The Summer Field

13 Chapter Two Clubbing Together ‘In all good clubs, strict attention to correct behaviour is looked upon as of equal importance to cricket ability …’ Lieutenant-Colonel the Honourable Gerald French, The Corner Stone of English Cricket Englishmen clubbed together, whether for games or a lone hobby such as golf; for a building to dine and sit in when in London; to be a part of a movement, such as Scouting; or simply for the company when somewhere foreign, such as the English Public Schools Association, which ran a cricket team in Sydney and gave a lunch for some of the MCC team and managers in January 1933 (‘Mr DR Jardine could not attend’). A 19 th century cricket club might open the season with the first eleven playing the next 22. Rather than tire of the same faces, typically two clubs had to agree to a ‘match’. A tellingly odd line in Arthur Gilligan’s 1933 book Sussex Cricket raised the dangers: ‘I am not a socialist but I love the social side of the game immensely and I detest snobs. And there are a few to be found in every walk of life.’ Who was accusing Gilligan of socialism – evidently something the former England captain felt he had to deny?! Here was the dilemma of playing cricket, or paying extra to watch it from the pavilion. You were forever seeking the like-minded (‘being desirous of establishing a regular club for the amusement of the Hedon and Holderness gentlemen’, as one letter in far east Yorkshire put it in 1854). Some surviving printed rules of Victorian clubs show that new men were elected by ballot (‘one black ball in five will exclude’, said Ham Hill around 1830). A club was forever balancing; it needed new blood as men left the district or never paid their subscription, while it kept out mismatches and anyone who might spoil it for those already there (‘any friends may be introduced by a member for play,’ the rules said for Langton Wold club, near York, in 1850, ‘but not to the exclusion of any member’). At first most clubs, except for schools, and Army units, formed on places. Occupational teams, of policemen, bakers, and railwaymen, followed as early as the 1860s. Well-moneyed clubs such as Burton-on-Trent printed a fixtures card before the season at least from the 1880s. The All-England Eleven, in-demand and forever-travelling, fixed its diary a good year ahead around the 1850s. Otherwise, arranging matches was more haphazard, done only a few weeks in advance. Seasons could start slowly. In June 1860 the Derby Mercury reported cricket in the town ‘somewhat backward’ as clubs had not had much practice, let alone matches. As if to make up, cricket went on until well into September. In 1852 a