Conan Doyle the Cricketer: The Wanderers Tour of 1885
Conan Doyle the Cricketer: The Wanderers Tour of 1885 is an article written by Christopher Roden published in the A.C.D. - The Journal of The Arthur Conan Doyle Society (Vol. 5, 1994).
This documented historical study reconstructs Arthur Conan Doyle's participation in the Wanderers cricket tour of Ireland in August 1885, combining match records, marriage chronology, and contemporary sources. It also reproduces and analyses Conan Doyle's humorous tour poem published in the Stonyhurst Magazine, illuminating an early episode of his sporting life.
Conan Doyle the Cricketer: The Wanderers Tour of 1885
The August of 1885 saw Conan Doyle in the north of England. An entry in the Register of Marriages of the Parish Church of Thornton in Lonsdale records that on 6 August, Arthur Conan Doyle was married to Louisa Hawkins. But his marriage was not, as records show, to stand in the way of a few games of cricket. Indeed, as Owen Dudley Edwards has noted, he went with an Old Stonyhurst cricket team to Dublin, combining it with an August honeymoon, and contributed a fine set of doggerel verses on the tour to the Stonyhurst Magazine.
The Wanderers tour in the summer of 1885 appears to have begun on 3 August with a game against Stonyhurst College Conan Doyle was not called on to bat in this match and bowled only one over, returning figures of one over for three runs and no wickets.
Further games took place on 5, 6 and 7 August against Preston C & G, Huyton, and Liverpool C & G, and it is not surprising, since his marriage took place on 6 August, that Conan Doyle's name is absent from the score-sheet on all three occasions.
The first match in Ireland was against Dublin University at the Trinity College ground on 12-13 August. Conan Doyle scored thirty-four before being bowled, and was not called on to display his bowling prowess
In a two innings match against Leinster Club at Rathmines, Dublin on 14-15 August, Conan Doyle failed to score in the Wanderers first innings and only managed ten runs in the second. He was called on to bowl five overs during the Leinster Club's second innings but failed to take a wicket, conceding eleven runs in his short spell.
There is little more to tell. A good time was obviously had by all, as Conan Doyle's verse tells:
- The Wanderers Irish Tour
- (to the tune of 'The Cork Leg')
- My Stonyhurst lads, just listen awhile,
- And I'll sing you a song in right musical style,
- A song that will raise on your faces a smile,
- Concerning our trip to the Emerald Isle.
- Ri-tooral-rooral, etc.
- A finer team that then went o'er
- Was never seen in the world before,
- For we had eleven men and more
- Who unless they got out might be reckoned to score.
- Oh, how can I tell of what fell to their lot,
- Of the balls that they hit, and the balls they did not,
- How the batsmen were cool and the bowlers were hot,
- And the fielders were-well, goodness only knows what
- The Phoenix came out with their heads in the air,
- The Phoenix went back in a state of despair,
- For Henry's performance it made them all stare,
- And we won by an innings and fifty to spare.
- And Trinity, oh, but we walloped them well,
- To George and the Doctor the honours there fell,
- And Hatt's fast expresses dismissed them pell-mell,
- And the heat was as great as in-Coromandel.
- In conclusion the Leinster their colours have struck,
- Where the present composer compiled a round 'duck'.
- There we fought against audience and players and luck,
- And pulled off the match by sheer coolness and pluck.
- So fill up a bumper to one and to all,
- Who handled the willow, the gloves and the ball
- May cricketers ever their prowess recall,
- And may Stony burst flourish whatever befall.
- They may change the old College in whole or in part,
- They may add a new wing and a frontage so smart,
- But in spite of all labours and seance and art,
- The place of the past is the place of my heart
- And I may just remark at the end of my song
- That the practical test is the best, and as long
- As they turn out a breed as loyal and strong
- As the boys of the past-they won't do very wrong.
- Ri-tooral.
The lines were signed 'M.D., and why not? Conan Doyle had been awarded his doctorate in Edinburgh a month earlier. And 'the Doctor'? Who else? With a score of thirty-four under his belt, Conan Doyle could rightly claim a share of the honours.
- Article courtesy Christopher Roden, founder of The Arthur Conan Doyle Society (1989-2003).
