Talks with old English cricketers Page 2
Mention of Norfolk recalled the fact that Mr Jenner-Fust was a contemporary of the batsman whose innings of 278 has remained a record for Lord's ground for eighty years. The batsman was the famous Mr W. Ward. The match, played on July 24, ifec, 1820, was M.C.C. v. Norfolk, and Mr Ward, for the Club, scored in the first innings 278 of a total of 473. It was in that match that another famous cricketer, the great Fuller Pilch, made his first appearance at Lord's, being then only seventeen years of age. Mr Jenner-Fust has many recollections of these and other great contemporaries whom he has outlived. Fuller Pilch used to go over to Cambridge when he was in residence there.
It was Mr Ward who arranged a match between Gentlemen and Players, which has come down to posterity as the "BarnDoor Match," or "Ward's Folly." The match was played on July 3 and 4, 1837. Mr Jenner-Fust remembers it very well. The Gentlemen defended wickets of the usual size, but the Players had to take their stand in front of four wickets 38 inches by 12 inches. Fuller Pilch's hat fell on the "barndoor," and he was out for 9. The Players won easily enough —by an innings and 10 runs, as a matter of fact. Recalling the match now, Mr Jenner-Fust says it would have mattered nothing what the relative sizes of the wickets were. The Players could defend their own big "barn-door," while they could have bowled the Gentlemen out if they had had only two wickets to aim at. Lillywhite and Redgate were the bowlers who did the execution.
It should be added that Mr Jenner-Fust thinks if it had not been for the enthusiasm and exertions of Mr W. Ward, the Gentlemen v. Players' matches, or even the M.C.C. itself, might not have kept an unbroken existence. It was Mr Ward who found a sum of ^5000 and boldly secured the use of the ground to the M.C.C. when the enclosure was threatened with absorption by the Goths and Vandals of the bricks-and-mortar trade. The services rendered, too, by Mr Aislabie as secretary should never be forgotten. "He came in just at the right time, and but for him cricket would not have been what it is to-day."
It would be interesting, though possibly laborious, to trace some old cricket stories to their source. The writer has heard the following story, recorded in the West Kent annals in 1827, fathered on to one or two umpires in modern times:—
"We used jokingly to accuse our antagonists from the Royal Artillery of playing a twelfth man in the shape of their umpire, Berwick, nicknamed Berwick - upon - Tweed, a stout and stolid personage, not much over 5 feet high, who generally wore a blue coat with brass buttons reaching down to his heels. It is on record that once when umpiring he stood in a position which incommoded the bowler, who suggested to him that he might stand sideways; upon which he replied, 'Lord, sir, I be bigger that way.'" In a marginal r.ote on this incident Mr Jenner-Fust lays it down that the Artillery umpire was "a very good twelfth man."
Mr Jenner-Fust, it may be again mentioned, was elected president of the M.C.C. in the year 1833, when only twentyseven years of age. He recalls that he had an uneventful year of office.
His last appearance in cricket was in 1880. He was then seventy-four years of age. The match was a game between his own parish of Hill and that of Rockhampton. It is recorded of the match that "Mr Jenner-Fust bowled at one end, kept wicket to the other bowler, and managed. The only thing he did not do was to run for himself, and from this cause he was run out, after scoring 11, by a zealous but too eager youth who had volunteered his services. In various ways he got 10 wickets, besides running out two. His side won by 21 runs."
In that interesting function Mr Jenner-Fust used a bat which was presented to him fifty years before. He has that bat now, and, producing it for the writer's inspection, he wielded it as if on guard in the old days seventy odd years ago, remarking as he did so, "It was a grand bat to drive with; many a good drive has it enabled me to make." The bat testifies to its age by a few worm-holes on the surface. The handle is "sprung," and it has never been spliced. The bat is rounder on the face, a little narrower and shorter, than modern bats. An inscription written in ink upon it says, "1829, from B. A., 1831." B. A. was Mr B. Aislabie, famous, as cricket students know, in the history of cricket and as secretary of the M.C.U.
How much Mr Jenner-Fust's active first-class cricket is in the past may be judged by the statement that he has never seen W. G. Grace play! Dr E. M. Grace is almost a neighbour of his, but he has only seen "the Coroner" play on a few occasions. Yet he follows the game from the arm-chair and through his morning paper to-day almost as keenly as he did when he was an active participant in it. He has alsi opinions of his own. For instance, he has unmitigated contempt for the modern practice of "leg-play "—"the coup de bolte," as it has been well called. He would have the rule as framed in 1774 reintroduced, and a batsman be out—
If the striker puts his leg before the wicket with a design to stop the ball, and actually prevent the ball from hitting his wicket by it.
The bat, he adds, was intended for the defence of the wicket, not the legs or pads; else why limit the width of the bat, which has remained unaltered for more than a hundred years? Modern reformers might take a note of this.
"It is all very well to talk about cricket being better now than it was a generation or two ago. If cricketers had the same rough grounds to play on now as they had then, it would be seen that there would not be so much difference between the present generation and those that went before. Very often there was but a very small quantity of level ground for the ball to pitch on."
The writer has said that Mr Jenner-Fust is a remarkable nonagenarian. His clearness of memory is manifested in this Talk. His physical endurance and visional powers may be understood when I add that he was turned ninety years of age before he ceased to carry a gun. But what will enable (he reader to understand Mr Jenner-Fust's vitality more clearly than anything I can say is the following facsimile of one of several charming letters that it has been my good fortune to receive from the Oldest Living Cricketer:—
Be it remembered that this is the firm hand of a man in his ninety-fourth year.
That with faculties no further impaired than they are now, Mr Herbert Jenner-Fust may live to inscribe upon his life-roll the score, " 100, not out," will be the sincere wish of every reader of this Talk.
17
ME V. E. WALKER.
TIME has laid its ravaging hand heavily upon the famous Walker family. There were seven brothers, six of them of cricket repute. Now only two remain, Mr R. D. and Mr V. E. It is Mr Vyell Edward Walker who now sits in the opposite chair in his charming house at Southgate for the purposes of this Talk.
The new generation of cricketers know Southgate and the brothers Walker by repute rather than by actual acquaintance. Wellnigh twenty years have passed since any member of the talented family was seen in first-class cricket, while it was so long ago as July 2 and 3, 1857, that the unique circumstance was seen of four brothers playing in one team for the Gentlemen of England against the Players in the first match of the kind ever played at Kennington Oval. Southgate is no longer a centre of first-class cricket, a rendezvous more popular than any other of its time within touch of the crowded metropolis. Cricket is still played there, but the giants of old time have laid down their armour, and the sward is no longer the tilting-place of champions forgathered from all cricket centres of the kingdom.
Southgate has been the home of the Walker family for 126 years. Arnos Grove, the mansion in which Mr V. E. Walker resides, is situated in a beautifully timbered park, on which the smoke of North London is perhaps beginning to take effect. Still Mr Walker is proud of his timber, his magnificent cedars and stalwart oaks. One of these oaks possesses, it is said, the greatest spread from branch to branch of any monarch of the forest in England. The writer refers to it in order to narrate an incident in which Mr Walker was concerned last summer. Mr Walker went to Nottingham to see the first of the test matches between England and Australia, thus testifying to his continued interest in the game with which he was so much identified when younger. Returning to Southgate on the Sunday evening after the match, he was walking through the grounds at Arnos Grove when h
e saw this huge oak-tree suddenly, in perfect stillness of atmosphere, deprived of two large limbs by a stroke of lightning. Mr Walker was sufficiently close to the tree to see and lament the disaster—and to congratulate himself upon his own escape.
The cricket-ground at Southgate is divided from the residential estate by the highway. It is a fine expanse of turf, but the modern cricketer will look in vain for the accessories of present-day first-class enclosures. There was no elaborate pavilion, with baths and dressing-rooms, in the Walkers' days, nor is anything of the kind needed there now. "The play is the thing," and always has been, at Southgate. Hits used always to be run out. Mr Walker recalls the fact that the highest hit recorded on the ground was an 8. He has scored two 7 hits off successive balls on the enclosure. This singular performance occurred in a match with the Free Foresters, and the hits were of course off the last ball of one over and the first ball of the next over. There has generally been a good wicket at Southgate. The turf was prepared at a great expenditure of labour. The greatest improvement in it was effected by George Hearne, now of Catford Bridge, but Mr Walker has to admit that the duty of looking after the wicket cost himself "many a wet shirt" in his younger days.
"What gave us the inclination for cricket?" remarks Mr Walker. "Well, I suppose it was partly inherited, and also partly due to the natural surroundings being so favourable to the pursuit of the game. My father and uncle (H. Walker) were both fond of the game, though my father was no great hand at it, while my uncle, though a left-arm bowler of fair pace, was not of the best class, though frequently he bowled at Lord's. In a private school at Stanmore, Middlesex, we had useful tuition in cricket from the second master, while the training at Harrow of course still further developed our taste for the game, the four younger brothers being at Harrow and in the Eleven.
"Recalling my Harrow days brings to mind the memory of old John Wisden. Wisden was at Harrow in my time for two or three years. He was the most excellent, civil, obliging, and painstaking fellow you could possibly meet. I suppose I may say he was as accurate a bowler, with as pretty a delivery, as any man ever saw. At that time he would be termed a fast round-arm bowler, though he was not as fast as Jackson, who was the bowler of England for a few years. Yes, Wisden was a good deal faster than Attewell, but not so fast as Lockwood. In appearance he was a funny little mite of a fellow. He was one of the last of the school of batsmen who favoured the old-fashioned 'draw' stroke. Tom Hearne was another, and about the last who practised the 'draw.' The stroke now is rarely or never seen.
"Wisden's partiality for the draw stroke once led us to set a trap for him which nearly came off. It was in the Gentlemen v. Players' match at the Oval in 1858. John Lilly white and he were in, and we had not got them out overnight. My brother John was keeping wicket, so we planned that I should give Wisden a ball for the draw stroke, and that my brother John should step on one side sharply to endeavour to catch him out. The plant came off all right, with the important exception that my brother did not quite get the ball sufficiently in his hand to make the catch. Wisden instantly tumbled to the plant, and would not bite at a draw stroke for the rest of his innings.
"Then old John Lillywhite! It seems ages since that row that led to the change in the law as to over-arm delivery. The matter has often been referred to, and has now long since passed into history. Well, I was the England captain, and the match was England v. Surrey at the Oval on August 25, 26, 27, 1862. The only amateurs in the England team were Lord Cobham, then the Hon. C. G. Lyttelton, and myself. We led off with a score of 503, towards which Tom Hay ward made 117. Surrey went in towards the close of the second day, and Edgar Willsher was no-balled six times by Lillywhite for having his arm too high. Willsher was savage, and threw the ball down in disgust, after which he and his brother professionals marched off the field in high dudgeon. Lyttelton and I lay down on the grass, while the Surrey crowd looked on and admired us in their own peculiar way. Finally, as it was late in the day, we went into the pavilion too, and it was arranged that the game should be continued next day with a fresh umpire. This was done, the new umpire being G. Street.
"I was told afterwards that Lillywhite had hinted to Willsher that he should no-ball him if he did not alter his mode of delivery. I did not know anything of the coming trouble at the time, or I should not have put Willsher on to bowl at the end at which Lillywhite was umpiring. That, I think, is self-evident. Willsher and Lillywhite were really very great chums, and they soon made up the little difference which this scene caused. Personally I always admired John Lillywhite for having the courage of his opinions, though I much disliked my position at the time, and his action certainly did good in bringing about a needful reform in the law."
To this the writer would add that George Anderson, Roger Iddison, and other professionals on the England side, had a suspicion that Lillywhite had been prompted to no-ball Willsher beforehand, and they resented it strongly. Thirty-five years after the incident occurred Anderson told the writer that it led to his refusal, with others, to play against Surrey in county cricket, with the result that his relations with the Yorks County authorities became considerably strained; indeed he attributed to that fact his failure to obtain a benefit match when in active cricket. Incidents of this kind are unpleasant, but they make history all the same. When a new Jack Lillywhite appears on the scene, prepared to no-ball a thrower six times in succession, then may we expect to see a new era inaugurated in English fair bowling. After this interruption Mr V. E. Walker resumes his Talk:—
"Another great player whom we have had at Southgate was Alfred Mynn. We once got him to play here for Kent v. Middlesex. He was the most magnificent specimen of an Englishman you could possibly see, and all that has been said and written about his kindliness of heart I can personally corroborate. When you had a grip of his paw you knew all about it. He was, of course, a long way beyond his prime as a cricketer when I first knew him, but he could still bowl well. There was a distinct hum as the ball left his hand. I suppose that was due to the way in which he held the ball. I have never observed the same hum in the bowling of any other man. Some people have thrown doubts upon this peculiarity of Alfred Mynn's delivery, but what I say is quite correct.1
"About my own career? Well, I don't think there is anything new that I can say. I was in the Harrow Eleven in 1853, and played my last county match at Nottingham in 1877. That was really the length of my active cricket. My first match, other than school matches, at Lord's was in 1856, when I was nineteen years of age. I played then for the Gentlemen of England against the Players, the latter winning an exciting game by 2 wickets. There is an interesting anecdote about that match that may be worth while narrating. One of the well-known habitue? of Lord's at that time was an old chap whom we used to call Bishop of Bond Street. He was a gunmaker. Outside the pavilion at that time was one row of seating only, and Bishop of Bond Street used to sit there and shout for the Gentlemen. After a bad 1 Mr E. Dowson makes the same statement in his Talk.
first innings start the Gentlemen were making a good show at the second attempt. I was going in nearly last when Bishop shouts out, 'Now, Mr brown shirt'—I was wearing a shirt of that colour—' if you can get 10 I will give you one of my best new guns.' Well, I got 16, so as I was going out I remarked, 'What about that gun, Mr Bishop 1' 'Oh, you shall have one of the best, my young fellow,' was his reply. Alas! for the promise of a cricket enthusiast. I never saw that gun.
"In my first two matches with the gentlemen at Lord's we had close finishes. The defeat by 2 wickets was followed next season by one of 13 runs. On both occasions it happened to be the misfortune of Mr Walter Fellowes to make a mistake that contributed to our defeat. He ran himself out in the 1856 match, and the next year missed a catch just at the finish."
The records show Mr V. E. Walker to have taken 10 wickets in an innings in first-class cricket on three occasions. No other player has performed the feat more than once. The first was the greatest, for the reasons that the performer was very young, a
nd that it was part of a double feat in one match. On July 21 and following days, 1859, England played Surrey at the Oval, and Mr Walker, after taking 10 wickets for 74 runs in Surrey's first innings, proceeded to score 108 runs of his own bat in England's next (that is, their second) innings. Reminded of this remarkable double performance, Mr Walker says :—
"The curious part of the bowling feat was that when the last man came in, Julius Caesar, who was ninth on the list, was missed off my bowling. I thought at the time that I was just going to miss the 10 wickets' feat, but I got the other fellow, Granny Martingell, caught by Wisden, and thus accomplished the performance I wanted to do. My success struck me as singular at the time, because the bowler at the other end was a far greater than I—namely, John Jackson. Bickley also had a few overs. In the next innings Jackson had satisfaction, for he took 6 wickets for 21 runs, while I obtained 4 for 67 runs.
"I used to bowl lobs, and it was with lobs that this feat was recorded. Lob-bowling was to me an acquired art, adopted through the exigencies of school cricket. I used to bowl round-arm, with a medium pace. The Hon. Robert Grimston and Lord Bessborough, who used to coach us at Harrow, got me to take up lob-bowling for the good of the school team. I used to bowl rather fast lobs, too, with a high delivery. I had a habit of running well up the pitch after the ball, and that got me a number of wickets. Of course batsmen think it beneath their dignity to be bowled by a lob, which reminds me of an amusing incident in which 'Ducky' Diver was concerned. It was in a North v. South match, and somehow I managed to knock off his bails. He was so wild that he turned round and knocked his three stumps out of the ground before retiring to the pavilion. He was sorry for this afterwards, and came to me and apologised for losing h;s temper. There is no doubt in my mind that lob-bowling is not sufficiently practised in present-day cricket. The success of Mr D. L. A. Jephson at Lord's against the Players and with the Surrey team last summer affords a proof of what a lob-bowler may accomplish, even in these days.