The Sussex Cricket Museum Quiz

Questions

1. Which Essex bowler was the first player to take all ten wickets in an innings for any county in the ‘official’ Championship?
   
   
2. Buxton, at about 300 metres above sea level, is well known as county cricket’s highest venue.  Which Essex park has the lowest altitude of any Championship ground?
3. Which Essex captain won an Olympic gold medal as a middleweight boxer?
   
   
4. Who was the Sussex all-rounder – he’s featured in the Museum – who, at the age of 46, bowled a spell of 85 six-ball overs, the longest spell in county cricket, at the famous old Leyton ground spread over two days and in both Essex innings?
   
   
5. Who has scored most runs for Essex in the County Championship?
   
   
6. Which Essex player is the only Championship cricketer to ‘record a number-one hit single’?
   
   
7. Once upon a time, Essex were usually found in the lower half of the Championship table. But they’ve now won the title eight times. In which year did their total of Championship match wins overtake their total of match losses? 1986, 1996 or 2006.
   
   
8. What was special about the Championship match played here at Hove in 1993 between Essex and Sussex?
   
   
9. Essex played Somerset at Lord’s in the final of the Bob Willis Trophy in 2020, the covid year. Played over five days, the match was drawn. What was special about its length?
   
   
10. How long have Essex been playing first-class matches at their current headquarters at New Writtle Street, Chelmsford?

Answers

1. Henry Pickett, who took ten for 32 against Leicestershire at Leyton in June 1895 in only the fourth Essex match in the competition.
   
   
2. Southchurch Park, Southend-on-Sea, where Essex played 112 matches between 1906 and 2004. Ordnance Survey mapping shows a spot height of just 2m next to its western boundary. Part of the ground was covered by the sea in the floods of February 1953.
   
   
3. J.W.H.T.Douglas, county captain from 1911 to 1928, won the middleweight title in the 1908 London Olympics. His Dad refereed the final bout and this has raised doubts about its legitimacy ever since!
   
   
4. In 1920 Albert Relf bowled through both Essex innings, with Essex following on; he took nine wickets for just 93 runs. His overs included 38 maidens.
   
   
5. Percy Perrin, an amateur who played from 1896 to 1928, scored 27,703 runs in 496 matches for the county. (A few hundred more than both Graham Gooch and Keith Fletcher.)
   
   
6. Geoff Hurst, who was in the 1966 England football team which successfully recorded ‘Back Home’ in 1970. He had played one Championship match for Essex in 1962.
   
   
7. In 1996, at the end of which their wins had totalled 634 and their losses 632.
   
   
8. A total of 1,808 runs were scored over four days, at the time the highest total in a match in England. Essex won by seven wickets.
   
   
9. It was the first five-day inter-county match since 1834 when Yorkshire played Norfolk on 14 to 18 July at Sheffield. (Norfolk conceded that match and went home!)
   
   
10. They played their first match there against Oxford University on 20, 22 and 23 June, 1925, a hundred years ago this season.

QUESTIONS

1. The first-ever first-class match played in Warwickshire was North v South at Leamington Spa in 1849. It had a special Sussex connection. What was this?
   
   
2. Which Test cricketer played for Sussex (briefly) and for Warwickshire and came from a family which owned the Edgbaston cricket ground?
   
   
3. At the age of 52, he took seventeen wickets in the match for Sussex against Warwickshire ‘on his home turf’ at Horsham in 1926. Who was he?
   
   
4. Which Sussex and Warwickshire cricketer was a member of the first expedition to climb Kamet (7,756 m) in Northern India in 1931, at the time the highest peak yet climbed?
5. A Sussex-born player, playing for Warwickshire, is the oldest player to score a century in the County Championship and also the oldest player to take five wickets in an innings in that competition.  Who is he?
   
   
6. Ian Thomson’s ten for 49 against Warwickshire at Worthing in 1964 is still remembered here, but who achieved the best bowling return by a Warwickshire bowler against Sussex?
   
   
7. What was the almost ‘legendary’ institution which, from 1957, helped convert the Edgbaston ground from an ordinary county ground into a regular Test match venue?
   
   
8. A well-known Sussex cricketer played six Sunday League matches for Warwickshire a couple of seasons after his retirement from first-class cricket. Who was he?
   
   
9. Around 7,500 cricketers have played in the Championship since its ‘official’ start in 1890. Bastien Zuiderent of Sussex is the last, alphabetically, of these. Which recent Warwickshire is at the top of that alphabetical list?
   
   
10. At the start of the 2025 season, Warwickshire and Sussex had met – to the nearest ten – in how many Championship fixtures?  

ANSWERS

1. The ground was run by John Wisden, Brighton-born, who played 82 matches for Sussex from 1845 to 1963.  He started his almanack which still runs, in 1864.
   
   
2. Freddie Calthorpe, who played for Sussex in 1911 and 1912, and for Warwickshire from 1919 to 1930.
   
   
3. George Cox senior, who took eight for 56 in the first innings and nine for 50 in the second; he achieved a new personal best in each innings.
   
   
4. Romilly Lisle Holdsworth, who played 28 Championship matches for Warwickshire from 1919 to 1921 and 34 for Sussex from 1925 to 1929.
   
   
5. Willie Quaife, (‘W.G.’) born at Newhaven, who scored 115 v Derbyshire at Edgbaston in 1928, aged 56 years 4 months in August 1928, and took five for 81 also against Derbyshire at Edgbaston in 1926, aged 54 years 3 months.
   
   
6. Charles Grove, who took nine for 39 in the visitors’ first innings at Edgbaston in June 1952.
   
   
7. The County Supporters Club ran a football pool.
   
   
8. John Snow, who played 248 Championship matches for Sussex from 1961 to 1977, played six Player League matches for Warwickshire in 1980. (There was also the small matter of 49 Tests for England.)
   
   
9. Aamer Jamal, the Pakistan Test player, who played two Championship matches for Warwickshire last season.
   
   
10. 154 matches, so will accept 150 or 160. Warwickshire have won 53, Sussex 39, with one tied (here at Hove in 1952) and 61 drawn.

Questions

1. Over its long history, Sussex have fielded more than forty sets of brothers in first-class cricket. Worcestershire, however, have had one family which provided seven brothers. Who were they?

2. What sporting achievements do Reginald Erskine Foster (of Worcestershire) and Charles Burgess Fry (of Sussex) have in common?

3. Maurice Jewell played thirteen first-class matches in 1919, including four for Sussex and seven for Worcestershire. In those days registration rules were very strict, so why was he allowed to play for two counties in a season?

4. Arthur Herbert Tennyson Somers-Cocks, who became the sixth Baron Somers at the age of 12 in 1899, played 16 Championship matches for Worcestershire from 1923 to 1925. What was he later better known as?

5. The eighth holder of this title played for Worcestershire and the ninth holder played for Sussex. What title are we referring to?

6. Which ‘legendary’ umpire, previously a Worcestershire player, umpired his last-ever Championship match here at Hove in 1955?

7.  In a Championship match at 1957, at Eastbourne, Sussex scored 332 and 199 for six declared, and Worcestershire 323 and 208 for five. What was the result of the match?

8. Who is the prime minister who moved from Worcestershire to Sussex apparently to improve his social life?

9. Which Worcestershire wicketkeeper is co-holder of the world record for most dismissals in an innings in a fifty-over match?

10. In the fixture list in 2019, Worcestershire were listed to play Sussex at Worcester on June 17 to 20.  The match was actually played at Kidderminster from June 18 to 21. Why the change?

Answers

1. The Foster family, from Malvern, provided seven players to Worcestershire starting in 1899 and ending in 1934. (There was also a brother-in-law, J.W.Greenstock.)

2. They both played for England at cricket and football.

3. The rules were strict, but he did; Worcestershire didn’t take part in the Championship in 1919 so the authorities took no action.

4. He took over from Lord Baden-Powell as Chief Scout of the Empire in 1941.

5. Nawab of Pataudi, a title now extinct.  (The eighth Nawab played 33 Championship matches for Worcestershire from 1932 to 1938 and the ninth Nawab played 82 matches for Sussex from 1957 to 1970. Both captained India.)

6. Frank Chester, who had lost part of his left arm in the Great War, umpired his 531st and final Championship match here at Hove in 1955; he had also ‘stood’ in 48 Test matches.

7. It was drawn. Sussex scored four points and Worcestershire six.

8. Imran Khan, at the start of the 1977 season.

9. Jamie Pipe, who made eight catches in an innings v Hertfordshire at Hertford in the C and G Trophy in June 2001.

10. The New Road ground at Worcester had been flooded by the River Severn . . . again.

Questions

1. Sussex started playing first-class cricket in 1815, Somerset started in 1882. What year did they first meet? 

2. In what year did Sussex and Somerset first meet in a limited-overs match? 

3. Who was the Somerset captain who spent formative years here in Sussex, who played Test cricket for two countries, rugby union for England, hockey for Somerset and football for the Sussex amateur team?

4. What was special about the Somerset cricketers Alfred Bowerman and Montague Toller?

5. In the Championship match at Taunton in August 1901, the Sussex captain, K.S.Ranjitsinhji, batted through the last day scoring 285* to save the match for the Sussex. What had he done the night before?

6. What was special about the first meeting (in May, 1919) between Sussex and Somerset after the Great War?

7. Who was the Somerset batter who played for the county for just three seasons, yet scored 6,975 runs at an average of 69.75?

8. What else was special about the Sussex total of 742 for five at Taunton in 2009?

9. What do the Sussex clubs Eastbourne and Horsham, and the Somerset club Bath have in common?

10. When did Somerset and Sussex last meet in the County Championship?

Answers

1. Their first meeting was on 21 and 22 July, 1892 at Taunton. (Somerset won on the second of the three days allocated. The return match here at Hove in September was almost completely washed out.)

2. In 1964 in the quarter final of the Gillette Cup at Taunton, then sixty-overs affairs.  (Sussex won, scoring only 141 in 54.5 overs, but they bowled out Somerset for only 125 runs.)

3. Sammy Woods, who was Somerset captain from 1894 to 1906.

4. They played cricket for the team representing England in the 1900 Olympic Games in Paris.  (They were members of the Devon and Somerset Wanderers side representing England which won in the only cricket match ever played in an Olympic Games.)

5. He had been fishing all night – apparently. (His 285 set a new Sussex record not beaten until his nephew’s 333 in 1930.)

6. The match was tied, with the last Sussex batter in effect ‘timed out’.  (This was the famous Heygate incident. With the scores equal, the last Sussex batsman, Harold Heygate took more than two minutes to reach the wicket – he had not been expected to bat because he was suffering from rheumatism and came out wearing his ‘street clothes’. On an appeal from Len Braund, the Somerset Test player, umpire Alfred Street, a Test umpire himself, gave him ‘out’.)

7. Jimmy Cook, later a South African Test player, who was the leading Championship run-scorer in 1989, 1990 and 1991.

8. It included Murray Goodwin’s 344 not out, the highest individual score in first-class cricket for Sussex. (Not surprisingly, the match was drawn.)

9. They have all won the National Club Championship. (Eastbourne won it in 1997, Horsham in 2005 and Bath in 2021. The competition has been running since 1969.)

10. In September 2015, at Hove. (The match was a rain-curtailed draw.)