Brian's piece on Charlie Ollivierre yesterday prompted me to turn to my Wisden shelves and in particular the 1950 edition in which is recorded the obituary of Mr Charles Augustus Ollivierre who died at Pontefract on March 25th 1949 aged 72. Much of the twenty or so lines is devoted to the match Brian described in detail in his posting and Wisden does not play down the 'unprecedented performance' saying that 'never before in first-class English cricket could any team claim anything approaching such an achievement.' It goes on to say however that eye trouble caused Charlie to retire from first-class cricket in 1907 after which he played club cricket in Yorkshire and between 1924 and 1939 coached schoolboy cricketers in Holland.
Brian has referred to his 2013 article on Charles Augustus and how he established a connection with the Whitby area whilst living in Yorkshire to the extent that when he was very ill from 'flu he asked to be buried at Robin Hood's Bay. Today however I want to look in more detail at the early days of his career and in particular the part he played in the first tour by a West Indian side to these shores in 1900. The tour is recorded in some detail in Wisden and full scorecards are available on Cricket Archive.
The stimulus for the tour stemmed from successful tours by English sides to the Caribbean in the 1890s where a jolly good time was had by all and some cricket played as well. The invitation to tour here had come from Lord Hawke in 1899 and short of perhaps of one from Queen Victoria one doubts if any invitation at that time could have been harder to refuse. A team representative of six islands and comprising 14 players and a manager was chosen and leaving Barbados on May 26th arrived at Southampton on June 5th after a record voyage. Ollivierre was the sole representative of St Vincent in a side captained by Raymond Warner, brother of Pelham.
Wisden's report of the tour is written by Pelham 'Plum' Warner and he whilst not afraid to praise the side he pulls no punches either so although he describes Ollivierre as 'the best batsman in the eleven' and one of 'the best fielders' Charlie and Lionel S D'Ade are singled out as 'the worst judges of a run I have ever seen'. Charlie tops the batting averages playing in sixteen of the seventeen matches scoring 883 runs at 32.70. Second is Lebrun Constantine, father of Sir Learie.
Raymond Warner played only seven matches being laid low by malaria and his place as skipper was taken by Stanley Sproston from Demerara and he acquitted himself 'right well' according to Plum whose final comment was that 'English men will be right glad to welcome another West Indian XI within the next three or four years. And that's right good of you to say so Plum.
As Brian has described Charles stayed on in Britain after the tour and qualified for Derbyshire playing for them in three matches in 1901 in all of which he had some success. He made his championship debut against Essex in July 1902 and was a regular for the rest of that season and until his career was sadly brought to a close in 1907. Wisden's report on Derbyshire in the 1903 edition remarks that 'CA Ollivierre ...speedily proved himself a valuable acquisition scoring a delightful innings of 167 against Warwickshire.'It is fully expected he will become one of the mainstays of the eleven. And he did.
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