First class cricket has a very long history in England, and Nottinghamshire is one of the oldest counties. Teams of that name have, in fact, played cricket since at least 1835. During that time, they have played their home games at a world famous ground called Trent Bridge……
One of their most famous, and colourful, nineteenth century players was Mordecai Sherwin who was born in 1851 and died in 1910. In the wintertime, when cricket was impossible because of the weather, “Mordy”, an expert at catching a moving ball, actually played football for Notts County, the local football club. He was very agile and, despite weighing seventeen stones (238 pounds, 108 kilos), he always played as a goalkeeper. Even though he carried a lot of weight, every time that Notts County scored a goal, he would treat the crowd to a cartwheel.
In those days, goalkeepers could be barged into the net to score a goal, so Mordy’s weight frequently came in useful. On one famous occasion, the Blackburn Rovers outside right, Joe Lofthouse, barged him, but merely bounced off. Sherwin famously said:
“Young man, you’ll hurt yourself if you do that again.”
A little while later, Lofthouse tried his luck again, but Mordy stepped aside and Lofthouse collided with the goalpost and cut himself .
Mordy was much more famous, though, as a first class cricketer for his native county. He played 328 times for Nottinghamshire and three times for England in international “Test” matches. He scored 2362 runs as a batsman and as a wicketkeeper he caught 616 batsmen and stumped 227. We have not looked at stumpings but it is basically a way which only the wicketkeeper can use to dismiss the batsman. If the batsman tries to hit the ball but misses it, the wicketkeeper can catch it and knock the wicket over himself, but only if the batsman has wandered too far down the pitch, beyond the special white line, about a yard or so from the wicket. Here’s Mordecai. You can just about see the white line for stumpings…..
During Mordy’s golden years, one of Nottinghamshire’s most effective bowlers was called Francis “Frank” Joseph Shacklock (1861-1937). He played for Nottinghamshire from 1886-1893 and took around 120 wickets. In his entire career, playing also for Derbyshire, the MCC/Marylebone Cricket Club and Otago in New Zealand, he took 497 wickets.
It didn’t take me too long to find some examples of Frank Shacklock’s partnership with Mordy Sherwin as they played together for Nottinghamshire.
These scorecards come from the annually appearing almanac of cricket entitled “Wisden”. Here is part of the scorecard for a Nottinghamshire v Sussex game in July 1891:
In this game, Shacklock managed eight wickets for 144 runs, with four in the first innings (in a a total of 332 runs by Sussex) and four more in the second (a pathetic 38). That is a remarkable difference in the two innings totals for Sussex. Below are the bowling statistics. Shacklock took his four wickets in the first innings at a cost of 117 runs but at a cost of only 27 runs in the second. :
Here’s Frank Shacklock :
In this next game, Shacklock took nine wickets in the match, which was a fixture against Somerset in June 1892. First come the statistics for Nottinghamshire’s two innings, and then Somerset’s two innings. Look how many times the phrase “b Shacklock” appears, particularly in the second Somerset innings of just under one hundred……
A frequent visitor to watch Nottinghamshire cricket at Trent Bridge around this time was an up-and-coming young author called Arthur Conan Doyle. Arthur was a huge sports fan. He actually played in ten first class cricket matches with a highest score of 43 and just one wicket as a bowler, that of WG Grace, the greatest cricketer in the world at the time. Arthur enjoyed bodybuilding and he was an amateur boxer as well as a keen skier, a talented billiards player, a golfer and, in amateur football, a goalkeeper for Portsmouth FC, the predecessor of the present club. Here he is:
Arthur had enormous regard for the wicketkeeping skills of Mordecai Sherwin and the bowling skills of Frank Shacklock. He was very much taken with how frequently batsmen were out, “caught Sherwin bowled Shacklock”.
Arthur decided that he would commemorate the skills of these two cricketers in the forthcoming detective novel he was about to start writing. The book was to be called “A Study in Scarlet” and it would appear in 1887. The best idea, Arthur thought, would be to have “caught Sherwin bowled Shacklock” become an important part of the book. One way of doing this would be to use the two men’s names in the name of the book’s hero, by taking the first syllable from one cricketer’s surname and the second one from the second cricketr’s surname. An excellent idea, although his first effort was a very poor one, it must be said. Who could admire a detective with the first name “Shackwin” ?
And so…….Arthur Conan Doyle turned the name on its head, came up with “Sherlock”, and the famous detective, Sherlock Holmes, was born.
“But what’s the connection between Mordecai Sherwin, Frank Shacklock and a Victorian pub called the Grove”, I hear you all ask. Well, with the money he had made playing cricket, Mordecai Sherwin bought the Grove pub. I have only got a few photographs from its very last days…
…..but it would have been a nice pub during the last few years of Queen Victoria’s reign. And I cannot imagine that with a character like Mordecai in charge, his old pal rank Shacklock didn’t come along every now and again for some free ale!
Next time, two other major characters in Sherlock Holmes stories who arrived directly from a fine bowling performance at Lord’s, probably witnessed by Arthur Conann Doyle, who was a member of the Marylebone Cricket Club and who would have visited this famous old ground on many occasions.
John Knifton 
How fascinating, John
Well yes, Derrick, I found it very intriguing. plus the fact that I also fouind ia likely origin for two more of the characters.
I did not, however, find an origin for Holmes, at least in the sense that the old Wisden compendium of the 1864-1900 editions does not list any great feats of arms by a player of that name.
The best wicket keeper I ever bowled to was Tony Pinder. we had such a relationship that he could signal what I should bowl. One batsman would take his guard in front of the crease. Tony would ask for an out swinger and advance to the stumps. He would then grab the out swinger and whip off the bails. I think that batsman appeared in the scorebook seven years running St Pinder B Knight
It almost makes it sound like a small business : “Pinder & Knight, Stumping Specialists”.
🙂
Cricket has a long history, but still remains a mystery to me. A friend sent me a link to have it explained, but that only confused me more. I find rugby, by far, more intriguing and exciting.
Horses for courses! I find cricket an extremely subtle sport with traps set for the unwary batsman, and some moments of great tension and drama.
Rugby, on the other hand, I find quite boring and I am always conscious of just how dangerous it is.
A recent survey found that of regular players just over a half of them had some kind of permanent brain damage. This is because no kind of head protection is commonly worn, which leaves the majority of players very vulnerable. I suspect that many concerned mothers will one day begin to stop their sons from playing such a risky sport.
That’s why our football players wear so much. A medical team also watches the games to look for players who have had their heads hit or shaken too hard to be removed for concussion protocol.
Exactly as it should be. Soccer introduced the same compulsory measure at the beginning of this season (September 2023)
I did not know that.
Interesting stuff. I wasn’t aware of the connection between cricket and Arthur Conann Doyle and his famous detective. I’ve read all the books, but never anything about Doyle and his history.
ACD would play any sport, and then, after the death of his beloved son in 1918, he expanded his already existing interest in spiritualism. In this he was a companion of Harry Houdini, who, unlike ACD, thought that all spiritualists were unscrupulous liars.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arthur_Conan_Doyle
This article should allow you to read about any aspects of ACD’s life that you find interesting….spiritualism, for example.
Naming characters for a fictional story can be quite challenging for an author. Sherlock went on to become a memorable fictional character. Thanks for sharing this interesting story about its origin. Do you have any idea why Doyle chose Holmes as the surname?
In a word, “No”. As I replied above to Derrick Knight……
“I did not……find an origin for Holmes, at least in the sense that the old Wisden compendium of the 1864-1900 editions does not list any great feats of arms by a player of that name.”
I didn’t read your reply to Derrick until after sending my comment. Perhaps the name Holmes has some connection in his personal life.
To be honest, I’ve never heard any suggestions at all as to why Holmes was called Holmes. I suspect that if anybody knew, it would be a well known “funfact” about the great detective,
Even though I’m not a major fan of cricket myself, I found this extremely interesting. I never knew there was such a link between the club, players and Doyle, and what a fascinating one it is too. I can see now the relevance of the pub and its history makes it even more worthy of saving. Sadly, that’s too late and what a shame it is!
Absolutely. I used to drive past what seemed to me a perfectly preserved Victorian pub four or five times a week but then it was fencing around it, and then it was just a pile of bricks. Wasn’t it Joni Mitchell, perhaps, who said “You don’t know what you’ve got till it’s gone” ?
It was indeed and true to the word.
Fascinating. The pub looks beautiful. Thank you.
I’m glad you enjoyed my blog post, Lakshmi. And you are absolutely right about the pub. It was a great pity that nobody was prepared to reopen it as a real Victorian pub, as it would have been in, say, 1890.