No.129
The Trusty Servant
150 th Anniversary of the
Opening of New Field in 1870
The Wykehamist 33 reported:
We have at last won Eton Match.
After a succession of defeats, since
so far back as 1859, it has fallen to
the lot of the Eleven of 1870 to turn
the tide of victory, and they have
good reason to be proud of their
performance in the match played
on the 1st and 2nd July. ‘We shall
never win again’ had become quite
a common saying, and it was more
especially Old Wykehamists who
looked upon our cricket as utterly
feeble and incompetent, and who
comforted themselves by comparing
their own gigantic feats with the
more effete efforts of their degenerate
successors…
‘The new field has seen its first Eton
Match’ are the first words of one of
the best accounts of our match we
have seen. May we be allowed to
add that without the new field we
could not have won. There was not
sufficient room in our former limited
space to gain necessary practice,
and it seems to be the fact that our
hitting is vastly improved now that
the batsmen have not Meads wall
to shut them in on every side. It is
hard adequately to acknowledge the
kindness of our Head Master [George
Ridding] for having added such a
large space of new cricket ground,
though perhaps the Eleven have best
done so by beginning their first Eton
Match there with a victory.
The greater grind taken by the
Captain and the Eleven is the
next most obvious cause of our
improvement. No matter how hot
the weather was for the last month
before the Match, our Eleven played
together for an hour every day,
Lords XI 1870
practising themselves in fielding and
batting. And what was the result?
Our bowling and fielding were so
far improved that they won us the
Match.
Winchester (92 & 76-8) beat Eton (46 &
121) by two wickets.
Neglected Positives
This article was written by RG Gow
(Coll, 33-38), who kept wicket for
Lords in 1938. It was published in The
Wykehamist of February 1942 by his
brother Michael, then editor. RG Gow
was killed at Arnhem in September 1944.
In the days when there were ladies in
fashionable clothes, old gentlemen
in IZ spats, and lobster salad in large
10
marquees, and for two days through
all Ridding’s there was the haze and
hum of summer and the distant
clopping of bat on ball, there once
came forth to bat an Eton captain
who will long be remembered for his
great charm and talents. He played
that day with his own extraordinary
grace and detachment, and between
shots he discussed, we are told, all
manner of things with the Winchester
wicket-keeper, who was a good deal
better with his tongue than with
his hands: the exact capability of
Capability Brown, the respective
merits of raspberry and strawberry
jam, the observances of the Sabbath
in the Western Highlands, Mr
Altham’s chapter on Mynn and Pitch,
the Balfour Declaration.