A Prince at Scarborough

 posted by John Winn

I mentioned in last week's post that in its early days the Scarborough Festival welcomed I Zingari, the oldest and perhaps most exclusive of wandering clubs. Founded in 1845 it is known for its aristocratic membership and its colours of black, red and gold. The eleven who played Gentlemen of England at North Marine Road in 1887 were typical of the social class make up of the club. Two 'Hons', Lyttelton and Hawke, Captain Friend and the Paravicini brothers, Percy and Harry, sons of Baron JP de Paravicini, took the field on Monday August 29th but pride of place must go to Prince Christian Victor, grandson of Queen Victoria. 

Wisden record that the match, the opening fixture of the festival, was spoilt by the 'deplorable weakness of the Zingari bowling'. On the first day The Gentlemen, centuries for Mr Thornton, Mr Stoddart and 73 for Mr WG Grace, rattled up 381 in under four hours. I Zingari did not go down without a fight, replying with 264 and 308 in a drawn match, top scorer Mr Webbe with 76 and 126. Queen Victoria would have been reasonably happy with her grandson's 35 in the first innings but not the nought for which he was bowled in the second knock. 

Wisden affords Prince Christian only six lines of obituary. Prince Christian Victor of Schleswig-Holstein, try getting that on your scorecard, was born in 1867 at Windsor Castle. He was educated at Wellington College, Oxford and Sandhurst and served in the King's Royal Rifle Corps from 1888 to 1900. At Wellington he captained the cricket team as he did at Magdalen College  and Sandhurst. Wisden rather damns him with faint praise saying that 'he would have very likely got into into the eleven at Oxford if a new wicketkeeper had been required'. Whist on military service he scored lots of runs including 205 v the Devonshire Regiment at Rawul Pindee in 1893.

Elevated to the rank of major he served in the Sudan and then took part in the relief of Ladysmith in the second Boer War. Whilst in South Africa he caught malaria and died of enteric fever* in 1900 in Pretoria where there is a fine grave. He is commemorated in a number of places in this country including a statue outside Windsor Castle. 

The match at Scarborough was his only first class game but no other member of the royal family has played at this level. 

                                                                         

A rainy festival

 posted by John Winn

When I was  a small boy in the 1950s family holidays were taken at Scarborough to coincide with the cricket festival at the beginning of September and at that time the three first class matches had a familiar pattern. Yorkshire would play MCC, Gentlemen take on Players and Essex stalwart TN Pearce would select an XI to take on the touring team, so I was lucky enough to see Australia in '53 and '56, South Africa in '55 and West Indies in '57. I suspect at the time I thought that this structure had been in place for ever and would go on for ever. Of course this was not so, TN Pearce had only taken over from HDG 'Shrimp' Leveson Gower, pronounced Lewson Gore of course, in 1951 and before 'Shrimp', Charles Thornton had had this responsibility. 

There had also been years when there were no visiting sides so for example in 1925 Thornton's XI took on team selected by MCC from those due to tour Australia that winter. Hobbs and Sutcliffe opened for the MCC side, not a bad attraction. Even further back in the nineteenth century I Zingari were regular visitors and North v South added spice to the occasion a number of times. 

The year referred to in the title of the posting is 1948 when on the first of September, a Wednesday, the festival opened with Yorkshire v MCC followed by Gower's XI v MCC, chosen from those due to tour South Africa and the climax came the following week when another of HDG's sides took on Bradman's 'Invincibles' who had gone undefeated in a tour beginning at New Road on April 28th. In his excellent book Bradman's War Malcolm Knox stresses how important it was to 'The Don' to go through the tour undefeated, his failure to do so in 1938 'still rankled' and thus he was very wary as to what might happen at Scarborough in what was close to a sixth test match. Staying at The Royal Hotel there were no festival festivities. Wisden has no doubt that there was an agreement that Gower would not include more than six test players although this is disputed in Knox's book. Whatever the truth of the matter only six test players were included while the Australian side had ten who had thrashed England at the Oval a few weeks earlier.

The weather for the festival seriously interfered with play and at times when play was possible watching was a miserable, cold experience. Yorkshire v MCC enjoyed a fine first day but only three and a half hours were possible on days two and three. Match drawn, as was the second match played for much of the time in 'wind and gloom'. For the Australian game much time was lost on the opening day the start was delayed on the second. Hutton was bowled in the first over by Lindwall, something to be repeated at Headingley five years later, and Bradman batted on until all possibility of defeat was eliminated thus preserving his side's undefeated record. Knox records that some of the Australians were not enamoured by this show of ruthlessness. In his last innings in England Bradman hit 153.

The tourists played two more matches before sailing for home, both against Scotland, in Edinburgh and Aberdeen where a crowd of 10000 saw  DGB sign off with 123 batting at number six.