Iremonger among the runs

James Iremonger was enjoying a golden summer for Nottinghamshire in 1904. The previous season he had been one of the Wisden Cricketers of the Year. On Bloomsday 1904 Notts were playing Kent. In the match leading up to this Iremonger had scored a mighty 189 not out at Lord’s against Middlesex. He went on to score 1949 runs for Notts that year, at the time the highest aggregate run total ever achieved in a season by a Notts player.¹

Clive Hart has already commented on infelicities and errors in Gifford’s cricketing commentary here and elsewhere.² The slight excuse for this note on Iremonger is a further error in Don Gifford’s account (Ulysses Annotated) of Iremonger’s innings of ‘a hundred and something’.

Gifford notes that ‘at the end of the day Iremonger..was still at bat having scored 155 runs’, and cites the Evening Telegraph of 16 June in support of this. In fact, the Evening Telegraph does not include the score ‘at the end of the day’, but at some point in the afternoon (evening papers often could not carry the close-of-play scores). The Telegraph has Iremonger on 155 not out, with Notts at 290 for two wickets when Joyce noted the score. The paper also included a stop-press score of 330 for two for Notts from slightly later in the afternoon. By the end of the day Iremonger had progressed to 221 not out, and Notts to 413 for three.

The next day Iremonger pushed on further, until he was finally bowled for 272, as Notts scored 602 against a weakened Kent side in a drawn game. Iremonger’s 272 remains the highest total ever scored by a Nottinghamshire batsman batting at No 2.

John Simpson