Page:Cricket, by WG Grace.djvu/50

 1854, was my first experience of first-class play. I was nearly six years old, and had paid more than one visit in the spring of that year to the field at the back of the "Full Moon" Hotel, Bristol, while it was being relaid for this special match, and the names of Clarke, Parr, Caffyn, Julius Caesar, Anderson, and Willsher, were discussed constantly at home. My father, uncle Pocock, and brother Henry, were playing, and with boyish eagerness and delight I sat in the pony-carriage by the side of my mother and watched the play. Bickley and Clarke were in great bowling form, particularly the former. He bowled:

Clarke captured eleven wickets first innings, seven second. And how Parr and Caffyn hit our bowling all over the field! Clarke's figure stands out in my memory yet.

The year after they came again to the same field, and met the same club, but Clarke was not in the Eleven. He wrote to my father some time before the match, saying that, owing to ill-health and failing sight, he would be unable to play. He was present as an onlooker during the three days, and was so delighted with E. M.'s performance as longstop that he presented him with a bat. E. M. had owned many a bat before; but this one had a spliced handle with a strip of whalebone down the centre of it, and was very much prized. My father, uncle, brothers Henry, Alfred, and E. M., all played in this match, and the twenty-two got dreadfully beaten. Bickley was again the most successful bowler, and at one part of the match was unplayable. His analysis was: