clarke bowled Daniel Day, at Weymouth, 60 balls without a run, but then Daniel would hit at nothing. Clarke also bowled 64 balls without a run to Caffyn and Box, in Notts _v._ England in 1853, no doubt a great achievement; still, at slow bowling, these players have not their usual confidence: they had over pitched balls which they did not hit away. But Pilch was not the man to miss a chance, and the fact that he made no run from 61 balls speaks wonders as to what Lillywhite could do in his best day.

Mr. Marcon, at Attlebury, 1850, bowled four men in four successive balls. The Lansdown Club, in 1850, put the West Gloucestershire Club out for six runs, and of these only two were scored by hits--so ten ciphers! Eleven men last year (1850) were out for a run each; Mr. Felix being one. Mr. G. Yonge, playing against the Etonians, put a whole side out for six runs. A friend, playing the Shepton Mallet Club, put his adversaries in, second innings, for seven runs to tie, and got all out for five! In a famous Wykehamist match all depended on an outsider’s making two runs, he made a hard hit; when, in the moment of exultation, “Cut away, you young sinner,” said a big fellow; and lo! down he laid his bat, and did indeed cut away, but--to the tent! while the other side, amidst screams of laughter at the mistake, put down the wicket and won the match.

In a B. Match, 1810, the B.s, scored second innings, only 6; and four of these were made at one hit, by J. Wells, a man given, though the first innings scored 137.

True, E. H. Budd was “_absent_,” still the Bentleys, Bennett, Beldham and Lord Frederick Beauclerk were among the ten.

On the Surrey ground, 1851, had not an easy catch been missed, the Eleven of All England would have gone out for a run apiece.

The Smallest Score on record is that of the Paltiswick Club, when playing against Bury in 1824: their first innings was only 4 runs! Pilch bowled out eight of them. In their next innings they scored 46. Bury, first innings, 101.

In a match at Oxford, in 1835, I saw the two last wickets, Charles Beauclerk and E. Buller, score 110 runs; and in an I.Z. match at Leamington, the last wickets scored 80.

TIE MATCHES.--There have been only four of any note: the first was played at Woolwich, in 1818, M.C.C. _v._ Royal Artillery, with E. H. Budd, Esq.; the second, at Lord’s, in 1839, M. C. C. _v._ Oxford; the third, at Lord’s, between Winchester and Eton; the fourth at the Oval, in 1847, Surrey _v._ Kent. But at a scratch match of Woking _v._ Shiere, in 1818, at Woking, there was a tie each innings and all four innings the same number, 71!

As to HARD HITTING.--“One of the longest hits in air of modern days,” writes a friend, “was made at Himley about three years since by Mr. Fellowes, confessedly one of the hardest of all hitters. The same gentleman, in practice on the Leicester ground, hit, clean over the poplars, one hundred long paces from the wicket: the distance from bat to pitch of ball may be fairly stated as 140 yards. This was ten yards further, I think, than the hit at Himley, which every one wondered at; though, the former was off slow lobs in practice, the latter in a match. Mr. Fellowes once made so high a hit over the bowler’s (Wisden’s) head, that the second run was finished as the ball returned to earth! He was afterwards caught by Armitage, Long-field On, when half through the second run. I have also seen, I think, Mr. G. Barker, of Trinity, hit a nine on Parker’s Piece. It took three average throwers to throw it up. Mr. Bastard, of Trinity, hit a ten on the same ground. Sir F. Heygate, this year, hit an eight at Leicester.” When Mr. Budd hit a nine at Woolwich, strange to say, it proved a tie match: an eight would have lost the game. Practise clean hitting, correct position, and judgment of lengths with free arm, and the ball is sure to go far enough. The habit of hitting at a ball oscillating from a slanting pole will greatly improve any unpractised hitter. A soft ball will answer the purpose, pierced and threaded on a string.

The most vexatious of all stupid things was done by James Broadbridge, in Sussex _v._ England, at Brighton, in 1827, one of the trial matches which excited such interest in the early days of overhand bowling. “We went in for 120 to win,” said our good friend, Captain Cheslyn. “Now,” I said, “my boys, let every man resolve on a steady game and the match is ours; when, almost at the first set off, that stupid fellow Jim threw his bat a couple of yards at a ball too wide to reach, and Mr. Ward caught him at Point! The loss of this one man’s innings was not all, for the men went in disgusted; the quicksilver was up with the other side, and down with us, and the match was lost by twenty-four runs.” But, though stupid in this instance, Broadbridge was one of the most artful dodgers that ever handled a ball. And once he practised for some match till he appeared to all the bowlers about Lord’s to have reduced batting to a certainty: but when the time came, amidst the most sanguine expectations of his friends, he made no runs.