CRICKET AT HOME.

Daily Telegraph (Napier), Issue 3160, 15 August 1881, Page 4

CRICKET AT HOME.

The London correspondent of a contemporary says:—"The cricket season has opened with unusual brilliancy. I never remember such a May of good cricketing weather before : the ground in perfect order for the bat, the air so warm that an easy place in the field is by no means unwelcome. There have already been many first-class matches. Tho M <\C. have put some very strong trams into the field, and given a good account, of bohli Universities. .As a rule the Northern counties have been playing very strong, and the Southern very weak. Yorkshire beat Middlesex in one innings, Emmett scoring 89. Notts beat Sussex in one innings by 69 runs. Lancashire defeated I 'erbyshire yet more signiilly by an innings and 135 runs, Mr Hornby, who scored 188, winning the match off hia own bat, with 23 runs to spare ! Mr W. Grace made even a larger figure than this at Bristol, where he put together 203 at a wonderful rate—but that was in a second-class match between two local teams. Mr J. M. Day, on the same side, scored above 100, and then retired. Of the two Universities, Cambridge is decidedly the favorite ; the three Messrs Stud—profanely termed the ' set of studs'— being a formidable division of their force. Their match with the Gentlemen of England was one of the best of the season, and was drawn clearly in their favor, the Studds contributing 280 in the first innings. There is, however, a new recruit on the Oxford side —Mr Leslie, late of the Hugby Eleven, who will give them some trouble if he gets his hand well in. In their match wiih the M .C.C., the Oxonians owed their escape from defeat in a single innings to his grand batting. He scored 111 in his second innings. Altogether, people are looking for an exceptional summer and a splendid cricket year, though I wish we had a strong Australian team to put us through our facings." A cable message to one of the Melbourne papers which we publish elsewhere, states that Rowe, a player in the Cambridge University vacation match, made the score of 101, not out. In the Sydney Morning Herald the message reads:—"Rowe made the extraordinary _ score of 415, not out." In these days of big scoring, 101 would be scarcely worth telegraphing, and the Sydney message is the more likely to be correct.