Empire Cricket Booklet

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BERNARD TANCRED HALL

'gentleman's' watering hole, and together with C. D. Rudd and H.J. Feltham, among others, was described as one of the 'generous supporters of the game' of cricket. 14 He died on 19 January 1895, aged 60. Au gu stus had achieved financial security and a respected position in white society. However, the legacy of his father, old Dr Tancred of the first Cape parliament, had been at best ambi gu ous in terms of finance, reputation and status, and those who remembered that Dr Tancred's conduct was also believed to have brought a curse on himself and his heirs might have paused to reflect that the renewed good times could not possibly last. The sons of Au gu stus Frederick Tancred and Mary Ellen, were the grandly named Au gu stus Bernard ('AB' or Bernard) born 1865, Claude Cassiolo born 1870, Vincent Maximillian ('VM') born 1875, and Louis Joseph ('LJ') born 1876. Born in Port Elizabeth, they all attended St Aidan's College, a Roman Catholic boarding school in Grahamstown. 15 A feature of this type of'public' school education, in the Cape as back'home' in Britain, was the emphasis on the importance of sport, both its skills and values. The Eastern Cape was far from being a cricketing backwater, building as it did on the firm foundations of the Port Elizabeth Club to which H. H.Webster, a professional player, was brought out from England in about 1881 by Owen Robert Dunell. He was said to be the first such player-coach in South Africa. Dunell later captained South Africa and played with A. B. Tancred in their only two Tests in 1888/89. Another advantage lay in the socially privileged background of many of the pupils for, although it was possible to come from the most modest origins and rise to spectacular wealth in a generation, there was also a parallel stream in which successful and well-connected families made use of their established networks to rise, and on occasion to fall, with the tide. Two contemporaries at St Aidan's who would featureprominently in A.B.Tancred's life were (later Sir) Percy Fitzpatrick, who would become famous as the author of Jock ofthe Bushveld and as a major fi gu re in the Uitlander movement to gain political and economic rights on the Rand, and (later Sir) Charles Coghlan, who became the first premier of Southern Rhodesia (1923-1927). 16

Augustus Bernard Tancred Widely known as'AB', Au gu stus Bernard Tancred (1865-1911) became labelled, and not only in the nor mally extravagant lan gu age of the obituary, as'the W. G. Grace of South Africa': 'The name of Tancred has been a household one in the world of cricket for almost a generation, four brothers of this family having made great reputations for themselves, and it may with justice be claimed that Mr Au gu stus Bernard Tancred was, when in his prime, the greatest of the quartet, and was, indeed, the W. G.Grace of South Africa.' 17 If Grace was the major cricketing phenomenon of his era and Tancred not, what ex plains the comparison? Grace was single-minded where cricket and money were concerned, Tancred not; Grace lined his pockets from his prowess on the field; Tancred was more the colonial gentleman amateur who had a day job. But if there was to be a South African Grace, why did the garland fall on Tancred, and what did it all represent? As the Tancred sons left school, so they headed back to the family home in Kimberley. An early account describes A. B. Tancred as 'one of the brightest orna ments of South African cricket, one who wrought many doughty deeds with bat and ball ... for many years unquestioned champion batsman of South Africa ... he came to Kimberley in the days of his adolescence, and at once astonished the natives by making a chanceless 140 not out in the first match in which he took part'. 18 He was just sixteen. Cricket in Kimberley was about to develop as rapidly as did most other aspects of that society, de velopments accelerated by the arrival of the railway in 1884 and electric light in 1885. Having sat out the first two Champion Bat tournaments organised by Port Elizabeth, Kimberley entered the fray in the third at Port Elizabeth (22 December 1884 - 1 January 1885) but with disastrous results, playing and losing three matches, two by an innings, despite the efforts of C. E. Finlason and the emerging talents of Au gu stus Bernard Tancred. This tournament marked the end of the reign of Edward Ling, the man who was early cricket in Kimberley, indeed an early candidate for the Grace mantle. A. B. Tancred, the young pretender who had averaged less than 7 in the tournament, was