Cricket 1886

466 CRICKET: A WEEKLY RECORD OF THE GAME. NOV. 25 1886. TH E IN FLU EN CE OF CR ICK E T ON TH E L IV E S OF MEN . B y M id - off . How often is the remark made that there is too much cricket played at Public Schools and at the Universities, that boys and men seem to have one ambition only, to be in the School or ’Varsity XI., and that prizes and scholarships are nowhere in the race. Now this statement like most sweeping assertions is on the whole false, although it contains a small modicum of truth. There is certainly not too much cricket at schools, in fact not enough ; there may be a little too much of it at the Universities, but then only from a cricket point of view, not from that point of view which takes life as a whole, and from which one considers how games affect men right up to the end of life. Of course in what I shall say there is much that applies with equal force to tlie other popular games and sports—Football, Rowing, Running, and Athletics, but there are modifica­ tions of the argument connected with each of these on which a long discussion might be raised, and I do not propose to touch any of them, but simply to confine myself to the sub­ ject matter as indicated in the heading, the influence of Cricket on the lives of men. There are no prizes in Cricket with the exception of bats given in some places for 50 or 100 runs, a custom, by the way, which I think ratherobjectionable—nomoney consider­ ation whatever to the young cricketer. There are not even that mildest of dissipations, cups, excepting only those newly introduced County Challenge Cups, which for my part I think are a great mistake, and which I hope may not prove the thin end of a very objectionable wedge. Here we have a game in which there is only one prize, honour, the bare record of what you have done to be handed down in the annals of Cricket, and this surely is an ambition calculated to fire the young brain. He is not to have his sideboard, supposing him ever to possess one, loaded with cups. There is no.£250 and a goldbadgeas atWimbledon. By no manner of means will cricket ever bring him in a direct manner any more of this world’s goods than he would otherwise possess, but I will endeavour to show that it will indirectly be of great service to all in enabling them to work hard and earn their living, and be con­ tented with the station of life in which they are placed. Surely it is a consideration of great value that a boy should be taught early to desire things which are an honour when done, things of beauty and joys for ever. Oh! that first century. Can W. G. remember his ? or Walter Read his? perhaps not, lost amongst the multitude; but still I fancy they can, most of us at any rate can remember ours, and many who have never yet obtained the coveted three figures, will remember their first big score. How the blood courses through the veins! what narrow escapes! how that long fellow at short- slips nearly caught me two or three times! how angrily the wicket-keeper appealed for a catch atthewicket! (IwonderwhetnerI touched it), and then the burst of applause when you walk back to the pavilion. If happiness exists anywhere on earth it is not very far away when that youngster throws his bat down inside the dressing room, and the sweet feelinggradu­ ally steals over him that he has done a thing which can never be taken away from him. A cup to mark his achievement would not make him any happier,a platedbat is anabomination, amoney prize would spoil the whole thing. Not an unhealthy ambition this for aboy. To hear the Governor’s approving “ Well played, old bojT,” and to keep that bit of newspaper locked away somewhere for over. Next let us look for a few moments at a school where sports are not thought much of, or taka a school where everythinghas a chance from brains to nerve and skill, and take the boy who goes for work alone. He becomes prodigiously clever, he wins all the prizes, but with what result? his shoulders are round; his health suffers; and he becomes, what is the greatest of all sins in schoolboy eyes, an insufferable prig. I remember the head of a school once, a very clever fellow—he seemed to know everything, the ways of Demosthenes seemed as familiar to him as the ways of the tuck shop did to us. After he had been at school some three or four years, and just before he was leaving, it occurred to him that perhaps learning was not everything, and he decided to try and win the Mile in the Sports. For some time previous to the date fixed, alarming rumours were prevalent that he had been seen in remote country lanes running at full speed, and it was noticed that he was very careful in his diet. Alas, he found that to win the mile required a good deal of training as well as to be head of the sixth, and without stopping to discuss the relative merits of the two achievements, I am not sure that our friend would not have given up a whole heap of his prizes to be first in that race, instead of being knocked out of it very early as was the case. Boys at school who will not play cricket, or who have acquired a just aversion to it through the reprehensible system of fagging, will be found congregated in a tart shop, eating hot cakes just after school dinner and sitting on stools in front of a counter all the fine afternoons waiting for hot tarts to be brought straight from the oven into their omnivorous jaws, and running up a healthy bill for their parents to pay in oash, and for themselves to pay in after life in chronic dyspepsia. Not to mention those excursions to country roadside inns, that sitting behind a red curtain, smoking and drinking beer until fortunately the outraged stomach cries out and nature refuses to take any more. If to learn well is a laudable ambition, to play well is equally to be aimed at; theschool exists for the education and improvement ofthe body as well as of the mind. Moreover, it does not at all follow that because a boy is very devoted to cricket at sphool, he therefore will not distinguish himself at the University and in after life. The names of hundreds of the most ardent devotees of the noble game, who have risen in their professions, will be familiar to every reader. Look at the thousands of the clergy who flock to the Oxford and Cambridge match, many of them men of note, most of them good scholars. Again look at many of the masters of our Public and other Schools. Indeed, it would appear, to judge from the number of masterships held by cricketers,that there must be something in the gamewhich qualifies them in a particular manner for the really onerous duty of teaching others—for how can a man teach to others that most difficultof all lessons, patience, who has not himself learnt it ? and where should he learn this lesson better than in the cricket field ? Can a man enforce the wholesome rules of discipline, so important a part of school teaching, unless he has himself felt them, and where shall he feel them better, and find the lessons more easily learnt than in having to suddenly go to long leg after he has as he thinks begun to find the spot in bowling. Believe me, you who have never tried it, this is a very wholesome discipline, and there are many variations of the same lesson. You hear extra cover ask his captain “ shall I cross over?” “ Yes, can’t help it,” is the answer, and off goes a big fellow every four balls, about sixty yards from point to point, a good step this for the whole of a hot August afternoon. This makes a man keep schoolboys in their place, and prevents them being spoiled. Some boys at school and men through life are hopelessly lazy. Everything is possible to the man who works hard, and he will always at any rate provide for himself in comfort. Nothing is possible to the lazy youngster at school except evil, small at first, but rapidly striking its fatal roots deeper and deeper, until the boy finds himself a man before his time, with vices in a fair way of development and with impaired health. What is to make him work ? What is to make him come out of, or never enter into evil ways ? The answer is lain, “ Cricket.” There is nothing else will o it; flogging him, or setting him impositions will not make him work. Why, I knew a boy once at a private school, who had a separate task book for himself, while all the rest of the School had one between them: Did the im­ positions make him work ? Not at all. A boy soon acquires just sufficient knowledge to keep him from disaster, but it is not such kind of knowledge that will keep such a character as I am describing out of life-long difficulties. Let him be induced to take an interest in cricket,not forced—that is an evil and will only make him hate it. Make the coach take him to a net, and interest him in the science of the game if possible. Have the leg net taken down, bowl him,by accident of course,somehalf volleys to leg, well up. Good heavens ! if he can resist that pleasure after a few weeks’ trial, he must be in a very bad way indeed. Interest him at any rate in some kind of outdoor amusement. Better a thousand times that such a boy should become what some parents call cricket mad, that he should think of nothing else at all, and neglect his studies entirely,than that he sholud grow up as so many boys do, with just enough attention to their books to keep clear of the master’s birch when at school, and enough evil in them to deserve it ever after. He will at least have learnt something—his parents’ money will not have been wasted. A noble pursuit will have been followed in amanly way and health and vigour will take the place of sickness and disease. Again, the surroundings, the associations of Cricket are eminently refining and good up to the end. The same cannot honestly be said of a good many games. Cricketers are a gentlemanly lot, all of them, Professionals as well as Amateurs, with a few exceptions not confined to either class. It would be unwise to mention names, but do we not often hear such a remark as this amongst amateur cricketers:“ So and so” (a professional) “ Why what a gentlemanly fellow he is,” or “ Quite a gentleman.” Why is this ? Why because the game is a refining one. Here is no horse-play, no bullying, no shouting, an umpire always there to give an irrevocable decision with more or less accuracy. The game has danger enough of a sort, great pluck is required in some portions of it as I shall endeavour to show later on, but no barbarity, no betting, and, I say dis­ tinctly, no bad language. When I say no bad language, I of course mean relatively none, for the smothered D— which reaches your ears as ou etand at point, when a redoubtable hard itter is out in the first over, surely cannot be termed bad language, and is in fact no more to his mind than the exclamation made by a celebrated professional whenever he gets a wicket, “ There! ” Amateurs and professionals play together on the terms of the most perfect equality, here is a levelling of class distinctions worthy of the name—masters and boys at school, employes and employers later on in life, have a rest here at least from all evil passions and jealousy; no class bitterness, no coveting or desire for anything that titled swell possesses, except the one little pleasure of knocking his off stump out of the ground, or running him out with a quick low return. They play very little cricket in Ireland. What is required in the game of cricket in the way of manly virtues to entitle it to such a high place in the education of youth ? Here are a few: Courage, Endurance, Modesty, Self-confidence, Abstinence, Good-temper, Thoroughness. Are these enough ? because, if not, many more might be added. Courage, of a decidedly strong kind, is required to go in in a really good match, orwhen your opponents are very much stronger than yourselves, when the wicket is kicking, and about twenty runs are needed to save the follow; a good deal of courage is required to standwhere E. M. Grace stands at point, and a fair quantity is also requisite not to flinch at mid-off when a man like W. J. Ford is putting them gently back with a bat three inches thick; and to stand up behind the wickets to a fast bowler bowling to a left handed batsman—Well—for those who Next Issue December 30