Page:Jubilee Book of Cricket (Second edition, 1897).djvu/344

From Wikisource
Jump to navigation Jump to search
This page has been proofread, but needs to be validated.
322
OXFORD UNIVERSITY CRICKET.

Marsham played five times, and, like Mr G. E. Yonge, achieved a series of fine performances with the ball:—

Wickets. Bowled.
In 1854 9 6
In 1855 5 3
In 1856 7 4
In 1857 8 6
In 1858 11 8

5. No sooner had "Mynn Marsham," as he was called, disappeared than the tide again turned in favour of Cambridge, who proceeded to win four matches (1859-62) in succession, and thus ended the period of the development of Oxford cricket by a balance of two victories on the side of Cambridge. This misfortune no doubt had some share in producing the reforms of 1862, to which we now come, and must pay special attention.


II. REFORMED CONSTITUTION OF THE CLUB, AND UNIVERSITY MATCHES FROM 1862 TO 1880.


The most astonishing fact in the whole history of the Oxford University Cricket Club, and at the same time the clearest indication of the haphazard way in which at first and for a long time university cricket was played, is the plan on which not only the club but also the eleven itself was managed. From the beginning in 1827 down to 1862 there were three treasurers and no one definite captain. In 1827 Charles Wordsworth was, as he says in his letter of January 18, 1887, "one of the three managers (treasurers we called them—there was no president) of the principal, indeed the only, real playing club in those days at Oxford, called the Magdalen." In 1851 W. Ridding is called steward, not captain, in the agreement for leasing the ground. In the spring of 1862 this rudimentary organisation still continued, for it is graphically described and criticised by a committee of the club, which comprised the following distinguished cricketers: A. H. Faber, K. E. Digby, E. G. Sandford, H. Reade, F. G. Inge, T. P. Garnier, R. D. Walker. The first paragraph of this report is worth quoting:—

The affairs of the Magdalen Club are at present conducted by three treasurers, each of whom has equal authority, and whose collective duty it is to carry on the whole management of the club, while at the same time no one of the three is directly or individually responsible for anything that may be done. That this system has not been