Cricket 1889

“ T o g e t h e r jo in e d i n c r i c k e t ’s m a n l y t o i l . ”— Byron. No. 2J 6- VOL. VIII. Registered lor Transmission Abroad. THURSDAY, JULY 18, 1889. PEICE 2d. SIR H E N R Y JAM E S , Q.C., M .P. T he Presidency of the M.C.C., the most influential cricket club in the world, is a position which none but those who have a distinguished record, or have deserved especially well by reason of their devotion to and interest in the game, can hope to fulfil. For over a hundred years, the Committee of the Marylebone Club have aoted as the law­ makers and high administrators of onr great national sport. Their position, too, has beenuniversally recognised, and, during the many changes that have taken place, their ruling has always been accepted on matters of cricket without appeal, as the result of careful thought and an earnest desire to uphold the best interests of the game. A glance at the names of those who have held the office of President of the Maryle­ bone Club during the last sixty years will show that the direction of its affairs has been undertaken by a long and distinguished array of crioket worthies. Even in such goodly company, though, the pre­ sent occupant of the chair, the Right Hon. Sir Henry James, can be said to yield to none in an ardent desire to advance the real welfare of the best of our British sports. Since his ichool days Sir Henry has been a consistent and liberal supporter of the game. Born at Hereford, on Oct. 30th, 1828, and educated at Cheltenham College, he was captain of the School eleven in 1844 and 1845. Forty years ago Inter-School matches were comparatively few, and it was not until 1856 that Cheltenham and Marlborough met. The records of Cheltenham cricket at the time were scanty, and the only notice we can find of Sir Henry in the book which gives particulars of the doings of Cheltonians in the various branches of athletic sports, is that he repre­ sented the Past in the first match against the Present Collegians, on June 23rd, 1851. Called to the Bar in 1852, he took great interest in the organisation of the Bar eleven, which played a number of matches in the hfties, and it was mainly through his efforts that it was formed. Though he long since gave up active cricjsct, his interest in it has never ceased, and as a member of the Marylebone, and for many years of the Surrey County Club, he has been a witness of most of the principal matches on the two ohief London grounds of late years. It is mainly as a cricketer and lover of cricket that Sir Henry James appeals to the readers of this paper. His political record, though, is one that may well be given too. Elected to the House of Commons in March, 1869, as one of the members to take office—though offered the Lord Chan­ cellorship—with Mr. Gladstone’s administra­ tion in 1886, disagreeing with the Prime Minister’s Home Rule polioy. Ever since he has been recognised as one of the foremost as well as most active members of the Liberal Unionist party. Our portrait is from a photograph by the London Stereoscopic Company, London. TH E M ONO TON Y OF MODERN C R ICK E T . for Taunton, unseating on a scrutiny his opponent, Mr. Sergeant Cox, he has remained ever since a member. Appointed Solicitor- General by Mr. Gladstone in September, 1873, he became Attorney-General in November of that year, and reoeived at the same time the honour of Knighthood. Going out of office in February, 1874, he was reappointed Attorney-General on the return of the Liberals to power in May, 1880, but declined N e a r l y forty years ago I con­ tended in the best matches in England, and for ten or twelve years subsequently I handled the willow and the ball. I shall, therefore, be accounted by the wise men of the present day as an ante-Diluvian who cannot know much about the game now ! Nevertheless I venture to think the game was a better one then than it is now, and for this reason, that it was more “ glori­ ously uncertain.” Good grounds of the billiard table type, and, above all, the absurd 1-b-w law have brought about dispropor­ tionate long innings, and the destruction to a great extent of what was known in my time— the era of Mynn, Bathurst, Hill- yer, and Redgate—as first-class bowling. I charge the 1-b-w law with having brought al»out that monotonous system of bowling which places the whole of the fieldsmen, ‘with the exception perhaps of one, upon the off-side, and which, therefore, does not admit of bowling for the curling twist from the leg side, or of wider balls on the same side from whioh bad hits were often made and men caught at long or short leg, or on the on side. I admit that I played myself under the pre­ sent 1-b-w law, but I think in those days a much more liberal construction was given to it. In the course of years umpires have per­ ceived the mathematical impossibility of a man being really out when standing between the wickets for being 1-b-w from a leg-twister, and they have acted accordingly. Much is it to be regretted, in ray opinion, that the wise men of the M.C.C. did not adopt the motioft