One finds in the Sussex Daily News an interesting account of a cricket match played on the ice on Jan. 9. The rivals were teams from Horsted Keynes and Cuckfield. Some funny things happened. Once a man slogged his bat away, and off it skated faster than any fieldsman nearly to the boundary; often the batsman fell before he reached home, and crawled in ignominious but safe.

One series of overthrows yielded five runs - it seemed as if the ball never would be held. Once a very tempting catch was sent to mid-on. He forgot all about his skates, and leaped into the air to grab the ball with his right hand high up. He failed to reach it, and then began to come down again. He came down flat.

Once, cover-point slipped just as he was throwing in, and a ball increased a by stander's bump of destructiveness to twice its pristine size. There was plenty of chaff and plenty of laughter. Cuckfield commenced batting at one o’clock, and the game finished at four, Cuckfield winning by seventy-one runs.

Score: Cuckfield, 182; Horsted Keynes, 111. The scorers were many. They wrote on a piece of paper held against a bat. When one of them was seen to be looking anxiously about for fingers he could no longer feel, another took the bat, and so on through the afternoon.

Sources

The Maitland Mercury and Hunter River General Advertiser (NSW : 1843 - 1893). Sat 28 Feb 1891, Page 4

Illustration from a book: 'All round sport - with fish, fur, and feather; adventures on the turf and the road, in the hunting and cricket fields, yachting courses, links, and curling ponds' (1886) From archive.org.

Contributed by Malcolm Davison.