The Summer Field

38 Something intangible such as fairness was hard to agree on; it might change as men aged and newcomers had new ideas; and it went to the heart of what cricket, and all sport, was about. In August 1920, the Rev G.H.Vine wrote in the Derby Daily Telegraph as a former football referee that ‘our sport must be kept clean and wholesome at any cost’, because the public was paying for fair play and a fair result. ‘If the game once became tainted with the betting evil and players could be bought and sold in this way, all hopes of survival of the code as a national asset would be gone forever.’ Vine’s plea was packed with meaning. What was the place of money in his, or any, sport? How did you define fair, and clean (in body, or conscience?); and why bring good and evil into it? Were these not topics for church on a Sunday morning, not a playing field on a Saturday afternoon? It was unchristian of Vine to speak of a sport tainted ‘forever’ if some people bet on it – what about forgiveness of sins? And who said betting was a sin? What was the purpose of sport: physical exercise and competition in skill — most football professionals were ‘clean living, honest men’, Vine wrote – that watchers could enjoy; or anything else, such as making money? Some players could earn a living and organisers could make a profit if people would pay to watch skilful and beautiful things that they could not do themselves; just as a vicar earned his money because he provided spiritual things that his parishioners could not, and wanted regularly. Was sport even as important as Vine implied? What was special about sport that its followers had to protect ‘at all costs’? Vine’s was only one point of view; referees, like umpires, had an interest in applying the rules. Others wrote the rules, and played according to them. If the rules made a game too boring or ugly, and enough spectators disliked it, and took their money elsewhere, what of ‘survival’ then? Was a sport something you played or watched in your spare time, run on the same lines as society generally; or could you – should you – seek to make it more ‘wholesome’ and ‘fair’? Were those few hours a week on a cricket field, or in church, a mirror of life or a respite from it? Whether a young and fit man, with the energy, time and money to spare on cricket, or old and untalented and only able to watch, were you seeking things you could not find in the working week? In a word, why cricket? What Was Cricket Like?