Cricket’ low scores and high drama

by A.C. De Silva

Cricket at times is a funny game and low scores at times can produce high drama. There was one such instance and India was involved in it. It was in a Test match between England and India at Headingley, Leeds on June 7th in 1952 where at that time England’s pace bowler Freeddie Trueman made a drama debut.

Trueman took India’s first four wickets without a run on the board at Headingley.

Then in the Prudential Cup tournament in 1983, India plumbed the depths and then skyrocketted to the heights when they lost their first five wickets for only 17 runs against Zimbabwe at Turnbridge Wells exactly a week before being crowned world champions at Lord’s on June 25. So, strange things do happen in cricket. The incidents are few and far between and there was one such incidence in a first-class match played 141 years ago, in which the first seven wickets in 25 minutes in this sequence – the immortal Dr. W.G. Grace to the 4th ball of the match, John Smith to the 6th, Cooto to the 15th, Alfred Shaw to the 22nd, Onslow to the 23rd, Brune to the 35th and Hearne to the 36th ball of the innings. All scored ‘ducks’.

M.C.C. 8 for 2

Beecher, at No. 7 scored 2 to record the first runs of the innings in the 10th over, but he soon lost his partner Buddulph – the eighth ‘duck’ on the score – sheet – and M.C.C. were 8 wickets down for 2 runs.

Beecher was ninth out with the individual top score of 8, which also was the team total then. In a flurry of runs, the last wicket pair of Rylett (6 not out)and Howitt (2) exactly doubled the score before M.C.C. were all out for 16 in 45 minutes of batting time after a late start on the second day, the first being washed out by heavy rain.

Their opponents were Surrey who were all out for 14 against Essex at Chelmsford on May 30.

Then five years later – that’s May 24 in 1877, M.C.C. had the satisfaction of erasing the memory of this humiliation by bowling out Oxford University for 12 – a record for the lowerst ever total in first class cricket, not challenged to this day.

Oxford University, batting one short, had seven ‘ducks’ a top score of 7 not out, two other batsmen made 4 and 1, no extras and the actual scoring strikes were 1 three, 2 twos and 3 singles.

The innings lasted nearly two hours through as many as 43.2 overs, 36 of them maidens, only two bowlers being used – Morley 7 wickets for 6 runs and Rylott 2 for 6.

M.C.C., in reply, made 124. Then Varsity lads were out for 35 in their second innings before the end of the first day itself, to give M.C.C. a thumping innings win.

Oxford’s lowest-ever 12 all out

A record that many would like to forget is Oxford’s 12 all out – the lowest in cricket history was matched 30 years later by Northamptonshire in a county match against Gloucestershire at Gloucester in 1907.

The game of cricket has to forge ahead and while the holocast of a World War raged elsewhere. The year 1942. The venue Bridgetown.

The home team Barbados first made 339, two unknown schoolboys in their teens adding 100 in the last hour.

Their names: 16 year-old Clyde Walcott and 18 year-old Frank Worrell. In the next decade, they were to become household names.

Trinidad, in reply were bowled out for 16 – still the lowest – ever in any first-class match in West Indies. Eight batsmen failed to score, the sponsors put up the highest scores – Andy Ganteume 9 and the captain Victor Stollmeyer 4. The only other batsman who scored was Garry Gomez 3 not out.

Only two bowlers were required to finish off the innings: James Edward Derek Sealy 8 for 8 in 6.7 eight-ball overs and Edward Albert Vivian Williams 2 for 8 in 6 overs. Sealy took the last 4 wickets in 7 balls.

Trinidad fared somewhat better when they followed-on, but their tally of 145 runs was not enough to prevent Barbados from winning by an innings and 178 runs.