Sir Dandy Gladstone, Lord Peterbury Nomenclature, Casper Princely-Squinting, all names that have been etched in stone in the pantheon of cricketing gods, yet none of them played in that immortal Wessex C.C.C of 1897 whose sporting feats have echoed through the ages like campanologists in Cheddar Gorge. Considered the first truly great cricket team, they even outshone the achievements of the Doctor himself, humbling ‘The Beard’ in a crushing innings and forty-five runs when they faced Gloucestershire at the Bristol County Ground. Yet ask even the hardiest of TMS fans about the Wessex Immortals and they’d stare at you blankly whilst proffering you a freshly baked lemon drizzle cake.
So, in order to illuminate the citrus dessert foisting cricket fans, who were the eleven stout men and true who made up this record-breaking unit? What do we know of the figures who were to stand as giants in the great game?
Thanks to extensive research, trawling the county records of Wessex at the Alfred the Great Library in its county town, and Wisden’s ‘Big Bumper Book of Fun Facts for Children’, I’ve been able to root out salient information on all of the team.
1 – Fitzsnuggly, Lord C.
Notorious in the West End for breaking wind every time someone came on stage in a sombrero, Lord Counterpane Fitzsnuggly ruined the original production of Oscar Wilde’s ‘Sancho Panza’s Fan’ to such an extent that Wilde had to do a complete rewrite. ‘The Importance of Being Earnest’ maintained patatas bravas right up until press previews, when cucumber sandwiches were used in their stead. Lord Counterpane Fitzsnuggly was banned from the Adelphi and instead took up the sport of cricket to fill his copious amounts of spare time being a feckless young aristocrat. The choice of cricket was in response to encouragement from his friend Sir Digby Mantelpiece who’d enjoyed facing the googlies of a young whala having been exposed to them to him in Lahore. It turned out he was a natural batsman, and having been spotted by Wessex’s coach, Lord Tintagel Espadrille, clubbing children through the covers on Wimbledon Common, he was fast-tracked through the County’s structure and found himself opening for Wessex in the 1897 season.
1897 Batting Av. 45.02
2 – Morton, C.
Crinkly Morton, in 1894, was opening the batting for his local village team. Unfortunately, that local village was a model one and his habit of coming down the wicket to pace led to the accidental crushing of countless teammates and the miniature bandstand. Encouraged by his eccentric mother, the celebrated Music Hall star, Dame Maggie ‘whoops-where’s-me-garter’ Morton, to broaden his horizons and pick on someone his own size, he went for a trial at Wessex, and by the time the 1897 season had started, he’d already clocked up over a thousand first class runs and some mediocre ones too. Morton never really escaped his Music Hall background and quite famously tensions were high at points within the team due to Morton’s habit of singing ‘Knees Up Mother Brown’ every time he ran a quick single to leg. Things came to a head when team doctor, Clarence ‘Waxy’ Candlemaker snapped and clubbed him round the head with an egg and cress sandwich until he passed out, leading to him missing the victory against Lancashire.
1897 Batting Av. 48.21
3 – Bandersnatch, Sir L.
Sir Leslie Bandersnatch was born in Cheamley-on-the-Flan to General Hilary Bandersnatch and Lady Mandible Bandersnatch in 1864. Though this being the Victorian Age, his conception and birth were done through a correspondence course, and Sir Leslie wasn’t formally introduced to his parents until his tenth birthday. Sir Leslie was educated at Eton and received the school award for Greek Wood, which he then studied at Cambridge. An avid adventurer, he claimed to have discovered Belgium, though this was later disputed by the historian, GM Young, and the Belgians. He averaged a remarkable 120 during the 1897 season, mainly achieved by an innings of 423 he got at Glamorgan by refusing to acknowledge any bowlers of a lower social class than himself.
1897 Batting Av. 120.72
4 – Twang-Nicely, Sir L.
Sir Leonard Twang-Nicely had fought in the First Boer War, losing a leg in Bronkhorstspruit before finding it again at Laing’s Nek. Upon his return from South Africa in 1881, Sir Leonard started work as a goosewhisperer until he was informed by a kindly aunt that there was no such thing as a goosewhisperer and that no-one in their right mind would pay money for someone to whisper to their geese. Several unsuccessful careers then occurred, such as stage hypnotist, street nurse, and Bishop of Leeds, though all through them he was playing cricket at various different levels until he was signed by Espadrille for Wessex in 1889. Although having a lower batting average than his fellow Wessex batsmen that season, Sir Leonard occupied the crease for hours with remarkable concentration, attained by repeating the hypnotic mantra of ‘you’ve got lovely soft feathers’ over and over again.
1897 Batting Av. 33.12
5 – Clack-Hammer, R.
The Duke of Malmesbury, Ruminant Clack-Hammer, insisted on always being accompanied by his two Irish wolfhounds, Gladstone and D’Israeli, when batting. The record fifth wicket stand he achieved with the all-rounder Viscount Marjorie against Somerset was mainly down to the fact that they ran three hundred and eight runs whilst Somerset desperately tried to prise the ball from the jaws of Gladstone.
1897 Batting Av. 87.45
6 – Egg-Stringent, Vis. M.
Viscount Marjorie himself was a highly-respected all-rounder. Being 87th in line to the throne, it was seen as undignified for him to actually bowl, and so his gentleman, Withers, would offer up his scintillating off-spin in his stead. Being the Viscount’s manservant, his bowling average of 12.04 and 287 first class wickets, according to the MCC, technically belonged to the Viscount.
1897 Batting Av. 38.79; Bowling Av. 10.70
7 – Quimf, S.
Sennapod Quimf, nicknamed by his teammates and fans as ‘The Crouching Quimf’, was wicketkeeper for the team for fifteen years before the famous 1897 season. A formidable gloveman, his other pride and joy in life was his substantial moustache. Robert Browning referred to it shortly before his own death in 1889, having seen Quimf squatting behind Grace at the Member’s End at Bristol Road, as ‘facial hair in the same sense that the north face of the Eiger is a it of a steep incline’, and that George Bernard Shaw wept openly when he first saw it declaring ‘why should any of the rest of us bother? He’s clearly won. His face has clearly won.’ and went on to blame the commercial failure of his plays ‘Candida’ and ‘The Man of Destiny’ on his sudden lack of faith in his own facial hair.
1897 Batting Av. 29.54
8 – Brown, R.
Bob ‘Wendigo’ Brown was the only professional on the team, being a zinc embarrasser from Wapping. In an interview with the Wolverhampton Suggestive he described his career outside of cricket: “We. . . er . . . get several ingots a day each in the factory. Myself and the other fourteen embarrassers would have to make them feel awkward. That intensive staring set me up right proper to track flight of the ball from bowler’s hand.” He was paid 5d a week, as opposed to the fourteen shillings and ninepence (+ jam butties on match days) he got for playing for Wessex. Being from the labouring classes, he wasn’t allowed to travel with the rest of the team, get changed in the same dressing room, enter the pitch through the same gate, and would have to doff his cap every time he crossed a batting partner during a run.
1897 Batting Av. 30.21; Bowling Av. 24.52
9 – Montredant, Lady C.
Famously, women were banned from playing cricket between the years of 1907 and 1963 because of the mistaken belief that there was a causal correlation pattern between the number of women players in County Cricket and the rise in diphtheria cases in West Saxony. Lady Cathode Montredant was born into a cricketing family, the only daughter of Lord Questionable Montredant who had scored a double century for England against Australia in 1864. She famously took Gustav Flambé (the only Frenchman to ever hold a bat properly) for a pair of ducks in the match against Kent. Flambé was extremely grateful and returned the favour the following Summer when he gave her the goose.
1897 Bowling Av. 18.36
10 – Netherswoop, Sir C.
Sir Clackton Netherswoop was famed for his bouncers. Royal records reveal Queen Vicotria’s astonishment at witnessing his bouncers at a friendly contest up the Oval: “The angles that gentleman could achieve with a firm ball in his hand was outstanding. We are amused.” Netherswoop had been part of the Whitechapel Vigilance Committee in 1888, until he discovered what it was, and refused then to go out of an evening in case he met Jack the Ripper, claiming ‘social awkwardness’ as the reason because he ‘wouldn’t know how to formally address a serial killer outside of a dinner party or Masonic Lodge meeting’.
1897 Bowling Av. 23.12
11 – Crabstick, Sir L.
The quintessential Bohemian, Sir Leopold Crabstick wintered in Algiers in 1896, where he wrote an opera based on the repealing of the Corn Laws. A leg-spinner by trade, Crabstick’s overs could take over an hour each to bowl due to his opium addiction and insistence that everyone have ‘a nice sit-down’ between balls. He was forced to ‘go cold turkey’ by Espadrille at the start of the 1897 which led to him ditching the leg-spin in favour of a furious fast pace that removed the leather from the ball with six overs and cracked the box of Middlesex’s Major Gastric Crimpling-Horn with such ferocity that he came back on the second day as Dame Nelly Melba.
1897 Bowling Av. 17.94
Twelfth Man – Goat-Ordnance. L.D.
Sir Lawrence Dandy Goat-Ordnance spent most of the season bringing on fresh towels, bottled lemonade, and port for the rest of the team until he got his chance for his single appearance of the year against Lancashire after Crinkly Morton was concussed by the egg and cress sandwich. A languid man by nature, he once stuck on a penny farthing for four days as getting down just seemed like a dreadful faff. He was hired by Espadrille initially as a draft excluder, but when Wessex’s longstanding twelfth man, Captain Frobisher Windchime, was sent to fight the Mahdi in the Sudan under Kitchener, Goat-Ordnance found himself thrust from under the door and out onto the boundary carrying refreshments.
1897 Batting Av. 15.00
The Wessex team’s achievement of winning every single county game of the 1897 season has never been repeated, though the team itself disbanded in 1899 in ignominious circumstances when it was pointed out to the ECB that Wessex hadn’t existed since the tenth century.
Treatises of Gloria 