Sometimes cricket stirs intense passions. So it was on Saturday, February 17, 1894, and in the weeks following.
Boggy Creek, near Moyhu, played Hedi on that Saturday. Hedi was the original name for Edi, near Whitfield.
Boggy Creek won the toss and chose to bat. It made 60 runs in the first innings.
Edi took its turn at bat but managed only 16 runs. When Boggy Creek had its second innings, it made 27. This left Edi with a run chase of 72 to win the match.
It piled on the runs in the second innings, making 69 for the loss of only three wickets. Edi now looked to be in a winning position.
It needed only three runs to take the match but it had seven wickets in hand.
Suddenly, onlookers were surprised to see the Boggy Creek captain leave the field where he was fielding.
He walked over to a group watching the match and had a short conversation with them.
He returned leisurely to the field, ostentatiously looked at his watch and announced that time was up. He then led all his players off the ground.
The umpire called ‘play’ twice but the Boggy Creek side showed no intention of rejoining the match.
As far as they were concerned, the match was at an end. Accordingly, the umpire applied rule 45 of the cricket rules, that is, ‘When they (the umpire or umpires) shall call “play”, the side refusing to play shall lose the match’.
To avoid unpleasantness, George Gould, captain of the Edi side, foolishly did not insist on his team’s rights to claim victory in the match under rule 45.
Instead, he offered to have the match called a draw. Boggy Creek agreed to Edi’s offer that the match be treated as a draw.
In the following days, Boggy Creek team irrationally claimed the match had been a win.
It said that the Edi side had failed to complete the match within the allotted time.
So, it said, Boggy Creek had won. This was despite the fact that Edi was only three runs short of catching Boggy Creek, with time and wickets to spare.
At best, if it were true that the match had run its allotted time and both teams had not completed their two innings each, the match should have been treated as a draw.
A heated controversy broke out in the local newspapers as each side claimed right, and the match.
Perhaps, Boggy Creek wanted to remedy history. In the previous two years, the two teams had met six times.
Not counting this match, Edi had won four times. Boggy Creek had won just once.
The controversy spluttered on in the newspapers for weeks.
By its end, Gould was claiming that the long list of other Boggy Creek victories had arisen only because Edi had helped that team.
The gamesmanship of the Boggy Creek captain is reminiscent of controversies that still surround cricket legend, W.G. Grace, who was playing at the same time.