VIII
UNIVERSITY CRICKET MATCHES
There is a sense of continuity and of permanence about the University match that is soothing in these days of change. Head-masters have power to knock a public school match on the head; the borderland between Gentlemen and Players is becoming very narrow; counties may come and go, but the University match, it is safe to predict, will go on, humanly speaking, for ever. Bishops, both Anglican and Roman, judges—unfortunately for them, no Prime Ministers—scholars, and clergy without number have played in these matches. Though in these days the bowling is often weak, still somehow the game is never drawn, and more than in any other match does the nervousness of the combatants upset the calculations of judges and bettors of trifling sums, made for the sentiment of the thing, to show which side has your sympathy. He is an evil creature who, if he bets at all, bets against his own University. The University match, like the Irish Secretaryship, has been the grave of many a reputation. John Walker made 19 runs in six innings; Lord Cobham made 61 in seven innings; A. W. Ridley exactly the runs in exactly the same number of innings; R. D. Walker 84 runs in ten innings. All these were men who played for the Gentlemen while they were at the University, and were all excellent batsmen.
The first match took place in 1827, and was not finished, but Oxford would certainly have won; and the teams met intermittently till 1838. Since then the match has been an annual fixture, and has been played out to a finish every year except 1827, 1844, and 1888, when, though four days were given to it, the weather triumphed in a bad sense. The University match makes the great opportunity for old friends to meet, and though, as in every other walk of life, the crowds are a nuisance and a hindrance to the enthusiast's real enjoyment, still Lord's is, after all, the real ground to enjoy cricket on; and long may it be played there, urgently desirable as it is that the M.C.C. should abolish carriages and let us walk round the ground in peace.
It must appear odd to the University player of to-day, to whom the University match is the match of his lifetime, to be told that in 1869 no less a man than the late Attorney-General, Sir R. T. Reid, was absent during the second innings of Oxford, and the present Bishop of Liverpool was the same; whilst in the following year Oxford began and finished the match with only ten men. The late Lord Dudley was absent one innings in 1841, and one from each side were absent in the second innings in 1850. These facts justify us in concluding that the play was conducted far less systematically in those days. If a man found it inconvenient, he very likely declined to play, and others threw their captain over in a way that the modern Zingaro and Quidnunc has been known to do: even as late as 1850 did this take place. Since then things have altered; but though we are all proud of the history of the old University matches, there is little doubt that many of the earlier elevens, like those in the Eton and Harrow matches, were more or less scratch teams.
The rules which qualify a man to play for his University are somewhat elastic, and, I think, need revision. No man is allowed to play for more than four years; this has been the unwritten rule since 1865, when R. D. Walker had grown grey in the service for Oxford and played his fifth year. But within this four years' limit there is an elasticity that is as surprising as it is absurd. As far as I know, if a man resides one term at any college, and keeps his name on the books, but never sees his University except for that one term, he has, nevertheless, qualified himself to play for four years. Though this preposterous rule is not acted up to now, it frequently happens that a man plays who has not been in residence that term at all; and the rule, I contend, should be altered on account of the injustice that is done to the bonâ fide residents who long to gain the coveted honour of playing for their University. There is one way in which Cambridge is at a disadvantage, namely, that their honours men get their degrees at the end of the third year—if they leave the University for business purposes they are lost—while the Oxford honours men get theirs a year later. A rational man from each University would soon settle the question quite fairly for both sides if they were to meet and discuss it.
The late venerable Bishop of St. Andrews, who only died a few years ago, played in the first University match in 1827, and clean bowled seven Cambridge wickets; and on the Cambridge side is to be seen the name of W. G. Cookesley, most famous of scholars, and a very well-known Eton master. Two men played five times in this match, the famous C. D. Marsham and R. D. Walker, both of Oxford. C. D. Marsham was perhaps the best bowler that ever played for either side: as straight and as accurate as a professional, he was the sheet-anchor of both Oxford and the amateurs in his day. He played five years against Cambridge, and only lost one match, the famous game which the renowned J. Makinson won for Cambridge almost by himself. C. D. Marsham took forty Cambridge wickets, or an average of four an innings, at an average cost of nine runs a wicket. Of all the players who played four years, very few have won on every occasion. I think I am correct in saying that S. C. Voules is the only Oxonian, and that T. A. Anson, W. de St. Croix, and W. Mills are the only three Cantabs; and of these Voules's is the most remarkable feat, as he played so late as 1863, 1864, 1865, and 1866.
A couple of very famous Cambridge players in the persons of Woods and M'Gregor would very likely have been added to this list, as they had some way the best of the drawn match. But the comparatively few men who have played in four winning elevens shows that in the long-run the matches have been very even, and there is every reason to suppose that this will always be the case. Both Universities have grand grounds, almost too good perhaps: they show up the weakness in bowling. Both get the leading public schools, though certain of these seem to favour one or the other: Oxford secures the majority of Eton and nearly monopolises Winchester, while Cambridge gets most Uppingham and Marlborough boys. In the last twenty years Cambridge has had rather the best of it, though since 1891 victory has gone in alternate years between them. But from 1878 Cambridge has had a fine lot of cricketers—A. P. Lucas, E. Lyttelton, A. Lyttelton, A. G. Steele, Bligh, C. T. Studd, G. B. Studd, Wright, Bainbridge, Woods, M'Gregor, Streatfield, Jackson, N. F. Druce, and several others; and Oxford has not been quite so strong, but in C. D. Marsham's days in the fifties and Mitchell's days in the sixties, Oxford had the better of the argument; and Cambridge largely owes her numerical superiority to the five consecutive wins in 1839 to 1843.
It might be thought that, in a purely amateur match such as this, where bowling is generally weak, there would have been more individual innings of a hundred made than in Gentlemen and Players at Lord's. But up to date, twenty hundreds have been scored in the University matches and twenty-two in the other. Seven hundreds were made in Gentlemen and Players up to 1869, while not till 1870 did W. Yardley set all the cricket world talking of the first hundred of the University match. It is the old story of nerve; for so many men in this the great match cannot play up to their true form. Since 1870, however, in Gentlemen and Players there have been sixteen centuries played against twenty in the other, and W. G. Grace has scored six of them. As Yardley was the first, so up to the present he holds the proud position of being the only man who on two separate occasions has made a hundred; and of all the grand innings played by anybody in these matches, the hundred made by Yardley in 1870 almost takes the first place. The match looked hopelessly bad for Cambridge, who were only twelve runs on and had lost five wickets; and Lord's was not by any means the easy ground it is now, as Cambridge found out to their cost the following year. But in a short time Yardley had pulverised the bowling: before you knew where you were, the bowlers in his hands had become helpless: fortunately, too. Jack Dale, the other end, was all the time playing a most scientific game, and a good total was reached. But out of 198 runs made from the bat, Yardley and Dale scored 167.
The next year, 1871, there was an old-fashioned wicket at Lord's; not a dangerous one, but of a kind I should like to see in these days, when the ball shot and came down the hill; and the finest piece of fast bowling ever seen in this match was given by Sam Butler for Oxford. He bowled from the pavilion end all the innings, and in 97 balls he got all ten wickets for 38 runs, all but two having been clean bowled, and some of the Cambridge eleven could really bat. Yardley, Money, Thornton, and A. T. Scott were all good, three of them up to Gentlemen and Players form; but the pace of the ball, its break and its shoot, wanted Grace to master it, and Grace only would have played the bowling that day. Butler got five wickets, four clean bowled in the second innings, and so for the whole match had the astounding figures of fifteen wickets for 95 runs,—a feat not to be seen again by this generation at all events. Cambridge had their turn the year after in a match which shows the old vicissitudes of the game. Oxford had the dreaded Sam Butler to bowl again, as well as his most efficient coadjutor, C. K. Francis, who now presides over the police court in South-West London. They had besides Townshend, Law, Ottaway, than whom no player who ever lived had a stronger defence, Hadow, Tylecote, Harris, altogether eight old choices to the five of Cambridge; and yet Cambridge, on winning the toss, amassed 388 runs, a score that was not equalled until Cambridge, in 1892, made exactly the same total. The wicket was, I suppose, easier than it had been the former year: at any rate, Sam Butler could only get three wickets at a cost of 103 runs. Oxford had to bat at five o'clock after many hours' fielding, and the boot was soon seen to be on the other leg, for in 68 balls W. H. Powys secured six Oxford wickets, five of them clean bowled. Next morning, on a wicket rather damaged by rain, Powys took seven more wickets, securing in the whole match, against a strong batting eleven, thirteen wickets at rather over three runs each! These two great fast bowling performances took place in two consecutive years, and stand as, on the whole, the two greatest records of their description. In this same match of 1872 Yardley scored his second century, but the real credit of Cambridge's long innings may justly be put down to the then young Etonians, Longman and Tabor, who for the first time in these matches put up 100 before the wicket fell.
As showing how completely calculations may be upset in cricket, we can turn to 1884 and 1885. In the former year Oxford played no fewer than seven freshmen, and won the match easily by seven wickets. The following year they had eight old choices, and won the toss; but Cambridge won the match by seven wickets. The public, as a rule, like the side that plays the most old choices, but they must have had a rude awakening in 1885. So frequently does nervousness show itself in this match, that a side is fortunate if it has players who have gained experience in playing for a first-class county. Such was the experience of the famous K. J. Key in 1884, for he had won his spurs in playing in a well-remembered match at the Oval against Lancashire.
If a young player has faced such an ordeal he will be better prepared to overcome his nervousness at the University match. I seldom indulge in prophecy, but I anticipate that Cambridge will find Oxford a far stronger side in 1898 than they were in 1897. In 1897 Oxford had some excellent batsmen in Fane, Bromley-Martin, Champain, and Eccles, but none of them had taken part in this great match before, and only Fane had been seen in first-class cricket elsewhere. The result was that they played nervously in the match; but with a year's experience of first-class cricket at Oxford and county cricket, these batsmen, if they all play again, will probably appear in a very different light. In the Cambridge eleven Burnup, Wilson, Druce, Jessop, Shine, and Bray had all played, not only for their University in previous years, but also in first-class county matches, having obtained thereby an experience far beyond that gained by Oxford.
The great R. A. H. Mitchell was captain in 1863, 1864, and 1865, and won all three matches; having himself played in 1864 one of those monumental innings that live for ever. This was in the days of low scoring. Cambridge had only two bowlers, and Oxford had a very strong batting side, Mitchell himself. Case, Tritton, F. R. Evans, Frederick, R. D. Walker, Voules, Wright, and Maitland, altogether making one of the strongest batting sides that either University has ever turned out, and they only wanted 125 runs to win; but if it had not been for the splendid not-out innings of 55 scored by Mitchell himself, Cambridge would have won. This innings is fondly spoken of by all Oxonians.
We all grow old, but a great delight of cricket is that as long as you live and can see, the joys of looking on at the game never decline, and of all matches the University match, to a University man, is the most enjoyable. You are very keen for your side to win, the cricket is very good, and the players are, or ought to be, about in their prime. Luckily, also, the weakness of the bowling is counterbalanced to a great extent by the nervousness of the batsmen. Anyhow, the matches are, unless weather is very foul, played to a finish, and your pleasure is not spoilt by a series of drawn games, as seems to be the case even in county contests.
THE END
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