Ted Peate
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 England (ENG) |
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| Batting style | Left-hand bat | |
| Bowling type | Slow left-arm orthodox | |
| Tests | First-class | |
| Matches | 9 | 209 |
| Runs scored | 70 | 2,384 |
| Batting average | 11.66 | 13.49 |
| 100s/50s | 0/0 | 0/3 |
| Top score | 13 | 95 |
| Balls bowled | 2,096 | 47,116 |
| Wickets | 31 | 1,076 |
| Bowling average | 22.03 | 10.64 |
| 5 wickets in innings | 2 | 94 |
| 10 wickets in match | 0 | 27 |
| Best bowling | 6/85 | 8/5 |
| Catches/stumpings | 2/0 | 132/0 |
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Test debut: 31 December 1881 |
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Edmund ("Ted") Peate (Holbeck, Leeds, Yorkshire, 2 March 1855 – 11 March 1900 in Newlay, Horsforth, Yorkshire) was an English professional cricketer who played for Yorkshire and England. He was one of the most famous slow bowlers of his day. Many of his contemporaries rated him the greatest slow left-armer who ever lived.
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[edit] Overview
Peate's career, which lasted from 1879 to 1890, was exceptional while it lasted but, alas, very short. He earned his place in the Yorkshire side in 1879 and, "before the season was over," wrote WG Grace (against whom he enjoyed conspicuous success), "had taken rank with the very best bowlers in England. Every year added to his fine reputation; and no matter the company he played in he came through the ordeal most successfully."[1]
Peate rose in 1880 to the top of the cricketing tree and remained there until the end of 1884. He amply filled the boots of Alfred Shaw, becoming the first-choice slow-bowler for the England elevens of his era. There ought to have been many more years of good work ahead of him, but he put on a great deal of weight and showed a weakness for alocohol. In the summer of 1886, it became evident that his days in first-class cricket were numbered. He would undoubtedly have lasted far longer had he ordered his life with more care.
He never entirely lost his skill as a bowler. Even up to the last year or two of his short life, he played with success in club cricket in and around Leeds.
[edit] Peate's most famous season
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Despite a serious ankle sprain, which kept him out of action for a fortnight, Peate managed a new record wicket haul for a county-cricket season with 214 in 1882. As Grace affirms, "Peate [...] had now become the acknowledged best slow bowler of England".[2]
His finest (and lowest) hour came in the Test Match against Australia at the Oval, where England, chasing just 85 for victory, found itself 75 for eight. CT Studd walked rapidly out into the middle, leaving Peate, the number eleven, back in the dressing-room, sipping merrily on some victory champagne. Soon, however, with the dismissal of Billy Barnes, he found himself draining his glass and rushing out the dressing-room to play his role in the final passage of play in that great and famous Test Match.
Peate was reckoned by some (not entirely fairly) to be the worst first-class batsman in English cricket; indeed, it was doubted in some circles that he even owned a bat: anything lying about in the dressing-room would do -- even an old table leg. Presently, as he left the dressing-room, his captain, Hornby, called out desperately to him, "Leave it to Mister Studd!" His team-mates echoed those sentiments wholeheartedly.
Peate, however, was an individual, and he had a mind quite of his own. Consequently, he also had ideas all of his own -- especially when it came to batting. He entertained absolutely no thoughts of orthodoxy or defence, and often showed a quite reckless abandon with the willow.
One of the scorers, shaking furiously from either the cold or his own nerves, scribbled Peate's name down so illegibly on the scorecard that it actually looked far more like "Geese". Peate took his guard, and Boyle ran in to bowl. Over whipped the arm, and out popped one of that bowler's cleverly-disguised slower deliveries. Peate swiped wildly across the line of the ball, fraying still further the already-ripped nerves of both the crowd and his team-mates as he did so. He made a connection, however, and the ball flew high over square-leg, well out of the reach of any of the Australian fielders. When the ball landed, it was slowed down by the Oval damp turf, and it came to a halt just a few metres short of the boundary. If Peate had middled it, surely, it would have gone for six; instead, he had run through for just the one, thus transferring the strike over to Studd, which was what so many had been praying he would do -- but, hold (!), the batsmen turned now for a second, which meant that Peate would have the strike. Much of the assembled throng was completely baffled by this, but some noted the fact that there were only two balls left in the over before the start of the next one from the "Demon Bowler", Fred Spofforth. Peate could probably survive a couple of balls from Boyle, they reasoned, but he could surely never be expected to cope with a full over of Spofforth's demonaic might.
Peate completed the second run -- but he had misunderstood his partner's intentions, and now set off on a suicidal third run, in a desperate attempt to bring Studd back on strike. Fortunately, Studd rejected the call, preventing an almost certain run-out, but, to the angst of both the English team and its many thousands of Oval supporters, Peate was still on strike. In view of the last stroke, it was hoped against hope that Studd would get to the business end as soon as possible, if that was how his number-eleven partner was going to be playing it. In the next over, of course, waited the terrible menace of Spofforth.
The score was 77 for nine; England needed eight runs to win. Peate settled into his stance once again as Boyle darted in to deliver the second-last delivery of this most entralling innings's 55th over. Surely, implored the crowd, surely Peate had the nerve to see off these last two deliveries without giving it all away?
To almost univeral horror, however, the tailender took the liberty of dancing down the wicket and mis-hitting the ball straight to a fielder. A run-out was on the cards again as Studd rejected yet another suicidal call, but England breathed once more. The English players in the pavilion, numbingly anxious about Peate's overly-enterprising efforts, cried out in vain against the decibel-defying racket that was now the Kennington Oval, urging him to leave it to Studd.
Meanwhile, the chairman of the England selectors, Lord Harris, was looking on at the scene in absolute disgust. Why was Peate so very jumpy today? Why was he going for such ridiculous runs? Of course, Harris did not think to blame Studd for making no effort to take the strike from the effervescent Peate, who was playing like a man who had been doused with far much too much champagne to have any semblance of an idea as to where he was or the significance of what he was doing; either that or he'd been doused with far too little. Whichever one it was, Peate himself was of the belief that he now understood the situation fully: Charles Studd (rated in some circles as the finest bat in England) was, to Peate's mind, quite simply not up to the task. Peate did not, quite naturally, feel that he could leave it all up to Studd when not even Studd wanted to leave it to Studd. This thing, he decided, would have to be left to Peate; it would done Peate's way; but Peate, of course, knew only one way here -- and that was to smash the ball high, far and in swashbuckling, heroic fashion to claim victory for England. He could already see the crowd's relief as the winning hit sailed over the pavilion. "Good owd Ted," he could hear them saying.
The last ball of Boyle's over was right up there, well pitched-up, slower, fullish and very straight. Peate's eyes lit up; it was right in every slogger's favourite area, allowing him to free his arms to their pendulum's fullest extent.
And free those arms he did, looking to send this one over square-leg yet again.
But bat and ball made no contact.
Instead, he had been bowled, and England had lost this greatest of all Test Matches by seven runs.
Peate arrived back in the England dressing-room to be admonished for not having followed the given instructions and refusing to leave the job to his better-equipped partner. WG Grace was among those totally unimpressed with Peate's utter recklessness and awful lack of judgment: he and others gathered round eagerly to hear the explanation.
"Why, man," they asked Peate, "did you try to hit? Why couldn’t you just stop them? Why, Ted, did you play a stroke like that?"
"Hey, very soorry, gentlemen," he replied in broad Yorkshire, totally sincere, "boot Ah 'ad t'hit; Ah jus' couldn't troost Maister Stood t'stay in, beggin' yer pardon. Maister Stood was so nervous Ah did not feel Ah could troost 'im t'score t'roons."
They were honest sentiments, but ones that were quite naturally taken in jest by those who heard them -- and as yet another example of this great Yorkshire character's essential geniality. Studd, it was reasoned, was a very fine batsman; indeed, had he not just recently scored a hundred against this very same Australian side?
Not being able to trust "Maister Studd"? Pah! What a delightful joke that was!
But it was not a joke: Peate was being dead-serious.
Immediately after the match, Ted Peate was off to Scarborough, to play for Yorkshire against the MCC. Rain brought play to a halt for a while, and he sat in the pavilion with Buns Thornton and ID Walker (another England selectors), chatting about England’s momentous defeat. The topic turned quickly to the talking point involving one of the three men present.
"Peate," asked Walker, "why didn’t you try to keep your end up until Charlie could get the runs?"
Peate's earnest response to this was that he thought himself to be the better batsman!
"Yes, you’re quite right, Ted," agreed Thornton. "Before they went in, Charlie was walking round the pavilion with a blanket around him, [Allan] Steel’s teeth were all in a chatter, and Barnes’s teeth would have been chattering if he had not left them at home."
It would seem, then, that Studd was not the only one whom Peate couldn't "troost"; but what truly happened to the England batsmen to bring about their legendary "funk" on that cold, late-August afternoon remains a conjecturable mystery.
[edit] Peate and Bonnor
George Bonnor, the mighty Australian hitter, was never at ease against Peate when they met on the field; indeed, Bonnor often suffered sleepless nights, and theirs must count as one of the great rivalries of their time. The night before the abovementioned Test Match, George Bonnor had found himself feeling extremely concerned about the foreboding proposition of Ted Peate's spiteful left-armers, and, that evening, in the privacy of his bedroom at the Tavistock Hotel, Bonnor imagined that he was actually taking strike to the left-arm spinner.
There he stood, alone in the dark, fashioning powerful strokes at non-existent deliveries from the non-existent bowler; but, contrary to what Bonnor thought, he was not alone: in fact, a team-mate was watching him with amusement as he played back to one of these invisible deliveries, murmuring to himself, "That's the way to play you, Peate." Next, Bonnor pushed forward, declaring, "Not this time, Peate, my boy!" Finally, he concluded this strange practice session with a massive swing at a bad legside delivery. "How do you like that, Peate?!" he bellowed as he swung around, his stroke having shattered the china jug and basin which formed part of the toilet set about which he had completely forgotten. The amused team-mate, of course, later spread the story to similarly-amused colleagues.
According to "Old Ebor" (AW Pullin), "Peate himself said that the hero of the crockery performance was always said to be W. L. Murdoch; in fact he was told so by C. T. B. Turner."[3] Turner, however, was not on the 1882 tour, and cricket historian Brian Bearshaw, in his very-complete account of the anecdote, is quite decided on the fact that the silly fellow concerned was George Bonnor.
As Peate informed Pullin shortly before his death, "One of the most dangerous men I ever crossed was Bonnor, but he would persist in trying to play the fancy game. At Bradford, in June 1882, he was kind enough to hit me three times out of the ground for 6's. I had my revenge in another match, when he came in about ten minutes from drawing-time. He went on playing over after over as nice as possible, until it got to the very last ball of the last over of the day. I sent him down what he evidently thought was a regular 'sloppy' one, and of course he must let fly, with the result that he was caught at cover-point. He went out looking as if he would like to kick himself."[4]
In the Old Trafford Test of 1884, Bonnor sent a titanic strike into a delighted crowd to take Australia past England's first-innings total, and the crowd was still applauding enthusiastically as Peate ran up to bowl again. With this ball, he managed to push the big hitter back deep into his crease, and the eventual outcome was that Bonnor's boot had disturbed the furniture behind it -– which, according to the Laws, meant that he was out. Bonnor was quite reluctant to leave, however; indeed, he stayed right where he was, and the Englishmen promptly made their appeal to umpire Charles Pullin (not to be confused with Alfred), who was standing at the bowler's end. Quite rightly, though, Pullin told them that it was the job of the square-leg umpire to make this decision. Umpire Rowbotham, though, told them that he had not been in any position to see. The decision went back to Pullin, who sent Bonnor on his way. This was the first hit-wicket dismissal in Test-cricket history, and it must surely have given Peate even more of a psychological hold over his nemesis.
[edit] How his contemporaries saw him
Peate was reckoned by Wisden to be, without doubt, a truly great bowler when he was at his bear -- although it must be said that he was very fortunate at the outset of his career in playing in some decidedly wet seasons. He did not set his store on a big break, but he could make the ball do enough on most wickets to beat the bat, and "his pitch was a marvel of accuracy" by Wisden's reckoning. Peate had some brilliant successors in the Yorkshire eleven in Bobby Peel and Wilfred Rhodes, but many batsmen (Billy Murdoch among the number[5]) who met him in his prime were of opinion that, as a left-handed slow bowler, Peate was never equalled.
Wrote Grace, "He was, undoubtedly, one of the very best slow bowlers of his time. That is the opinion held by very good judges in Australia and England, and we have only to look at his results with the ball to see the truth of it." The immediate cause of his death was pneumonia, but his health had been in a bad state for quite some time.
[edit] Best performances
Some of his best performances with the ball were-6 wickets for 14 runs, Yorkshire against Middlesex at Huddersfield, 1879:
- 5 wickets 11 for runs, Yorkshire v. Derbyshire, at Derby, 1880.
- 14 wickets 130 for runs, Yorkshire v. Sussex, at Brighton, 1881.
- 14 wickets 77 for runs, Yorkshire v. Surrey, at Huddersfield.
- 8 wickets 71 for runs, England v. Australia, at the Oval, 1882.
- 8 wickets 57 for runs, Shaw and Shrewsbury"s XI. at Sydney, 1882.
- 6 wickets 12 for runs, Yorkshire v. Derbyshire, at Derby, 1882.
- 8 wickets 32 for runs, Yorkshire v. Middlesex, at Sheffield, 1882.
- 8 wickets 5 for runs, Yorkshire v. Surrey, at Holbeck, 1883.
- 5 wickets 17 for runs, Yorkshire v. Notts, at Sheffield, 1883.
- 6 wickets 13 for runs, Yorkshire v. Gloucestershire, at Moreton-in-Marsh, 1884.
- 10 wickets 51 for runs, North of England v. the Australians, at Manchester, 1884.
- 10 wickets 45 for runs, Yorkshire v. Derbyshire, at Huddersfield, 1885.
- 6 wickets 17 for runs, England v. Shaw's Australian XI., at Lord"s, 1885.
- 9 wickets 21 for runs, Yorkshire v. Sussex, at Huddersfield, 1886.
He first represented the Players against the Gentlemen in 1881, and took part in the matches for six years, bowling in 11 matches (21 innings), 3227 balls for 996 runs, and 39 wickets, average 25.53. At birth he was registered as Edmund Peat.
[edit] Notes
- ^ Grace, W.G.: Cricket (J.W. Arrowsmith, 1891), p. 353.
- ^ Grace, op. cit., p. 168.
- ^ Pullin, Alfred William: Talks with Old English Cricketers (W. Blackwood, 1900), p. 317.
- ^ Pullin, op. cit., p. 318.
- ^ Lilley, A.A. Twenty-Four Years of Cricket (Mills & Boon, 1912), p. 187.
