WG comes to Halifax

 posted by John Winn

A recent visitor noticing my collection of Wisden's asked if I had read them all. My answer was that the best I could say was that I had not read any of them in their entirety but that I had read at least part of each copy of the almanac. One of the main pleasures that the collection gives is to take a copy from the shelves, open it at random and see what turns up. Rarely does this random approach fail to arouse my interest and today's blog stems from such an event.

Over the weekend I looked at the oldest almanac in the collection, that from 1889 which in the main covers the cricket in 1888, a season which saw an Australian tour, the sixth such tour of this country and to which 60 pages were devoted. The tour involved cricket almost every day from May 7th to September 22nd, Yorkshire played them three times. Inter county matches are not classified as 'county championship' but a table is printed which shows Surrey top with Kent and Yorkshire tied for second place. Two pages are given over to a match played at Hanson Lane, Halifax,'the first important match ever played on the new ground of Halifax Cricket and Football Club. The ground which was only laid out in 1887, is a spacious one, having a capital pavilion, facing one side for cricket and athletics and the other for football.'

Yorkshire's opponents for this significant game were Gloucestershire, skippered by Mr WG Grace, who having won the toss opened with his brother Mr EM. The West Country men did not fare well being bowled out for just 80, Peel 7 for 39, to which Yorkshire replied with 122, Peel top scoring with 25. Gloucestershire's second innings was only a little better than their first, 102 all out setting Yorkshire 70 to win which they achieved for the loss of seven wickets with Ulyett top scoring with 23. Man of the match was undoubtedly Peel for in addition to his first innings runs he took 13 wickets. 

Peel's record over the season qualified him for a feature in the almanack  'Six Great Bowlers of The Year' and  his statistics show he bowled 1768.1 overs, 886 of which were maidens and took 181 wickets at a cost of under 13. The portraits of the six were from 'fresh negatives taken by the well known Brighton firm of E Hawkins and co.' Alas time has not treated the photos kindly and they are very faded. 

The return match between Yorkshire and Gloucestershire was played at Clifton College in Bristol in August and this time it was the batters who were on top. WG for the third time in his career made centuries in both innings but Yorkshire showed great depth in batting and led by 213 on first innings. Grace's outstanding second innings effort when he batted over three hours saved the day for Glos and although Yorkshire batted a second time they were unable to hit off the 104 needed for victory in the time available

To close I must mention a curiosity of Yorkshire's season, namely a match they played at Sheffield in May against 23 (sic) colts. Despite having more than twice the customary number of players the youngsters were bowled out for 114 and 96 and lost by an innings and four, Peel taking 15 wickets in the match.