The Summer Field

176 Chapter Twenty-One Renewal ‘The pace of social and technological change is too fast for it to be possible to stick to ancient ways. To that extent we live in a society which has cut off its roots in the past.’ Sir Keith Thomas, Religion and the Decline of Magic As early as May 1910, John Sharp in Umpire newspaper was writing that a new way of counting county matches — ignoring draws – ‘is bound to brighten the game’. That such a thing as ‘bright’ cricket was praiseworthy took hold after the 1914/18 war. In April 1938 the Bridgnorth News reported that a knockout competition in Ludlow would have eight men a side, instead of eleven: ‘It is felt that this should lead to much brighter cricket.’ Whatever ‘bright cricket’ looked like, it was easier for the stronger team to attempt, and ignored the truth in any team sport that for every winner you had to have a loser. The Leicester Mercury reporter Cardinal hailed July 1928 as an unbeaten month for Leicestershire; his colleague Reynard noted the team’s ‘greater confidence’ and ‘more obvious brightness’. Perhaps because it was so vague, ‘bright’ cricket split conservatives. Two MCC trustees, Lord Hawke in 1937, and the Earl of Dartmouth in 1938, each appealed publicly for ‘bright cricket’. Rather than wishing for change, they sought a return to a better past, real or imagined. Lord Dartmouth, as Staffordshire president at the club’s annual meeting, complained that ‘a sort of dullness had crept into the game – a loss of the aggressive spirit by the batsman, by the bowler and especially by the field. There was nothing more depressing than watching an idle, lethargic field.’ Dartmouth, as a cricketing conservative, did not believe the laws needed drastic change; ‘brightening of the game’ was in the hands of players, captains and committees. Yet Dartmouth denied them all, let alone spectators, the right to choose how cricket evolved. He disapproved of ‘sensationalism’, which he claimed ‘some people’ were trying to bring in. In truth, Dartmouth disliked anything he did not control, such as people liking their amusement ‘in short spasms, filled from end to end with sensation’. Sir Pelham Warner, speaking as Middlesex president at the club’s annual meeting in 1943, likewise said he could see nothing wrong with modern cricket, except that there were too many counties (harking back to the Findlay Commission, of 1937, which suggested having 15 counties instead of 17), and some wickets were ‘over-prepared and over-doped’. ‘Do not be led away by the call for brighter cricket,’ Warner said. Quality of play mattered, on a pitch not over-favouring bat or ball, rather than tempo or