Trivia 2020

(Just an aside. Some ferocious-looking characters there, esp. in the top side.)

Just because you mentioned chucking, I'm guessing Arthur Mold. And just like the current Indian team, they all had the same ****** facial hair then apart from WG.... And am struggling to identify

Correct on Mold. (Can you identify which he is? Hint: think physique, stature.)

Guessing on the basis of your hint- second from left, back row top photograph.

Also see Shrewsbury sitting bottom left there. Guessing this a Gentleman's vs Players match. Which would mean no captains in the top photo and plenty in the bottom.

Lot of guesswork so could be wildly inaccurate... next to Grace on the left looks like Gregor MacGregor. Got his pads on, so assuming he's keeping, and that weird moustache. Far right, middle row (second photo) could be AC Maclaren/Stanley Jackson.

Seeing Fry there and not Ranji, it should be somewhere between 1893 to 1896.

If indeed Jackson is there, and there has to be (just don't know which one)... This is an interesting story about him during his political times.

https://www.cricketcountry.com/articles/bina-das-opens-fire-on-stanley-jackson-at-calcutta-university-286516

Got a book with old cricket pictures out at the mo and I swear any of these players could be two or three different people. Half of them look like Lord Hawke.

If that's from the era you describe and it's not GvP then everyone in them could be potential captain's. If it wasn't for the war you would have gone through more captain's than we did players.

Bradman wrote:Got a book with old cricket pictures out at the mo and I swear any of these players could be two or three different people.  Half of them look like Lord Hawke.

Yeah, case in point. That's not the same person. No chance.

The one on the left looks like the picture of Hawke I'm using for comparison. I mean the same fekking picture.

FGS stop moaning, you two!

Trike - yes, that mildewed character is indeed the Arthur in question. https://www.espncricinfo.com/england/content/player/17059.html I wouldn't like to run into him - no-balling or not. "Brick shithouse - reinforced version" comes to mind. They weren't all wiry and undernourished/lean as a whippet in those days ...

Cracking knowledge and deductions on the type of match, and the date bracket. It is indeed a "Gents vs Players" match ... in the years you mention. I won't yet give exact details of year and location, until we've got the question more exactly answered (regarding the bottom team - you were right on the top team, for reasons that you know).

Also some good player IDs. WG (most obviously - and most obviously skipper); the Scot who was his own son and his own father (or at least his name suggests as much), with the saturnine mien and dense schnauzer, well deduced from those big pads (the old style with the sticks showing through, an interesting sight); and the unmistakable Carlos [or Carlo] Fry (as Ranji called him) bottom right.

And far right in the middle row certainly is F.S., one of my cricketing idols. Not only because of these two heroic feats:

Wiki wrote:"Jackson played for Cambridge University, Yorkshire and England. He spotted the talent of Ranjitsinhji when the latter, owing to his unorthodox batting and his race, was struggling to find a place for himself in the university side, and as captain was responsible for Ranji's inclusion in the Cambridge First XI and the awarding of his Blue. According to Alan Gibson this was "a much more controversial thing to do than would seem possible to us now". He was named a Wisden Cricketer of the Year in 1894.

He captained England in five Test matches in 1905, winning two and drawing three to retain The Ashes. Captaining England for the first time, he won all five tosses and topped the batting and bowling averages for both sides, with 492 runs at 70.28 and 13 wickets at 15.46."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stanley_Jackson

Isn't that shot of him a great study? To me (I'm biased), it shows the human qualities as well as a champion's calm.

Eyyup, that's definitely not frosty Archie!! - (btw: one of those many whose biogs has gone missing on cricinfo. Hence my point on the other thread.) Re: those two pics of A C Maclaren: well, one is of the young Harrow student - I'd guess age 16, 17? - the other of the veteran - maybe 28, 30? Quite a few of us change quite a bit in that period. Add a (ubiquitous) late-Victorian moustache and 10+ years, look closely enough, and you'll still notice the selfsame basic face shape - with the far-apart eyes - & the wide shoulders. Both are of him, all right.

I do agree, there is a generic, moustachioed, slightly thin-faced, strained, bored-by-sitting-waiting-for-the-photograph look to a fair number of them - also not helped by the poor repro quality of the Players team photo (the Players look far more alike than the Gents, for some reason, whether technical or just they are more of a piece, the hardworking pros?) ... But, get beyond the 'tache, use a bit of imagination (and googling), and the differences become more apparent, even among most of the similar-looking ones. And then, nobody could accuse e.g. Tom Richardson and Bobby Abel of being lookalikes ...

Hawke had a particularly "aristocratic" look to him, more disdainfully haughty than any of the above (even Grace), aristocratic I mean in the most uncomplimentary sense. He was a martinet, and showed it. He's not in either team photo.

Trike: it's not Shrewsbury bottom left of the Gents, but you are indeed (of course) close. Have another go!


So - in sum - how many England captains?

And who's the other noted "chucker"?

Nice stuff Peter. And good work, t & Q.

Old pics are not my forte.

Well, set up another triv then!

The book I'm reading at the moment noted that during the early years of the last century (that's as far as I've got) suggested at one stage Jackson was preferred over McClaren because of his luck with the toss. Not even enough to sway Hawke who didn't need to draw to long a how to prevent McClaren being captain. That he didn't succeed that often is probably testament to the widely held belief that the good Lord only got involved in English selection to prevent a pro ever captaining and to make sure the national side never messed with Yorkshire. Outside of county matches the only other ones he cared about were Eton Harrow and the Gents game.

I'm not sure I get your drift there, Bradders. I've substituted "bow" for "how" in the middle, but that doesn't solve my problem.

On the cluster of areas you raise, I'd say:

> the "Gentlemen" were amateurs (at cricket), and only very few of them (e.g. WG, like Bradman a great collector of moneys other than by direct pay) anything like shamateurs. "Jacker" for one had other fish to fry, and was already involved (I think) in politics. These "gentlemen" weren't always available for cricket, some of them indeed rarely available for cricket. Jackson's intermittent and curtailed involvement with England - and no tours - was largely due to that.

> I'm not sure who you are saying "didn't succeed that often". If Jackson, see above. If Hawke, you mean in ... preventing Maclaren being captain?? Or as a captain himself? As an administrator?

> Re: Maclaren, see a) previous notes on "Gentlemen"; b) Maclaren was by all accounts a rather cold fish, and a rebarbative captain, neither particularly popular nor particularly respected as a captain, as far as I've read. That he could occasionally turn his hand to a large, even a huge innings among more common failures for England with the bat, is another matter from the said captaincy issues.

> Lord Hawke ... see previous post above.

> Preventing professionals from becoming captain of England ... well, that hits perhaps the hidden main point of this quiz question, which Trike got quickly.

It debilitated England for many decades, in plain cricketing terms, even aside from general social/societal aspects, part of a forelock-tugging deference to power for its own sake, masochistic support for the powers that be (and what do you know? - that's back, in disguise, under Alexander Boris de Pfeffel Johnson, for all his gross "anti-Establishment" hypocrisy!). And led to dodges such as Hammond, post-War, i.e. way too late in his career, "going amateur" so as to be allowed to captain his country. By that time he was both over the hill and thoroughly disillusioned, a grumpy, uninspiring, even off-putting leader himself.

Ps: If the book you're reading on such subjects is not this: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/18079436-a-social-history-of-english-cricket or else this: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/2163659.The_Willow_Wand (there is some overlap), I'd strongly recommend either, or both, next up!

Yeah sorry rather shambolic post. Yes I meant Hawkes disdain for McClaren which might have had something to do with shamaeturism as he was always bumming money off his pros.

A number of the away tours could have benefitted from some Yorkshire talent most of whom were desperate for a bit of sun, but the tit for tat between McClaren and Hawke to the point of one changing selections on the morning of the first day and the other one not playing said changed selection at the last minute may even me feel sorry for English cricket.

Anyway the books one I've had for years but hadn't read for a long time and I'm hoping to find the first of your recommendations at the bottom of another storage box some where.

PeterCS wrote:Eyyup, that's definitely not frosty Archie!! - (btw: one of those many whose biogs has gone missing on cricinfo. Hence my point on the other thread.) Re: those two pics of A C Maclaren: well, one is of the young Harrow student - I'd guess age 16, 17....

Ah cheers for that. Didn't know the latter part.

Trike: it's not Shrewsbury bottom left of the Gents, but you are indeed (of course) close. Have another go!

Sorry, I wasn't clear enough. Meant bottom left in the players. Again, mainly because of his white moustache.

Bottom left gents is possibly Stoddart. So another captain there. Got five captains so far, but there will be at least a couple more.

It's 1895 at Lord's. I think there was one played at somewhere other than the oval.

And after bragging about my access to the archives they don't have the game. So that's all I got from.

Thanks.

Did a bit of cheating and checked Getty images. They have the squad there....
Back row (left-right): G.J.Mordaunt, Sir T.C.O'Brien, J.R.Mason, N.F.Druce. Middle row: E.Smith, Gregor MacGregor, Dr W.G.Grace, J.A.Dixon, F.S.Jackson. Seated on ground: A.E.Stoddart and C.B.Fry

Haven't even heard of Smith, Dixon, Mason and Druce.

But going by that - 6 England captains? Tim O'Brien, MacGregor, Grace, Jackson, Stoddart and Fry.

Also, realised that I was way off with Shrewsbury... he did captain England of course. Completely forgot that.

Actually found a pic of the 1895 GvP at the oval. A vastly different Gents side and one from 1899 where Grace looks about twenty years older than in '95.

How did you get the names, I could only get the pic and a caption. Thought I was on Getty by could have just assumed. There's a few sites with some quality stuff. Might use downtime adding to the eclectic collection.

link

Just typed in the names I knew in getty's search engine.

Good work, both. Trike in particular demonstrating good "cheating" skills (actually, in the digital age, good *puzzle-solving* skills - what are Search Engines for?).

Hence, the solution-delaying "two-phase" procedure I originally mentioned was: a) using a reverse-image-search machine (e.g. the best three I know - Google Images, tineye, yandex (beware: Russian!) - all bring up different results); b) finding a list of England cricket captains. Google and wiki do that as a good combo.

So, I think it's time to wrap this one up.

a) FIVE, I'm fairly certain, Trike. I don't think Grreggerr M'Grreggerr M'Grreggerr (etc.) ever captained the MCC-dominated lot south of the border. (Or even Scotland.) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gregor_MacGregor_(sportsman) See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_England_cricket_captains
- that's "Phase 2", as mentioned. Grace (of course); the tragic "Stod" - yes, that's him; the "Victorian Eoin Morgan", Irishman Tim O'Brien; "Jacker"; and you know who (who, btw, was the other "chucker" - or infamously called as such, to Fry's incandescent and probably genuine resentment. (Few "chuckers" realise that they do so, as Ian Peebles noted in his great book on the subject, referenced a couple of years ago.)



So, FIVE of the lower team. None of the upper team, for reasons already discussed!

THIS COULD HAVE BEEN ANOTHER LONG POST - sorry guys, but there's a lot of info packed into this! - SO I'LL END THIS ONE HERE, and wrap up the rest of the material in the next post.

Yes, Gentlemen vs Players, Lord's 8-10 July, 1895.

Curiously (even back in the day, it was usually a yearly match), they had a second match straight afterwards, Oval, 11-13 July - with some of the personnel radically different. I'll actually put up those two teams in the next post, with a single "sequel" question!

The reason for the "vastly different" sides that you noted, Bradders, is probably threefold;
a) back-to-back G v P matches, so give 'em a rest, and give others a shot;
b) my point above about variable availability of amateurs;
c) County Championship was running parallel, hence some required/demanded by their counties.

As for your "How did you get the names, I could only get the pic and a caption." ... A lot has to do with resourcefulness & imagination with search term inputs (and which searches to use where), plus detective skills and quite a lot of patient, dogged determination! Trike is very shrewd and inventive at all of these.

Players team:




Wisden report on the match (don't ask how I found this - sorry it's not clearer) - btw: Players won by 32 runs:

I had the scorecard briefly before I was firewalled and refused to buy into it, though if you can keep coming up with these doozies I may as well invest.

Second that, stupendous question and find.