A History of Cricket at King Edward's School, BIrmingham

10 higher. Bowling was better as well. E Wheeler was the outstanding player: he took 63 wickets, and with the bat averaged 15.4 runs per innings. Wheeler, who took 6 wickets, and Partridge, with 4, dismissed Tettenhall for 17 (extras top score with 11). In 1881, under HF Devis, five matches out of the 12 played were won. Wheeler starred again, and made two fifties, one after taking nine Wolverhampton wickets in one innings. He averaged 22.7 with the bat and took 74 wickets, and according to the writer in the Chronicle he was ‘good enough to play for any school in England’, and preferred to play for the School rather than for ‘a crack local club’. He later appeared for Warwickshire, though they were not then a first-class county. His School record was 137 wickets in two seasons, and with the exception of Joseph Manton nobody in the nineteenth century took more. A slight decline set in in 1882, the first of two years under HW Webster. It seems that only four matches were won out of the 12 played. One redeeming feature of 1882 was the emergence of a good bowler to replace Wheeler – DP Malins. He performed two hat-tricks during the season, against Trinity College Stratford and Suburban CC, and against Tettenhall he took the first nine wickets and completed the innings by running the last man out. He finished the season with 42 wickets at an average of 3.69. The batting, however, was not strong, and only ML Banks and Webster achieved anything like consistency. The match with Kings Norton at Eastern Road finished in a tie, each side scoring 32. It is recorded that a large part was played by excellent School fielding – a good sign. In 1883 only two matches were won. The main reason for this was probably the fact that Malins was only able to play occasionally. Although FE Hewitt tried hard, both the bowling and the batting were sub-standard. One mystery of these years is that two pairs of brothers who later went on to play with some distinction in more important cricket do not seem to have played much, or at all, while at KES. Ludford Charles Docker was born in 1860, and played for Warwickshire from 1887 to 1895. Warwickshire became a first-class county in 1894. Ludford Docker had previously represented Derbyshire (not first-class at this time) from 1881 to 1885, and was captain in 1884. He toured Australia with Arthur Shrewsbury’s team in 1887-88. This was one of two English teams touring Australia in that season: they combined to produce an England side to play the only Test Match played that year, but Docker did not play. All told, he scored 2,665 runs (average 20.82) in first-class cricket. His brother F Dudley Docker, born in 1862, also played for Warwickshire in the days before it was considered first-class. However, there is no evidence of either brother playing cricket while at KES. Another two early Warwickshire players educated at KES were HBG Hill (born 1861) and his younger brother JE Hill (born 1867). HBG Hill played for Warwickshire from 1890 onwards, including five first-class matches between 1894 and 1900. JE Hill also made his Warwickshire debut in 1890, and played 25 first-class matches between 1894 and 1898. The only evidence in the Chronicle that they played cricket while at KES is that ‘Hill’ (no initials given) played a few matches in 1881 and 1883. This must be JE. Though he showed little evidence of his ability while at School, he played with distinction for Warwickshire and was the first person to