TWO MEN BEAT A CRICKET ELEVEN

Nelson Evening Mail, Volume LXX, 6 October 1936, Page 7

TWO MEN BEAT A CRICKET ELEVEN

A HUNDRED-YEARS-OLD DEFEAT UNAVENGED

(By Air Mail—From A Special Correspondent)

LONDON, 12th September

They will be talking for the next hundred years down in Isle of Oxney about the innings “Chubby” Catt, the Wittersham bricklayer played in the famous match listed on the 2d score cards of “an eleven v. two players.”

A century ago (or so the story runs) a publican was so tired of hearing the local cricket eleven high-hat the other villagers that he bet them £2O he would find two men who could beat the whole team.

He did. He brought in two professionals of 1830, by name Wenlock and Mills, and they won the match by 66 runs.

The Isle of Oxney lads took a century to think things over, and this week they set out to avenge their ancestors’ defeat.

An eleven composed of men of Wittersham and Stone-cum-Ebony, Isle of Oxney, met_ W. Ashdown, the Kent opening batsmen and A. F. Wensley, the Sussex bowler.

The Wittersham eleven won the toss and batted first watched by the gentry led by Sir William Jowitt, ex-Attorney-General. The score was 152 for nine and the local lads were frisky with hope when the teams went into lunch in a marquee.

After lunch the eleven put on only one more run.

The start of the two professionals’ innings was spectacular. Boy Pridham opened the bowling from the church end with a run, a bound, two hops and lunge. That ball should have terrified anyone. But Wensley lifted if for the first of many boundaries. Gradualy a discernible gloom began to gather over the field.

Wensley and Ashdown looked too comfortable out' there at the wicket. And it was so. They made 186 without apparent effort, Wensley’s 96 included three 6’s and 13 4’s before he was caught by Cooke off A. Bush. Ashdown’s 83 not out included 14 4’s.