100 Years Ago: 3 September 1924

Cricket north and south

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Day 1

Scarborough: Yorkshire v M.C.C.

Macaulay and Sutcliffe Star

M.C.C. 101 (A S Kennedy 16, W E Astill 37; R Kilner 3/19, G G Macaulay 6/30). YORKSHIRE 191/3 (P Holmes 37, H Sutcliffe 108, E Oldroyd 39, R Kilner 1*, W Rhodes 0*).

The day was very one-sided, with Yorkshire showing the superb form of champions and M.C.C., strong on paper, putting up an indifferent show.  It began well enough for them, with Alec Kennedy and Ewart Astill putting on 53 together for the first wicket.  Yorkshire restored Abe Waddington to his old place of new-ball bowler alongside Emmott Robinson, but he was innocuous, and when their two top bowlers of the season, George Macaulay and Roy Kilner, went on at 45 the whole game changed almost immediately.  Macaulay soon bowled out both batsmen, while Kilner trapped Jack Hearne lbw without scoring.  Not a single batsman after the openers reached double figures; in fact the third-highest scorer was Henry ‘Shrimp’ Leveson Gower himself at No 11, with 6 not out.  Johnny Douglas became even more unpopular with the crowd than usual when he made a bad call that ran out Percy Chapman, but the two great bowlers shared the other wickets.  Macaulay’s six were all bowled out; the pitch was easy-paced, but he found a considerable amount of life from it to go with his superb variations of pace and movement.  The innings closed soon after lunch.

When Yorkshire batted the M.C.C. bowling was indifferent, with too much short stuff sent down; George Louden was more accurate than the others, but lacked his usual pace.  Percy Holmes and Herbert Sutcliffe almost took the score past the M.C.C. total by themselves, until Holmes was out at 93 after about 80 minutes.  Then came another big partnership between Sutcliffe and Edgar Oldroyd.  Both were out to successive deliveries just before the close, Sutcliffe scoring a fine century, batting for about 2½ hours and reaching 2000 runs for the season, but Yorkshire still finished in a very strong position.  There was a crowd of about 8000.

Hastings Festival: South v South Africans

Consistent Batting by South

SOUTH 312/9 (J B Hobbs 56, A Sandham 44, E H Bowley 44, D J Knight 30, F S G Calthorpe 69, M W Tate 25*; S J Pegler 3/69, A W Nourse 3/55, D J Meintjes 2/37). SOUTH AFRICANS to bat.

The Hastings Week is now officially known as the Royal Air Force Club’s Week.  The South are playing a strong eleven, including six members of the M.C.C. team to tour Australia and some local favourites, including Robert Relf.  Arthur Gilligan is the captain.  The pitch was slow and easy, but Jack Hobbs was not at his best and took over two hours to score 56, though the South African bowling was very good.  Andy Sandham actually outscored him for once in their opening partnership of 84, during which Sandham reached his 2000 runs for the season, a remarkable achievement considering he was unable to play before June owing to illness.  When Hobbs was out four wickets were down for 117, including Frank Woolley for 4, but the middle order came through strongly, with Freddie Calthorpe playing the most entertaining innings of the day for 69, driving fluently.

John Ward is an ACS member and a long-serving Zimbabwean cricket statistician. If you would like to contribute to this newsletter, please either respond to the email in which you received it, or leave a comment below.