The very haphazard arrangement of county matches continued in 1845. William Clarke seemed occupied with the Nottingham Amateurs Club and playing for them against Leicester took nine wickets in a single innings.
At the end of June Notts were beaten at Canterbury by an innings and 20 runs with a day to spare against a Kent side lacking Alfred Mynn. William Hillyer with six wickets helped to dismiss Notts for 47, Joe Guy with 25 was the only successful Notts batsman. Nicholas Felix top scored with 54 as Kent replied with 134, William Clarke with six wickets. Hillyer took a further five wickets in Notts second innings of 67. Immediately prior to this defeat, the North v MCC match was staged at Lord’s – the Northern side being identical to that of Notts v Kent, save for Jonas Warwick, who had to go back to Southwell and was replaced by another amateur, Chappell Batchelor. Batchelor was a keen member of the Gentlemen of Notts Club and was an organist at Southwell Minster. It seemed that MCC no longer objected to Notts representing the North and Clarke this time vindicated his cause by beating MCC with an innings to spare. Clarke obtained 10 wickets and Samuel Redgate six in a low scoring match. The highest innings came from Sam Dakin with 41, who played for Notts though he seems to have no qualification to do so. He lived in Derby in the 1840s, being a native to Leicestershire.
He was chosen for the return Notts v Kent at Trent Bridge, but dropped from the team which actually played - perhaps Kent objected. The qualification of players was by gentlemen’s agreement except when it was written into the contract drawn up for a specific match. Dakin was a swarthy-complexioned, strongly-built man, usually dressed in the type of velvet jacket favoured by artists. He was clean shaven except for his fierce looking black moustache and had a Midlands accent which was difficult to follow – so much so that when he took a coaching engagement at a London school, the pupils thought he was the German master. With Clarke taking 16-69 and removing the formidable Mynn for 0 and 4, Notts won the home game played in mid-July by eight wickets. Kent scored 65 (Clarke 9-29), Notts replied with 130 (George Butler 38, George Parr 31, Hillyer 7-56). Kent made 86 in their second innings (Clarke 7-40). Notts won with a day to spare finishing on 22-2 second time round.
On 4, 5 and 6 September at Trent Bridge, Notts then challenged England, but played fourteen men against eleven. The result was a win for the county by 6 wickets. All but one, the Rev William Musters, of the Notts 14 were professionals. Samuel Parr made an unbeaten 40 in Notts second innings as they successfully chased 133 with seven wickets down. England though not at full strength were well represented and the result showed that Notts cricket was now as strong as any of the counties. A couple of University cricketers made fleeting appearances for Notts in 1845. Richard Seddon gained a blue for Cambridge in 1846 and 1847, hailed from Leicester and seems to have no qualification for Notts. Philip Williams had played for Oxford from 1844 to 1847 and was a useful member of the Notts County Club of Southwell. Another Southwell player, Frank Tinley, though a professional and a member of the Town Club, also made a first appearance in the ranks of the county.
One of three brothers who played for Notts, Frank Tinley was a slow round-arm bowler, who walked, rather than run-up to deliver the ball. He played frequently as a given bowler in local Twenty-twos against the wandering England Elevens and was so successful, it is surprising that he played only a few times in the more important eleven-a-side games of the period. For some years he kept the Hearty Good Fellow Inn in Southwell and also umpired for the Free Foresters.
September 2020
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