The Summer Field

71 The Myth of the ‘Golden Age’ When men around 1914 did rate their era, beyond the day-to-day grind or season’s preview and review, it’s striking how they believed the opposite of Cardus. Before the 1910 season in the Sunday sports newspaper Umpire , the Lancashire batsman John Sharp wrote (or at least allowed his name to be printed above the words) that ‘although some of our critics seem to think that cricket is dead, I am sure that given a decent summer the public will take a greater interest than ever in the game’. Like most basic points, Sharp’s is often over-looked; memorable seasons such as 1947 and 2005, the building-blocks of golden ages, need dry weather. Lieutenant-Colonel John May regretted early in his 1906 reminiscences of north Hampshire that his district lacked the ‘encouragement of or devotion to cricket’ he had once seen. The Herts and Cambs Reporter columnist Corvus Cornix had a good perch to spot a ‘golden age’: in July 1913 he recalled W.G.Grace made his century of centuries in 1895, and a Daily Telegraph shilling fund for the doctor raised £10,000 (over a million in 21 st century money). ‘Those were the great days of English cricket which WG and his brothers had done so much to foster. It is doubtful whether the public interest in cricket is today quite what it was in those days.’ What was wrong with the game in the 1900s to explain these misgivings, The Gentlemen, who lost to the Players at Lord’s, July 1895. Left to right: back, G.J.Mordaunt (Oxford captain), Sir T.C.O’Brien, J.R.Mason, N.F.Druce. Seated: Ernest Smith, Gregor MacGregor, W.G.Grace (captain), J.A.Dixon, Stanley Jackson. Front: A.E.Stoddart and C.B.Fry.