Empire Cricket Booklet

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A. B. TANCRED AND HIS BROTHERS

1 000 runs in a season twice. He wrote the chapter in Luckin's History of South African Cricket on the first Australian team in South Africa (1902). 47 Louis played in the historic match that ended on 4 January 1906, which 'will ever be a red-letter day in the annals of South African cricket, for on that date South Africa beat the Marylebone Club team by one wicket, and for the first time in the history of the game in South Africa an English eleven was vanquished in what is now commonly called a "test match'" . 48 South Africa won, thanks to the batting of A. W. Nourse in the second innings. L. J. Tancred, opening the batting, made 3 and 10. Louis's first tour to England was in 1901 with the second South African team to tour England. Louis had a reasonable tour, scoring over 1 000 runs and averaging 25.56. In the first innings of the match against London County in May at the Crystal Palace, he was caught Beldam, bowled W. G. Grace, for 37. His revenge came in the first innings in the match against MCC and Ground at Lord's in June, when W. G. Grace, opening for the MCC, was caught Tancred, bowled Rowe, for 12. It did not end there. Opening the South African innings, Louis was bowled W. G. Grace for 2. There may have been no ill will, however, as Louis turned out for London County, secretary and captain W. G. Grace, on one occasion in 1901. Louis scored a resounding 0. He was also a member of the third South African team in England in 1904. This time the team spent the first three weeks of the tour practising on the unfamiliar turf wickets. News of Vincent's suicide reached Louis in June. He missed two matches and then, returning to the crease in splendid form about ten days later, hammered a sequence of fine innings, as if writing an elegy in runs for his lost brother. Against Gloucestershire he hit 97 and 26, against Warwickshire 106 and 13 not out, against Middlesex 29 and 75, only 4 against London County (for whom W. G. Grace made a modest O and 1), and then 148 against Dublin University, 99 against Hampshire, 73 against Somerset, and a towering 250 against Scotland. He scored six centuries and concluded the tour with an aggregate of 1 640 runs, an average of 48.23. It was his finest hour. Yet, as his team-mate Maitland Hathorn (average runs 37.19) observed, 'a

borrowed a service Webley revolver from a friend before catching a train to Florida where he went to his rented room at the Linda Hotel. A short while after his return, shots were heard by people some distance from the hotel who assumed it was someone practising on the veld and took no notice. Strangely, none of the other hotel guests admitted to hearing a noise. Bernard Tancred, who had received word that his brother was depressed and had borrowed a gun, hurried to Florida to find Vincent with three bullet wounds in the head. Down the years, the question 'why' has received no complete answers. It has been suggested that he was disappointed at being omitted from the team to tour England for which he had been a reserve, and it may be that he never regained his abilities after a hand injury sustained during the South African War. He was working as a customs clearing agent but did have debts, including money owed to his married sister living in London. The inquest decided that his death was due to melancholia, or what we would now call clinical depression. In true Tancred fashion, his funeral was attended by many mourners and their 'beautiful wreaths'. A bachelor, Vincent left debts but no descendants. His younger brother Louis, touring with the South African team in England, laid low for a few days, then hammered a series of big scores. For superstitious family members, Vincent's death was yet another manifestation of the curse they believed to have been vested on the family ever since the sins of old Dr Augustus Joseph Tancred, who had died in 1867. 46 Louis Joseph Tancred Louis Joseph, the youngest of the Tancred brothers, was born in 1876 and became the third Tancred brother to play Test cricket for South Africa. He was by far the best-known and most illustrious cricketer of them all. His 97 against Australia at the Wanderers in 1902/03 was the highest score by a South African on Test debut until Andrew Hudson scored 163 in the West Indies in 1992 and became the first South African to score a century on Test debut. Louis played in fourteen Tests for South Africa, in three as captain. He was the first player to pass 1 000 runs in Currie Cup cricket, and in all matches scored over