by A. W. Pullin
"In the North v. South at Broughton, the first match of the kind I played in, the South had got a long way ahead of us in the first innings, and we had to follow on. The late Mr W. P. Lockhart and I went in first on following on. I was out first for 44, and Mr Lockhart did not leave until 100 were on the board with 2 wickets down. Finally we left the South about 120 to get to win, but M. M'Intyre, the Notts bowler, and I got them out for 90 odd and won the match. I know I bowled 'wonderful well' that time, but I don't remember what my analysis was.
"You may be interested to know something about my first match in Gentlemen v. Players. It was on July 3, 4, and 5, 1865. I got only 5 the first innings, but made 31 in the next. The Players won by 118 runs. W. G. Grace made his first appearance in the Gentlemen v. Players' engagements in that match, and other notable players to make a debut in it were Mr I. D. Walker, Harry Jupp, Tom Humphrey, and Alfred Shaw. You will see, therefore, that I 'came out1 at the Oval in these representative matches in very good company.
"My best performance in these matches was reserved for the year following, June 28,1866. Alf. Shaw, Ted. Willsher, and myself, the three bowlers, were last in. I got 66, Shaw 70, and Willsher (not out) 14. All the same, the Gentlemen beat us by 98 runs.
"My first match with Yorkshire proper was at Bramall Lane in July 1863, when I made a good score. In 1874, when I was captain of Yorkshire, I had my benefit, but it was not a success as benefits now go, for the match was soon over. I received in all about ^300.
"One of the most exciting games I can remember was against the M.C.C. at Lord's in 1870. They had 'brayed' us about a bit in the second innings, and we finally had only 3 wickets to go down and were about 70 or 80 runs behind. It looked long odds against us. Myself, Tom Emmett, and the late John West had to go in. I soon lost my partner, and was joined by Tom. I began to hit very hard, and rattled up within a run or two of 50 while Tom was making 9. Then Tom ran me out, and the game was a tie when John West came in. 'W. G.' and Alf. Shaw were bowling, but Tom Emmett got the run, and we won by 1 wicket. I remember Tom say, on coming out of the field, 'If we hed lossened t' match ah sud nivver 'av shawn mi face in t' pavilion for running thi' aht.' He had lost sight of the fielder, who was covered by the umpire.
"I first played against W. G. Grace when he was a boy of fifteen. The match was against Twenty-two of Bath. I often met him afterwards, and remember some roastings that he used to give us. One was on the occasion of his first visit to Sheffield. He scored 150 out of 294. The match was Gloster v. Yorkshire on July 29, 30, 31, 1872—the first the counties played against each other. Play was stopped on the first day at five o'clock. The score was 208 for no wicket, W. G. having made 132 not out and Mr A. G. Matthews 69 not out. I remember that one gentleman sent me a telegram asking me to wire back the state of the game, and I replied, 'We have not got a wicket yet, but are hoping to get one every day.' I got W. G.'s wicket next day, my nephew Andrew catching him off my bowling.
"In this match W. G. thwacked me out of the field for 6 on the square-leg side. There used to be a practice in those days of giving a shilling to those who returned the lost balls. An old lady found this one, and toddled up with it to the wicket, as was the custom. She brought it to me, and I said, 'Nah, yon's him that hit it; yo mun go to him for t' brass.' She crossed the wicket to W. G., and gave him the ball, and he, much amused, paid the shilling forfeit.
"W. G. also played for Gloster against Yorks in my benefit match on July 27, 28, 29, 1874, and scored 167— a contribution I did not in the least object to. It was rather a curious circumstance that the champion was caught by one of his own men—Mr F. G. Monkland. That gentleman was fielding as substitute for Allan Hill, who was obliged to retire very early in the game."
Of personal reminiscences of famous old cricketers Luke Greenwood has a good store, and they are all tempered with an exceedingly kindly, almost affectionate, regard. He recalls a match at Parker's Piece between Yorkshire and Cambridge, when George Anderson and he each made 50 odd by hard hitting, and pulled off the game. In forcing George for a run the Bedale veteran remarked, "Oh! Luke, you've run me out," but fortunately George got home in time. This incident led naturally to a personal testimony to George Anderson.
"A nicer man never stepped on to a cricket-field than George Anderson. Straightforward and quiet, you never heard a wrong word come out of his mouth. He never misses writing to me on his birthday even now. Cricketers after a hard day in the field are liable to take stimulants, but I never saw George Anderson have more than one glass after a match. He was not fond of chaff, and what he said he meant. As a captain no one could have been nicer and more popular. Then he was always so erect and neatly attired in the field,—as clean as if he had come out of a band-box, or, as we once told him, as clean as a new-scraped carrot.
"Then John Thewlis. Now he was one of the best allround men that ever Lascelles Hall turned out: he had strokes all round the wicket, and he was perfect in them all. He was the second man from Lascelles Hall to play for the county; I was the first. How he came first into prominence I will tell you. Old George Parr said to me, 'Greenwood, we are going to Southampton to play twenty-two there. Do you know a good batter 1' I said I did, and mentioned John Thewlis. John was forthwith sent for.
"Well, George Parr, on the strength of my praise, sent in John to open the innings, and poor John was bowled first ball! Had he not been a fair age then (about thirty-two, I think, as he came out late) we should have said he was nervous. But that was not so. John, as he left the wicket, turned round to the bowler and said, 'Tha'll noan bahl me aht t' first ball agen, tha can bet.' He was not bowled out either, for in the next innings he made 41 not out, and on the ground we were then playing on that would be worth 100 to-day.
"But though John Thewlis was good at all-round play we never had a cutter like Ephraim Lockwood. Ephraim and I were brought up together and played thousands of hours together, and I know what he could do. I say, therefore, that Ephraim Lockwood was the finest cutter I ever saw in my life. I have seen him cut a ball off the middle wicket scores of times. It was all by wrist work and quickness in timing; he did not move his feet. It was no use bowling on the offside for Lockwood, for he would simply play with such bowling. We knew that, and had to keep them straight when he was batting." 1
"We were speaking of George Anderson a minute or two since. The last time he and I met was four or five years ago, at a match at Bradford. We sat together and saw every ball bowled, and he was of the same opinion as I—that we have not as good bowling now as in our days. The bowling is not as straight now, and they do not bowl with as good a length. On hard, true wickets men should bowl straight and with a good length, and use judgment. There is nothing that beats a batsman better than a good length straight ball. There is a length which the batsman cannot play, and it is the business of the good bowler to find that length. Yet modern bowlers have an advantage as compared with those of our days. If we bowled above our shoulder we were noballed. Now they can bowl as high as a mill-chimney, and they ought to come down so much straighter than from a round-arm delivery.
"To show how straight we used to bowl, I may say that I only bowled one wide for Yorkshire in the whole of my career, and that was at the Oval, after a thunderstorm. Once when Alf. Shaw and I were at Nottingham two gentlemen came up and asked if we would answer a question. It was, 'How
1 The author may here mention with regret that John Thewlis, who made a great stand with his nephew, Ephraim Lockwood, on the occasion of the latter's first appearance in London (see Talk with Lockwood), died last Christmas week (1899). There was a touch of the tragic element in his death. Thewlis went over to Lascelles Hall from Failsworth, Manchester (where he had resided for some years, unknown and in very indigent circumstances, when the writer discovered him), to spend the Christmas holiday. He was in the Tandem Inn, the favourite resort of Lascelles Hall cricketers, when he was taken suddenly ill. He was removed to his relatives' house, and died a day or two later. In attending his funeral,
William Bates contracted a cold and died ten days afterwards. The suddenness of poor "Billy" Bates's death explains the absence of a Talk with this famous player in this book. Had Bates lived another month, an arrangement which he and I made for a Talk during the summer of 1899 would have been fulfilled. May the sod rest lightly on poor Bates's grave 1 He had his failings— who has not ?—but he had also trials that fall to the lot of few men. He was * great cricketer, and a most kindly soul.
F
many wides had we bowled in our time for our counties?' I said, 'One.' Alf. Shaw said, 'I have never bowled one'; and that was quite true.1
"Lob-bowling is also not as much in vogue as it ought to be, for though it gets knocked about it often pays. Poor old Roger Iddison was a very good slow underhand lobbowler.
"Who do I consider the best bowler of my time? We vary in our opinions. In my opinion Allan Hill was the straightest fast bowler I ever saw take hold of a ball. But he had not the devilment in his bowling that George Freeman had, though he was rather faster than that great bowler. Freeman had some very nasty balls, and they whipped off the pitch like lightning. Spofforth could, however, make a ball 'do' more at his pace than any other bowler I ever saw, but he was not as true a bowler as either Allan Hill or George Freeman.
"While on old players, I wish it were possible to place W. G. Grace, at his best, Tom Hayward, Richard Daft, and Robert Carpenter against the four best living batsmen any one could select. I should back the old quartette—four of the finest batsmen that ever lived. Blackham was the finest wicket-keeper I have seen. He used to do some wonderful things for the Australians when I was umpiring.
"I umpired for the Australians on three visits. They always behaved like gentlemen to me, and I never saw teams work better together. I umpired only a few times for the 1878 team—the first—but I did a good deal on the two subsequent visits.
"I was umpiring in the memorable match at the Oval on August 28 and 29, 1882, when Mr Murdoch's second team beat England by 7 runs. England appeared to be carrying all before them, and went in a second time, needing but 85 runs to win. Three wickets were down for 51, and the match seemed as good as over. W. G. Grace was out third wicket, after making 32 out of 51. Then everything came off for 1 Shaw corroborates this.—AUTHOR.
the Australians. It looked a good thing for England when A. G. Steel joined A. P. Lucas, for only 19 runs were required, and there were such batsmen as Maurice Read, Barnes, and C. T. Studd to come in, to say nothing of E. Peate. But every possible chance offered was taken, and the Australians won by 7 runs. I never saw such excitement in my life as the match produced when one English crack after another fell. But the Australians had all the luck of the match.
"There was an umpiring incident in the match which I think I am the first to mention. It was a decision given by Bob Thoms. In the Australians' second innings W. L. Murdoch and S. P. Jones were batting. Mr Murdoch hit the ball a little on the leg-side, and the Hon. A. Lyttelton, who was keeping wicket for England, ran for it and threw it in to Peate, who was at short-slip. The run was made safely enough, and Peate made no attempt to take up the ball. Mr Jones thereupon walked out of his ground to pat the wicket where the ball had risen at the previous delivery, and W. G. Grace coolly picked up the ball, walked to the wicket, dislodged the bails, and cried, 'How's that 1' Thoms, who was the umpire appealed to, gave him 'out,' and out Mr Jones had to go. Mr Murdoch, on seeing what had occurred, remarked, 'That's very sharp practice, W. G.'; and to this day I think it was. Had I been appealed to I should not have given Jones out, for the ball was to all intents and purposes dead, and there had been no attempt to make a second run."
Talking of the Lascelles Hall days, Greenwood says that in the famous ^50 aside match between the weaving village and Sheffield, in September 1870, "we could have made the match one for ^500 a-side if Sheffield would have had it. The old weavers used to put their money down on us like bricks. How these old weavers followed cricket! There was a glee party among them who always came to the matches in Yorkshire. They would put up at the nearest 'pub' to the ground, and if we were batting and doing well the crowd always heard their music round the field. If things went wrong they kept quietly to the bar-parlour."
Of his connection with Yorkshire Luke retains the plcasantest of recollections, and to-day, he says, "they always behave to me like gentlemen, and send me a card every year. Last year (1897) I walked to Leeds and back twice, to Bradford and back twice, to Huddersfield and back once; and I was going to set off on the Sunday night to walk to Sheffield to see the match with Sussex, but when I found that Ranji was not playing I did not go."
From these excursions it will be understood that Luke Greenwood had not the wherewithal to indulge in railway travelling. As a matter of fact, in recent times he has been sadly down on his luck. "Looking back," he said pathetically, "now in my sixty-fourth year, it seems to me I have been playing on a bad wicket. Yet it is not my fault. I was in that house" (the Carpenter's Anns, Ossett) "twenty years, and never had a single glass of drink! It is not many cricketers can say that. We are too often blamed, and rightly so, for insobriety and improvidence, but neither charge can be brought against me."
The writer is pleased to be able to add that at the close of the summer of 1899 the Yorkshire County Cricket Committee, at the instigation of Lord Hawke, voted a winter allowance to Luke Greenwood. They did the same to John Thewlis, who only lived a few months to enjoy it. May Luke have better luck 1
EVER foremost among the school of Notts cricketers will be the name of Richard Daft, whose "cool and cautious tactics" have been praised in rhyme, and whose style contemporaries admired and descendants have made classic. Mr Daft may be described as a cricketer of four ages. His career began in the late 'Fifties and was continued more or less regularly into the late 'Seventies. Then followed a period in which he lay dormant, resting on well-won laurels. Thirty years or more after his debut he reappeared in his old county's new ranks, with no evidences of IUp-van-Winkleism upon him. In the last years of the nineteenth century he was one of Notts's nominated umpires.
Richard Daft is a wonderfully preserved man. It is true his hair is silvered, but his cheeks reflect the ruddy glow of perfect health, and his carriage is as erect as if he were still emerging from the pavilion to make his hundred, Regularity of habit, constant exercise, and moderation in diet and drink, are the means by which Daft carries his sixty-five years so easily. "Every morning, winter and summer," says he, "I use the 7-lb. dumb-bells before dropping into my cold bath. After the tub I have a two miles' walk in all weathers. I also take plenty of exercise in other ways, such as tennis and cycling, and I further make a practice of only having three meals a-day. To-day I have not an ache, or a pain, or a rheum about me."
It is not the writer's intention to reproduce Richard Daft's performances. To do so would be supererogation. Equally superfluous would it be to describe how, why, and where he became famous. A discursive talk on cricket in general, with reminiscences not hitherto told, and opinions on points in which by his long experience "Dick" Daft is most qualified to speak, are rather the objects that will be kept in view.
It will be appropriate to mention that Daft's highest score was 161, made for Notts against Yorkshire, at Trent Bridge on June 12, 13, 1873. "Some people used to tell me," says Daft, "that was my best performance. But I have always thought my best was the score of 118 for the North v. the South in Jimmy Grundy's benefit match. That was obtained on a nasty wicket, and Edgar Willsher was almost unplayable. I was out to a ball that hit me on the stomach and fell on to the wicket. I thought Tom Lockyer had been juggling a bit, but he said, 'It's all right, Richard, you'll have to go.' So I had."
"It is not a little singular," says Daft, "that the match about which old Notts enthusiasts delight the most to talk to this day was the first which Yorkshire played on the Trent Bridge ground, on July 9, 10, and 11, 1863. The counties had played their first match at Bradford on June 22, 23, and 24 in the same year, when Yorkshire won with
8 wickets to fall. In the return game the Tykes led off so well that another equally easy win seemed probable. My dear old friend George Anderson scored 82, and Yorkshire's total was 243. Roger Iddison, Hodgson, and Slinn—all, alas! now dead—got us out for 162, and we had to follow on.
"Of course the match seemed as good as lost; still we made 181 in the second innings, and Yorkshire had to go in, requiring 100 runs to set our score. Jimmy Grundy and Wootton then bowled so splendidly that wicket after wicket was captured, Ned Stephenson being the highest scorer with 30. Finally the last wicket fell at 94, and Notts won by 6 runs. The excitement at the finish was intense: I never saw anything like it before, and have not seen it equalled since. Grave and reverend clergymen, and citizens of the most austere type, quite lost their heads—hats and all—in their enthusiasm at the Notts success."
It may seem strange that a cricketer of Daft's exceptional abilities should never have formed one of the English teams that have visited Australia. The reason was not the want of an invitation. As a matter of fact, Mr Daft could have been included in the first team that left these shores under H. H. Stephenson's captaincy in 1862.
"Messrs Spiers & Pond sent an agent, named Mr Mallam, over here to see me, and he made several good offers to me to go out with the team to Australia. At last he attended a dinner at the Hen and Chickens, Birmingham, at which Captain, now Lieut.-General, Sir Frederick Marshall was present, and Mr Mallam asked me to name a price, and he would give it to me. They wanted to take out the best team, and there was no limit as to price. However, I declined to state a price: I could not see my way to go at that time. The speculation was a fine one on the part of Spiers & Pond. I think it is the fact that they cleared ;£ 11,000 by it."