Aug.
On the theory that what has been done once can be done is hardly an outrage on modesty to suggest that one cricketer at Toast might become a Jessop. If such there be he should know the analysis which Wisden gives of the secret of Jessop's success When he fails to come off sometimes advised to. be more careful, but the eri always strikes one as being beside the mark.
If he modified hhis method and played like other people, is value would be gone ly be difficult to get the professional cricketer to adopt this role, sound for ial reasons, because a professional cannot afford to ignore the value of piling up runs, But, remembering always that Jessop was all through his career a cover-point of outstand~ ing merit and, for many sea sons, his bowling was always dangerous, it should be possible for a keen amateur to try and fill the Dill.
One of the fastest scoring feats ever performed was that of Alleason, the Nottingham professional, who in 1911 made 189 runs out of 227 in ninety minutes.
But in iNlustration of the correctness of the theory already put forward, Alletson did not put on record any performance comparable to this in the course of his subsequent career.
One of Mr. Jessop's other feats may be mentioned; his innings at Hastings for the Gentlemen of the South, when he made 191 runs out of 1234 in ninety minutes, his cen~ tury being actually segred in forty-two minutes, The value of a nings of this kind to a team is two-fold.
First of all, the prospect of it is terrify the opponents and the rea on gives them a task which it will take all their abu y to accomplish, That it make for brighter cricket cannot be denied, 'That it attracts, support to the game equally true. Therefore it is all the more puzzling that at a. time when bowlers are suffering from a slight inferiority complex batsman should arise to assn the mantle of "The Croucher.' again it seems astonishing that. no modern cricketer has yet come upon the scene to rival the performances of G. L, Jessop. This is the more surprising b The present generation vaguely knows that Mr. Jessop was a mighty. hitter.
They may have Heard that his plckname. was "The allusion to his style at the "Croucher," graphic
cance of his aps appreciate the exact signi-cet. St) he oe not per presence in the Gloucesteshire team. Turn to Wisden for 1898, The tribute given to the young Cambridge cricketer, there might be studied with advantage, Gloucester-hire was sti eaptaice by the Grand Old Man, and. dutifully len had to salute a forty-me-year-old cricketer who, In the past reason, had obtained 1o88 rane, aa renee of the reader is told, the "most But next to the captain, Prominent and attractive fSieure the. Gloucestershire was unquestionably Mr. G. L.[l Jessop," and Mr. G. L.. Jessop duly appears in that number of Wisden as one of the five cricket] cers of the year. noted an Dalat errs The biographer Deen harder hitters than Mr. Jessop—were there not C. I. Thornton and Sir Timothy O'Brien Middiesex?—but tone of them attained to||f Jessop's faculty for changing the fortunes of a game within the apace of twenty minutes or half an hour. Jessop's reputation and his performances were such that so long as he sat in the pavilion with his pads on the fielding side could never be sure of the task it would be set to perform. When Jessop was playing, either at Lords or at the 'Oval, surreptitious messages used' to come from the City to send word when he was due to go in, and offices would be emptied and cabs make their way feverishly to. St. John's, Wood or Kennington in the hope of finding the "Croucher" in form. In 1897 Mr. Jessop played for Cambridge. against Oxford and in his second innings scored 42 runs out of 5 in less than twenty minutes,. Against the There ove No Other Artists Them Like
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.