and till his last year performed yeoman’s service. In 1856, Makinson’s
year, Mr. T. W. Wills, with the concurrence and sanction of Oxford,
played for Cambridge without ever having resided at Cambridge for one
single day, though his name was entered on the College books. However,
his part in the match consisted of getting five runs in one innings and
bowling nine overs for one wicket. It appears very clear, then, that
Oxford have profited by having five matches played on their own ground
and making use, for five years, of Mr. C. D. Marsham, the best bowler
they ever possessed, to say nothing of Mr. R. D. Walker.
Of course the characteristics of University cricket have changed very
much, following the example of cricket generally. About the first match
of all the late Bishop of St. Andrews (Bishop Wordsworth), who played
in it, very kindly wrote the following note:--
THE FIRST INTER-UNIVERSITY CRICKET MATCH.--1827.
In the newly published Life of my younger brother Christopher, the
late Bishop of Lincoln, the following words are to be found, quoted
from his private journal:--‘Friday’ (no date--but early in June,
1826). ‘Heard from Charles. He wishes that Oxford and Cambridge should
play a match at cricket’ (p. 46). And as I have been asked to put
upon paper what I can remember concerning the first Inter-University
Cricket Match, with a view to its insertion in the present volume,
I venture to take those words for my text. Yes; I was then in my
Freshman’s year at Christ Church, and both my brother and I--he
at Winchester, and I at Harrow--had been in our respective school
elevens. But more than this, as captain of the Harrow Eleven I had
enjoyed what was then a novel experience in carrying on correspondence
with brother captains at other public schools--Eton, Winchester, Rugby
and even Charter House; and I well remember how the last amused us at
Harrow, by the pompous and, as we presumed to think, bumptious style
of his letter, proposing ‘to determine the superiority at cricket
which has been so long undecided.’ Having played against Eton for four
years, from the first match in 1822 to 1825, and in the first match
against Winchester in the last-named year, I had a large acquaintance
among cricketers who had gone off from those schools and from Harrow
to both Universities. My brother, as I have said, was one of these,
but though successful in the Wykehamist Eleven at Lord’s in 1825
(when he got 35 runs in his second innings, and ‘caught’ our friend
Henry Manning--the future cardinal--of which he was wont to boast in
after years), he did not keep up his cricket at Cambridge, whereas I
continued to keep up mine at Oxford and was in the University Eleven
during the whole time of my undergraduate course. Nothing came of
my ‘wish’ to bring about a match between the Universities in 1826.
But in 1827 the proposal was carried into effect. Though an Oxford
man, my home was at Cambridge, my father being Master of Trinity;
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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