Cricket – the Philadelphia Story ….. Bosanquet’s XI of 1901
Martin Chandler |Published: 2025
Pages: 111
Author: Smith, Steve
Publisher: Private
Rating: 3 stars
At the end of the English summer of 1901 a team of amateurs toured North America, albeit not on this occasion of almost exclusively young men from Oxford and Cambridge Universities. The team were scheduled to spend a month in North America during which time they would play five matches, one each in New York and Toronto and three in Philadelphia. The fixtures in Philadelphia comprised one against 19 ‘colts’ and two First Class matches against the full strength of the Gentlemen of Philadelphia.
During the Englishmen’s voyage President William McKinley was assassinated, so plans had to change and the tour proceeded against that difficult backdrop. It ended with some controversy as well, a newspaper report suggesting that the Englishmen’s main motivation in travelling was to get an expenses paid holiday and watch an international athletics meeting as well as the Americas Cup, a suggestion that was dismissed by all concerned following its appearance in print.
How strong were the tourists? Skipper Bosanquet is famous for inventing, although popularising might be a better word, the googly and, with that delivery, playing a big part in ‘Plum’ Warner’s side recovering the Ashes in 1903/04. In 1901 that was all in the future, but make no mistake Bosanquet was a good cricketer.
Of Bosanquet’s teammates the most distinguished was Reggie Schwarz, born in England but who later, having learnt the googly from Bosanquet, enjoyed considerable success in 20 Tests for South Africa. Twenty years on from this tour Rockley Wilson appeared in a single Test in the 1920/21 Ashes and Frank Mitchell, captain of the 1895 side that toured North America, had by 1901 played for England in South Africa and would later captain South Africa in the 1912 Triangular Tournament.
As regular readers of these books will expect the tourists were untroubled by the New Yorkers or Canadians but found the Philadelphians sterner opposition. It is never easy to assess games against odds, but 19 was clearly far too many Colts for Bosanquet’s men, although they did win the first of the First Class matches, before being outclassed in the second.
Anyone who has bought the previous volumes in this series of books is going to enjoy reading about this tour as well. Having clearly fixed on a style of presentation that he likes Smith adopts the same one here and once again the result is a very readable account, as long as you find the subject interesting. As ever Amazon or, at a discounted price, Red Rose Books are where the book is available.
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