Page:Cricket (Hutchinson, 1903).djvu/262

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176
CRICKET

to flourish exceedingly, but has never achieved champion honours, being, as a rule, Hke most of the southern counties, deficient in bowling, though Willsher, whose career terminated in the early 'seventies, was a left-handed bowler who was second to none. He was also the hero of the first great no-balling incident. No one has worked harder for Kent cricket, and cricket in general, than Lord Harris, to whose vigour, and to whose enthusiastic efforts to enforce the proper spirit in which the game should be played, the county owes a deep debt of gratitude. The headquarters of the county club, which was established in 1842, the year of the first Canterbury "Week," are at Canterbury, but the executive rightly believes in the distribution of matches throughout the county, and we find that county games have been played, and are still played, not merely at Canterbury, but at Gravesend, Catford Bridge, Beckenham, Tonbridge—where there is also a "week,"—Maidstone, Tunbridge Wells, and Blackheath—truly a goodly list for a county that is not abnormally large. The Mote ground at Maidstone probably possesses a greater slope than any other ground on which great games are played. Among the more famous Kent cricketers we may quote the names of W. Yardley, W. H. Patterson, J. R. Mason, F. Marchant, W. Rashleigh, E. F. S. Tylecote, Stanley Christopherson, the brothers Penn, W. M. Bradley, C. J. Burnup, and Hearnes innumerable. Than J. R, Mason, the late captain, there are few finer all-round men.

Lancashire dates back to 1864 as a county club.