brated match was played ninety years ago between two teams composed of one-legged and one-armed cricketers. A picture of this match, which is said to have produced some excellent cricket, now hangs in the pavilion at Lord’s.
Londoners will probably recollect a curious match between two Covent Garden porters in 1890. Covent Garden porters are continually challenging one another to various feats of strength, but on this occasion the competition was something quite out of the common. The course was from Covent Garden Market to Hampstead Heath station and back, the conditions being that one should walk on stilts while the other should carry a sack of potatoes.
The stilt walker was a trifle more speedy, but his opponent possessed the advantage of being hampered in a far less degree by the traffic which runs so thick along the greater part of the route taken. Furthermore the stilt walker was stopped several times by the Police, who displayed a great anxiety about his movements; but, notwithstanding these obstacles, he reached the winning post ten minutes ahead of his opponent. Why two such hard-worked individuals, as most Covent Garden porters are, should voluntarily undertake such a laborious task on the chance of
CRICKET MATCH BETWEEN ONE-ARMED AND ONE-LEGGED MEN.
(From a picture, by kind permission of the M.C.C.)
winning a paltry sovereign is a mystery utterly unintelligible to the non-athletic mind. It can only be conjectured that the financial acumen of the Covent Garden porter is less strongly developed than his sporting instincts.
It must not be supposed that in queer competitions men have the field all to themselves. Many cases could be quoted to show that women are quite as ingenious in evolving out-of-the-way contests.
Apparently with a view of putting an end to the fiction that women cannot shop as expeditiously as men, a well-known lady novelist undertook lately to drive through Oxford Street and Tottenham Court Road, stop at every milliner’s shop on the route, buy some small articles at each, and return to her house in Bayswater in the space of an hour and a half, the receipt for each article purchased to be produced, not necessarily for filing, but as a guarantee of good faith. She won her wager, but only with a few minutes to spare. To the mere male mind there does not appear anything particularly startling about such a feat, but as among the circle of the lady’s friends her performance was regarded as an epoch-making event, the writer considers it his duty to duly record it in an article dealing with extraordinary contests.
M. Randal Roberts.
