An early cricket tour of North America
One of the rarest of all cricket books, The Log of the Old Un from Liverpool to San Francisco 1886, was "Printed for Private Circulation" at Exeter in that same year
AR Littlewood
05-Jan-2008
One of the rarest of all cricket books, The Log of the Old Un from Liverpool to San Francisco 1886, was "Printed for Private Circulation" at Exeter in that same year. It was reprinted in facsimile, with the addition of a preface by P. Wynne-Thomas, in 1994 in the valuable series of reprints by J. W. McKenzie of interesting but largely unobtainable cricket monographs. Due,
however, to publishing delays copies have only recently become available.
Under the pseudonym of the "Old Un" lurks William Clulow Sim,
who in retirement from the Indian Civil Service was the Honorary
Secretary and chief benefactor of the Devonshire County Cricket
Club. In 1886 he combined a visit to his son in California with one
to Eastern North America in the capacity of scorer to the English
Cricketing Eleven's tour that was arranged by his friend E.J. Sanders,
a leading member of the Devonshire Club. Sanders chose County and
University players, of whom the best known are K.J. Key and H.W.
Bainbridge (later captains of Surrey and Warwickshire respectively).
His captain was W.E. Roller of Surrey, the batting hero of Sanders'
similar tour of the previous year. Nine games in all were played,
two in Canada and seven in the U.S.A., of which the two in
Philadelphia have been assigned first-class status. The team was
victorious in all its matches except for a draw in Boston against a
New England XV. The match in Toronto was won by eight wickets
against an Ontario Cricket XI for which F. Harley scored 40 out of
only 72 in the first innings and A.C. Allan and R.B. Ferrie (who also
took three wickets) 45 and 38 respectively out of 111 in the second.
At Montreal the England XII (including Sanders himself) easily beat
XVI of Montreal C.C. by an innings and 117 runs after scoring 257.
Sim gives scores for all the matches, but omits bowling
analyses and, for four matches, details of the innings of the
opposition. The 20 remaining pages of his "plain, unvarnished 'Iog'",
as with so many descriptions of nineteenth-century tours to North
America, do not decribe the actual cricket but revel in travel
arrangements and the scenery. Sim actually left the tour after the
second match (at Toronto) and expatiates on his journey to
California and that state's prospects for future greatness.
Inevitably he discusses the American love for baseball: "Cricket", he
claims, "is more likely to take root and prosper in Canadian than in
American soil. It is not fast enough for the go-ahead Yankee." He
particularly notes the dangers to a baseball umpire: "If one meets a
man in the street with his arm in a sling, one broken leg, and an eye
out, it may safely be conjectured that this 'wreck of humanity' had
been 'adjudicating' at some recent big base ball match, and had to
run the gauntlet of some two or three thousand infuriated lookerson. .",
Wynne- Thomas writes a sober account (in contrast to Sim's
pun-Iaden prose) of the history of earlier cricketing tours, briefly
describes the one of 1886 (making the interesting point that many of
the U.S. teams, but neither of the Canadian, were strengthened by
visiting English professionals) and gives brief biographies of the
members of the party, with a strange emphasis upon their deaths
(but omits to say that Sir Kingsmill Key died of an insect bite and
completely omits Hugh Rotherham, the Warwickshire all-rounder and
well-known rugby football threequarter for Coventry who died in
1939). Some explanatory notes would have been useful. Many
readers may not realize that the "Tristie" to whom Sim refers is the
Somerset wicket-keeper F .T. Welman; and who is Handford (no
initials given) who played for the English team at Boston ? Could
this be the U.S. player Saunders Handford, brother of the
Nottinghamshire professional Alick Handford, who was drafted into
the team because of the injury or indisposition of Roller and
Rotherham ?
Wynne- Thomas quotes the notoriously misguided prophecy
from the New York Commercial Advertiser that "It is believed by
some Americans that cricket will very soon supersede the game of
baseball, especially as a gentleman's game. It is conducted in a
quiet manner and without the usual howling that marks the game of
baseball." But he concludes with the provocative observation that if
cricket had forged ahead in popularity in the U.S.A. Sanders' two
matches in Philadelphia may have been regarded to-day as Test
Matches, since they were of a higher standard than those in 1888/89
between Major Warton's English team, captained by "Round-the-
Corner" Smith, and the South Africans that were subsequently
granted that status.
William Clulow Sim, The Log of the "Old Un" from Liverpool to San
Francisco 1886 (with an introduction by Peter Wynne- Thomas, 16 +
30 pages) is available from J.W. McKenzie, 12 Stoneleigh Park Road,
Ewell, Epsom, Surrey, KT19 OQT, England at £15.