and this gave me opportunities for communicating with men of that
University, many of whom remained up for the vacations, or for part of
the vacations, especially at Easter. I remember calling upon Barnard
of King’s, who had been captain of an Eton Eleven against whom I had
played, and who was now one of the foremost Cambridge cricketers, and
he gave me reason to fear that no King’s man would be able to play at
the time proposed (early in June), though that time would be within
the Cambridge vacation and not within ours, because their men, at
King’s, were kept up longer than at the other Colleges. And this, I
believe, proved actually the case; and if so, some allowance should
be made for it. But the fact is, there were similar difficulties on
both sides, and I am not sure they were not as great or greater upon
ours. In those ante-railway days it was necessary to get permission
from the College authorities to go up to London in term time, and
the permission was not readily granted. To take my own case:--My
conscience still rather smites me when I remember that in order to
gain my end, I had to present myself to the Dean and tell him that I
wished to be allowed to go to London--not to play a game of cricket
(that would not have been listened to)--but to consult a dentist; a
piece of Jesuitry which was _understood_, I believe, equally well on
both sides; at all events my tutor, Longley--afterwards Archbishop of
Canterbury--was privy to it.
Thus, though not without difficulties, the match came on, but
unhappily, the weather presenting a fresh difficulty, it did not fully
go off. We could only play a single innings; with the result which the
score shows. The precise day in June on which it was played has been
disputed. One report gives the 4th; another states that ‘the match
did not take place on the 4th as intended, but was deferred for a few
days.’ I can only say that I do not remember any postponement, as I
think I should do had such been the case; and what is more, ‘a few
days’ later would have brought it within our vacation, and so would
have rendered my piece of Jesuitism unnecessary. The players on the
Cambridge side were mostly Etonians, though there was, I think, no
King’s man among them; and on the Oxford side, mostly Wykehamists. We
scored 258 runs to our opponents’ 92, but it cannot be said we were a
strong eleven. The bowling was divided between Bayley and me; and the
state of the ground being in my favour, I was singularly successful
with my left-hand twist from the off, bringing down no less than seven
wickets in the one innings for only 25 runs. Jenner, famous as a
wicket-keeper, and well known afterwards as Sir Herbert Jenner Fust,
was the only batsman who made any stand against it. He had learnt by
painful experience how to deal with it. We had been antagonists in
the Eton and Harrow match of 1822; and I can well remember even now,
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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