IT CAN never be known whether Percy Jeeves ever dreamed of playing at Lord’s while he was regularly running through opponents’ batting on behalf of Goole and Hawes. If he did, then on 16 June 1913, that dream came true. But it arrived accompanied by a lot of hard leather-chasing. Jeeves once suffered long and hard in the sun as a fielder with Goole as village batsmen made hay at Beverley. Now a similar experience fell his way against some of England’s finest at the home of cricket.
Frank Foster returned to Warwickshire’s team to face Middlesex (the captain’s recovery aided, perhaps, by the prospect of a game at Lord’s – slightly more alluring than Binley Road) and led them through a gruelling opening day in the field. Four thousand spectators sweltered in the open stands and the Bears’ fielders baked in front of them as Middlesex plundered a perfect batting wicket. Openers William Robertson and Frank Tarrant rode their luck to add 178, Robertson scoring rapidly although, according to the Post, “the dangerous fast ball that Jeeves sends down in every over bothered him a lot and he was lucky on several occasions to snick it through the slips”.
Robertson’s luck ran out on 96 when Jeeves bowled him but Plum Warner and Patsy Hendren laid into a tiring attack to add 150 in 105 minutes. Warwickshire stuck at their work – “Foster, Hands and Jeeves maintained throughout a high standard of excellence” – but it became nothing more than a damage-limitation exercise when Billy Quaife came on to bowl his spin with a seven-man leg-side field. For the last half-hour, Jeeves was one of four fielders on the Grand Stand boundary as Quaife bowled for catches. Middlesex closed the day on 431/6.
On Tuesday morning they advanced to 483, an imposing total in the face of which Warwickshire struggled against cousins J.T. and J.W. (Jack and ‘Young Jack’) Hearne. It was 191/6 when Jeeves strode through the Long Room, down the pavilion steps and out to join Foster in the middle. With those two players, only one approach would do. They counter-attacked to add 82 in 65 minutes and, after Foster was bowled by Young Jack for 70, “the mantle fell upon Jeeves who was even more daring than his captain”, reported the Post.
“He made the bowling look rather cheap and repeatedly got the ball close to the boundaries. On one occasion he failed by only a yard or so to place the ball over the rails on the uncovered stand side, no mean feat on a ground like Lord’s.” Jeeves scored 43 before lifting a catch to Rupert Anson, grandson of the Earl of Leicester.
After following on, 154 behind, Warwickshire closed the second day on 0/1. They required a huge rearguard action on the final day and needed everyone to contribute. First and foremost, they needed everyone there, but at start of play there was no sign of the captain.
Foster was no stranger to late nights or late arrivals (in a championship match at Harrogate in 1911 he took the field in the throes of a desperate hangover only after Frank Field threw him in a cold bath and gave him a rub-down). This latest tardiness was explained 97 years later in Robert Brooke’s biography of Foster, The Fields Were Sudden Bare.
“Under the weather (again) after a heavy night, he had taken Willie Hands to the Turkish Baths early in the morning,” wrote Brooke. “Then they treated themselves to a shave, haircut and shampoo, and had a game of snooker before deciding to get a cab to Lord’s.”
While that cab made its way through the London streets, 46-year-old Jack Hearne and young medium-pacer Guy Napier were making short work of Warwickshire’s batting. Without a run added overnight, Crowther Charlesworth fell to Napier. Quaife, a potential match-saver, then fell for nine and from 16/3 Warwickshire plummeted to 17/7. Among the casualties was Jeeves, lbw to Hearne for one. At 20/8, Foster was still not ready to bat but while Santall and Hands eked 13 runs from the ninth wicket, the skipper at last got round to padding up. He went in at 33/9 and slogged 27 before Tarrant bowled Hands to leave Warwickshire all out for 63 on a perfect batting wicket. They were beaten by an innings and 91 runs and deeply embarrassed.
The collapse was inexplicable. Foster’s shoddiness was no excuse for the rest and there was some speculation that, all along, one or two players had an eye on Ascot races that afternoon. The Post was scathing: “Warwickshire had no excuse except a species of fright to advance for their sorry show.” But around the corner lurked a performance which made a total of 63 appear positively imposing.
Next morning, over the county border at the elegant Angel Ground, Tonbridge, Warwickshire faced Kent for the first time in 14 years. The counties had fallen out in August 1899 during a grumpy affair at Catford Bridge in which Warwickshire’s ten-wicket defeat featured a five-hour century by Quaife and, for the home side, 24 from Gerry Weigall, later to fail to spot Jeeves’s talent in Harrogate.
The reason for ill feeling from that match is undocumented but the feud was stirred up again in 1911 when Warwickshire won the championship under a bizarre points system (proposed by Somerset) which meant that Kent finished only second despite winning most matches. Warwickshire took the title courtesy of a higher percentage of possible points gained.
Two years later, Kent were eager for revenge and bang in form. Top of the table, fresh from beating Essex the previous day and having won seven of their last eight games, they were full of confidence, as any side boasting Frank Woolley and Colin Blythe, great all-rounder and left-arm spinner respectively, had every right to be.
While Kent were at full strength, Warwickshire were badly weakened. Already without Kinneir, Hands, Field and Langley, they lost Smith with heatstroke from Lord’s. That at least meant Jeeves had another pal alongside him on the trip as Len Bates came into the team. Jeeves had become close to Len, as he was to George Austin, now the regular scorer. He was becoming closer still to George’s sister Annie.
After the imposing grandeur of Lord’s, Tonbridge offered different but also considerable charm. The Post described “the pretty Angel ground with its crescent of gaily decorated tents and throng of motor cars before a crowd of nearly 4,000 people among whom the brilliant colours worn by the large number of ladies present imparted additional brightness to an already attractive scene”. Kent’s supporters expected a big win but Warwickshire fought hard on the opening day. On a poor wicket they made a competitive 262, Charlie Baker top-scoring with 59 while Jeeves’s 30 included a straight six off fast bowler Arthur Day.
When Kent replied after tea, Jeeves was in the thick of the action. His third ball had ‘Punter’ Humphreys caught behind and he then caught Wally Hardinge off Foster in the slips. But it was with the very last ball of the day that he silenced the genteel audience. As Jeeves began his short, rhythmic run-up for the final time in the day, Kent’s members were expecting to spend the evening happily anticipating Tonbridge-born Woolley making merry in the morning. But they were in for a shock as their hero was “caught in the slips off Jeeves’s deadly fast ball”.
One of 779 occasions on which Woolley was out caught in first-class cricket, the wicket left Kent uneasily placed at 40/3 at stumps. Straight from the Lord’s debacle, Warwickshire had shown plenty of pluck.
On the second day rain permitted play for only an hour – long enough for Jeeves to come within a whisker of a most bizarre hat-trick. After a delayed start, his first ball of the day had James Seymour caught at slip, at which point lunch was taken. His previous delivery having dismissed Woolley the night before, the bowler was now on a very elongated hat-trick. Forty-five minutes later, Kent captain Ted Dillon faced the vital delivery – and defended it solidly. Kent progressed to 104/4 when the rain returned to wash out play.
With the match still not halfway through its second innings, for a decisive result to follow on Saturday, something extraordinary had to happen. It did. The sun came out and, as the Post correspondent put it, “6,000 people saw a termination to the Kent and Warwickshire fixture which must be classed among the most extraordinary ever recorded in first-class cricket”.
On a drying pitch, Kent’s last six first-innings wickets tumbled in 45 minutes as Foster took 5-13 in eight overs. All out for 132, the championship leaders trailed by 130 and were surprisingly on the back foot but the consensus in the press tent was that, against Blythe and Woolley on a treacherous track, Warwickshire would struggle to get 100, perhaps even 50, second time round. The consensus was right. They were all out for 16.
They began batting at noon and progressed smoothly to five without loss before Jack Parsons was stumped by Fred Huish off Woolley. Parsons’s five was to remain the top score as Woolley and Blythe were simply unplayable. Jeeves went in at 12/4 and fell first ball, caught Blythe bowled Woolley: 12/5. Foster and Gerald Curle departed to successive balls from Blythe: 12/7. Hands was bowled by Woolley: 12/8. A buzz of excitement, the sort that only rises when something historic is unfolding, filled the Angel ground. Was Northamptonshire’s record low total of 12 all out to be equalled?
Santall averted that prospect by edging a single but the end soon came. Warwickshire posted their smallest ever total and Woolley (5-1-8-5) and Blythe (5.2-1-8-5), having bowled the Bears out in 45 minutes, were cheered from the field.
Sixteen all out, the innings lasting just 62 balls, was risible but 147 appeared a difficult target on a pitch which had played all sorts of tricks on the batsmen. Jeeves soon took a stunning reflex catch at short leg off Foster to oust James Seymour and, at lunch, Kent were 16/2. The game was right in the balance.
During the interval, however, the wicket dried out and, with no specialist spinner to torment them, Kent galloped home. Woolley and Hardinge thrashed 57 in 25 minutes and the former advanced to a magnificent unbeaten 76. Only Jeeves came close to dismissing the great man. On 63, Woolley was “almost bowled by Jeeves and, off the next ball, Curle made a splendid attempt for a one-handed catch”, but he survived to see his team to a remarkable win. Victory was sealed at 3.40pm with successive boundaries off Hands, at which point, reported the Post, “the crowd surged round the pavilion at close of play and would not be satisfied until their hero had bowed his acknowledgement”.
While Woolley took the acclaim, Warwickshire’s players packed quietly and quickly in the tiny away dressing rooms. A long train journey lay ahead and, all out for 62 and 16 in successive second innings, they had much to ponder as they travelled up to Sheffield to face mighty Yorkshire.