Cricket 1887

JAN. 27, 1867. CRICKET: A WEEKLY RECORD OF THE GAME. 3 but should a modern satirist seek to lampoon the noble president of the Marylebone Club, or the Kentish senator who represents cricket in the House of Lord’s, he could not, with a shadow of justice, charge Lords Lyttelton and Harris with expending less zeal and labour in the service of the country than they have given to their favourite game. Nous avons change tnit cela. Nor is there probably a less change in the “ respectable” personages on whom the brunt of the cricket contests falls. Before the introduction of pads and gloves; when the hands of an old cricketer could be described by Mr. Jesse as worthy to be pre­ served in a glass case in the pavilion at Lord’s, like Galileo’s at Florence, as trophies of his sufferings and glory,—“ Broken, distorted,, mutilated, half-nailless, they resemble the hoof of a rhinoceros almost as much as a human hand,”—it is not surprising that roughness of address rather thau refinement of manner was characteristic of the personage who made his living by cricket, and that he should occasionally turn his battered digits to more violent ends. A newspaper of 1752 records, for instance, that “ Slack, theNorwich butcher, beat Faulkner, the cricket-player (who before beat Smallwood and others), at .Broughton’s Amphitheatre, after a very severe contest of twenty-seven minutes.” One great cause of these terrible injuries to the hands was the rule which existed when the wicket played at consisted of two stumps and one bail,—that to run a player out the ball must be returned into a hole in the ground between the stumps before the batsman could place his bat in the same hole, a race which must have m-ide the contact of hard wood and bruised fingers a matter of constant occurrence. The increase of the stumps to three abrogated this barbarous usage ; and the general introduction of swift round-arm bowling, by making defen­ sive armour a matter of necessity, obviated many accidents. Not that the fast under­ handers which were bowled before this innovation could be treated with indifference. This is how the great David Harris is depicted by a cricket chronicler : “ His attitude when preparing to deliver the ball was masculine, erect and appalling. First he stood like a soldier at drill—upright. Then, with a grace­ ful and elegant curve, he raised the fatal ball to his forehead, and, drawing back his right foot, started off. "VVoe be to the unlucky wight who did not know how to stop these cannon­ ades ; his fingers would be ground to dust against the bat, his bones pulverised, and his blood scattered over the field!” And yet, though pads and gloves would seem almost a precaution of ordinary prudence, there are men educated at Westminster School, long after the era of the late Primos of Scotland and the present Laird of Metheven, who remember the Queen’s scholars’ eleven arrayed for their annual match with the Town-boys, in nankeen knee-breeches, and silk stockings. But after all, the great dead-weight which retarded the progress of cricket was the taint of gambling, which clung to the sport far into the present century. Miss Mitford, who was, ft's became a Wessex woman, an enthusiast for cricket, writes “ quite spitefully ” to Haydon in 1823 about a match which she had been to Bramshill Park to see. •‘ There they were, a set o f ugly old men, -white- headed and bald-headed, for half of L ord’s was engaged in the com bat, players arid Gentlem en, Mr. Ward and Lord Frederick Beauclerk, the veterans o f the green, dressed in tight white jackets (the Apollo Belvidere could not bear the hideous disguise of cricketing jacket), with neck­ cloths firm ly tied round their throats, fine japanned shoes, silk stockings, and gloves, • . . there they stood, silent, solemn, slow, playing for money, making a business o f the thirg. I never was so disappointed in my life; but every­ thing is spoilt; when money puts its ugly nose in. To think of playing cricket for hard cash ! Whether the charming authoress of “ Our Village” took quite a fair view of the proceed­ ings in this match, which was between Hamp­ shire andEngland ,it might not be safe to assert, remembering how much her pictures are coloured by her predispositions; but it is impossible not to sympathise with her denunciation of “ making the noble game of cricket an affair of bettings and hedgings, and maybe of cheatings.” There should be little question as to the im­ provement in the spirit of the game, which was inaugurated when county matches (the genius loci taking the place of the fames auri ) were substituted for the contests between selected elevens, which had hitherto been the rule. Some twelve years later William Howitt writes to Miss Mitford a most ani­ mated narrative of a match between Sussex and Nottingham, which he and his sister Mary witnessed. He begins by a lively pic­ ture of the arrival of the Sussex men by the coach one fine Sunday morning, “ in their white hats,” and, we may presume, their other paraphernalia. He then graphically sketches the scene in the “ Forest ” ground on Monday: the amphitheatre crowded with an eager, forward-leaning mass of twenty thou­ sand spectators—silent, except when some exploit of the players produced a sudden thunder of applause. His picture of the play and the result is equally vivid; but the cream of his letter is in the conclusion :— I could not help seeing what a wide difference twenty years has produced in the character of the English population. W hat a contrast is this play to bull-baiting, dog, and cock fightings! So orderly, so manly, so generous in its character. It is the nearest approach to the athletic gam es of the Greeks that we have m ade, and the effect on the general m ass of the people by the em ulation it will excite must be excellent. There is som e­ thing very beautiful in one distant county send­ ing out its peaceful cham pions to contend with those of another in a sport which has no draw­ back of cruelty aod vulgarity in it, but has every recomm endation o f skill, taste, health, and gener­ ous rivalry. You, dear Miss M itford, have done a great deal to prom ote this better spirit, and you could not have done m ore had you been haran­ guing Parliam ent and; bringing in bills for the purpose. The writer’s instinct, Quaker and Radical as he might be, was thoroughlyBritish. He grasped the truth that athletic training developed the elements of his ideal of John Bull, though it made men contented with their lot in life and loyal to their Queen. Sir Wilfrid Lawson is credited with a desire that his sons should be good cricketers. The wish is honourable and wise, but hardly com­ patible with the strong advocacy of those opinions for which the author of the senti­ ment is so notorious. Mr. W. G. Grace is understood to be at one with Sir Wilfrid in his avoidance of alcohol; but it is doubtful whether any prominent Radical, with the exception of Mr. Herbert Gladstone, has ever distinguished himself in the cricket-field. On the contrary, the rise of cricket as a popular pastime is in no small degree owing to the influence of the Church of England. About 1830, the University (known for a long time as the Magdalen) Club was founded at Oxford by Charles Wordsworth—afterwards Bishop of St. Andrew’s—and F. B. Wright, who became Rector of Broughton, Manchester, in whose possession are the first minutes of the Club. The many exemplary clergymen who from that time made cricket a feature in their curriculum of parish elevation, can hardly be counted ; but lists of the University and public school matches include names, from the Bishop of Liverpool and other prelates downwards, which would do honour to any religious society. Much of the popu­ larity of Rugby School, under the late Arch­ bishop of Canterbury, arose from the sound­ ness of its cricket tuition; and through the influence of masters and tutors, the game found its way, under the happiest auspices, to town, village, and hamlet—from Berwick-on- Tweed to Penzance. The taint of gaming under such influences soon became slight, if it did not entirely dis­ appear from the cricket-field. An old univer­ sity and public-school man may stake his half-sovereign or half-crown on his alma, mater with an equally enthusiastic crony of bygone years; but the professional betting- man finds Lord’s or the Oval the mcst unproductive field he can frequent, and even in the exhibition matches which have been in vogue of late years, has been heard to com­ plain how little^there is to pick up. Certainties are unknown at cricket, and “ good things” are as uncertain. There is no room for the chicanery of the turf, and in the remoter quarters of the game alone are umpires suspected of partial dealing. Where this occurs, it is in no small degree a remnant of the superstition that an umpire was a sort of counsel for the defence, on whom the victory of his side depended in no small degree. It is not so many years since a first-class county paper contained in its comments upon an impending All England contest an exhorta­ tion to the local umpire to be careful how he placed his men in the field! It was only a development of this idea which inspired a country umpire to exclaim, on an appeal as to the last ball in a match, “ Not out, and our side has won! ” when in fact they had only escaped a defeat in a single innings. Such a partisan is not necessarily, or even presumably, a rogue. While the love of cricket and its practice was fostered with traditional affection in its parent counties, a strong rivalry was springing up among the vigorous Norsemen of Notting­ ham and York, and the eager lads of Lanca­ shire. Nottingham, as Howitt relates, beat Sussex in 1885. Soon after that date Norfolk became a stronghold of cricket; Cambridge, Leicester, and other midland shires helped to swell the catalogue of cricketers of maik, and the South of the Thames no longer enjoyed a monopoly of the game. Yet it was seme time before it crossed the Tweed. In an amusing article on Ancient and Modern Cricket, published in the “ Gentleman’s Maga­ zine” in 1883, Lord Strathavon, afterwards Marquis of Huntly, is dismissed with the observation that he ought to play in private; and he is the only Scotsman thought worthy of mention. But very soon after this date the formation of the Grange Club at Edinburgh, and the exertions made by amateurs of cricket like Sir Thomas Moncrieffe at Perth, Major Dickins at Kelso, and Colonel Buchanan of Drumpellier, in the West of Scotland, brought the game into vogue with a respectable and numerous class of the community. It is, however, far more probable that the great impetus to the acclimatisation of the game in Scotland should be considered as due to its introduction into several of the new schools, which about this date sprang up in various parts of North Britain—as the Edinburgh Academy, under Principal Williams, and Gledalmond, under the immediate eye of the Bishop of St. Andrews, could hardly fail to emulate English public schools in its cultiva­ tion of their principal sport; and a little later on Loretto throve, as many an adventurous academy in England has done, upon its repu­ tation for sending out not only fair scholars but well-trained cricketers. It should not be forgotten that, owing to the influence of the noblemen and gentlemen already referred to, the Marylebone and other well-known English clubs paid occasional visits to the North; and one—the Free Foresters—made a series of cricket tours, ranging over several years, with a noticeable improvement in the ratio of success obtained by the local clubs against whom they played. The late Earl of Carlisle, when Lord Lieutenant of Ireland, did much in the same direction, by bringing I Zingari over to play in the Plicenix Park, and to visit several county clubs; but their colours caused them to be hooted and pelted by the “ wearers of the green ” in the wilder districts: and if such was the spirit in the halcyon days of Eglinton and Abercorn, it is to be feared that now little cricket intercourse will take place with Ireland. It is not the least melancholy part of the present gloomy outlook in that country, that the natural manly love of sport is to a great extent eradicated by the agitators, among whom “ all the reptile’s venom rankles in the man.” Notwithstanding those who would fain create the same state of civil war in England, the peaceful combat is waged in Britain by every class and in every shire with Next Issue Fe