Page:Jubilee Book of Cricket (Second edition, 1897).djvu/341

Rh Wordsworth, Bishop of St Andrews, as he afterwards became. He clean bowled for only 25 runs seven Cambridge wickets with his fast left-handed under-hand, twisting from the off. Herbert Jenner, the famous wicket-keeper, alone withstood him, scoring 47, or more than half the runs on the Cambridge side. The Bishop has contributed two accounts of the first university match—one, dated January 18, 1887, in 'Inter-University Records between Oxford and Cambridge, 1827-87' (London, Wright & Co., 1887); the other, dated May 16, 1888, in 'The Badminton Library Cricket.' From these accounts it appears that he was instrumental in getting up the match, and had peculiar facilities for doing so, because his father was Master of Trinity College, Cambridge, while he himself was at Christ Church, Oxford. One feels, in reading what he says, how difficult it was before railways to organise any concerted action between the universities.

After this first drawn match Oxford won the next three, in 1829, 1836, and 1838. In the match of 1829, which was played at Oxford, Oxford won by 115 runs. H. E. Knatchbull, the Kent cricketer, made 7 and 36, the highest score on either side. As in 1827 he had made 43, his average was 28·2. He was the first on the Oxford side to play in the Gentlemen v. Players. In the interval between 1829 and 1836 Oxford began to play the M.C.C., and the first match, which took place on the Magdalen ground, Oxford, in May 1832, under the title "Marylebone, with Lillywhite, Broadbridge, and Wenman, v. Oxford Undergraduates," ended in a victory for Marylebone by 14 runs. In the match of 1836 against Cambridge at Lord's, Oxford won by 121 runs. The Rev. G. Rawlinson, now Canon of Canterbury, and celebrated for his work on Herodotus and many other books, made 12 and 2 for Oxford. The most striking feature was the number of extras—87 given by Cambridge in the Oxford score of 300, and 62 by Oxford in the Cambridge score of 179 runs! In the match of 1838 Oxford scored her third victory by 98 runs.

2. From 1839 onwards the match has been annually played. Cambridge then scored no less than six victories in succession, only interrupted by the drawn match of 1844. The most remarkable of these matches was that of 1841, when each side scored 103 in the first innings, and Cambridge, having scored 120 in the second, got Oxford out for 112. Close as this finish was, it might have been still closer had not Lord Ward, on the Oxford side, been absent at the crisis.