shire the possession of Mr. A. G. Steel. He was 15 years of age when he played his first match at Lord's on the 29th and 30th July for Marlborough College v. Rugby School, and scored 41 not out first innings.
The Players made rather a better fight against the Gentlemen that year, winning one match out of the three played, and losing the other two by 48 and 61 runs. Only one individual innings of a hundred runs was scored in the six innings played by both sides, and that fell to my credit.
One of the closest and most exciting matches of that year was the North v. South, played at Prince's on the 4th and 5th June for the benefit of the Cricketers' Fund. The South in its second innings had 27 runs to make to win, with five wickets standing, and yet lost by 3 runs.
I was again successful in a benefit match, scoring 167 for Gloucestershire v. Yorkshire at Sheffield on behalf of Luke Greenwood.
University cricket was now a different thing from what it had been ten or twenty years before; and very rarely were the Gentlemen without one or two University players in their eleven when they met the Players. A match entitled "Gentlemen of England who had not been educated at the Universities v. Gentlemen of the Universities, Past and Present" was played at the Oval on the 15th and 16th June. A University education has always been considered a distinct aid to success, mentally and physically; but this match did not show that University men were better cricketers than non-University men, for their representative eleven got severely beaten by an innings and 76 runs. But then their opponents had among them such players as A. N. Hornby, I. D. Walker, V. E. Walker, A. Appleby, G. F. Grace, and myself.
What was described as an "American Invasion" took place early in the month of August. Eighteen
