by Abhishek Mukherjee
Charlie Absolom of Cambridge and Kent was a giant of a man. He played one Test, and is generally remembered the man who walked out just after Fred Spofforth took the first ever hat-trick in Test cricket. Coming out at 27/7, he top-scored with 52 to take England to 113. Barring Lord Harris (33) nobody else reached double-figures.
Curiously, he did not bowl in the Test, but he used to be one of the best slow medium-pacers in England at one point. Holding the bat unusually high, he could also slog hard, particularly through long-on.
Soon after that Test, he almost vanished from the face of the earth. Nine years later he was reported dead in Trinidad, crushed by a crane while trying to load sugar (unloading bananas according to a source) aboard SS Muriel. Only 53, he had apparently working as a ship's pursuer all this while.
He played 99 First-Class matches, and got 2,515 runs at 15, 282 wickets at 19, and 127 catches. He was also competent at football, long jump, and shot put (he earned Cambridge Blues in both cricket and athletics).
However, his real cricketing claim to fame lies elsewhere. It dates back to a match for Cambridge at The Oval, in 1868.
The undergraduates put up 339. Surrey responded with 179 and had to follow-on, but recovered to set Cambridge a target of 175. Then James Southerton took out the Cambridge batsmen one by one. It was all but over when Absolom joined William Warner at 91/7. Then something curious happened.
He unleashed one of those straight slogs. The straight boundary at The Oval was some distance away without a marked boundary. They ran six and set off for a seventh run. Now, as the throw came in, the ball hit the Absolom's bat when he was en route the crease.
The fielding side appealed, and Absolom was given out. In fact, he became the first man in First-Class cricket to be given out obstructing the field.
This happened on 20 June 868.
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Not everyone was pleased with the decision, particularly Charles Box, as is evident from his piece in The English Game of Cricket: "This silly mandate received the contempt it deserved. Without doubt the ignorance of the umpire sadly marred the prospects of the Light Blues."
In fact, Box was so annoyed that the glossary of the book had the entry "Absolom, Mr., wrongly given out".