‘Lancashire Play a Pretty Good Uphill Game’

Martin Chandler | 8:25am GMT 09 February 2025

Published: 2025
Pages: 12
Author: Tebay, Martin
Publisher: Red Rose Books
Rating: 3 stars

It is a sobering thought that it is now a quarter of a century since Oxford University last played a First Class match against a county club. There was a time, when sporting talent was, on occasion,  at least as valued as academic ability by those responsible for admitting students, that the University had been capable of testing theဣ bꦅest. Those days were long gone by 1999 however, and few argued against the loss of status.

In 1888 as well the University were not a particularly strong side, and they were humbled at home in the Parks in May by Lancashire, who beat them by 221 runs. Oxford didn’t win any of their eight First Class fixtures that summer🎐 although they must, at the close of the second day, have ha🌠d high hopes of breaking their duck in the return match against Lancashire at Od Trafford.

Lancashire were not at full strength, but in Dick Barlow and Johnny Briggs they put two of the finest players in the country in the field, and with Frank Sugg and Dick Pilling had two other Test men. Oxford on the other hand had just one man who would go on to play for England, Hylton Phillipson, who played five times against Australia in Australia – he was of that now extinct species, the specialist wicketkeeper.

Over the first two days of the fixture Oxford did well enough to force their hosts to follow on, and having done so to end the second day just 28 runs on with a single wicket standing. That next day the Red Rose won by 20 runs is testament to t𒁃he contribution♔s of Alec Watson. First he helped Richard Kentfield, for whom this was one of only four appearances he ever made for the county, to add 34 more precious runs and then, with Briggs, shared the wickets as Oxford capitulated for just 42.

It is, by definition, an interesting story and told very well by an author who has gone thro🉐ugh all of the contemporary accounts of the match. There is also a remarkable digression in the introduction where the reader is told a story of how the Oxford all-rounder Arthur Croome had suffered a bizarre injury on his visit to Old Trafford the previous summer with his county, Gloucestershire.

There are 20 individually signed and numbered copies of this entertaining monograph which, as always, can be purchased directly from or, for those on the other side of the world, from in Mel▨bourne.