Cricket 1902

CRICKET, SEPT. 18, 1902. “ Together joined in Cricket’s manly toil.” — Byron. So. 01 «. V O L . XX I . THURSDAY , SEPT. 18, 1902. pb icb aa. CHATS ON THE CRICKET FIELD. he created an interest which has endured even to the present day in the cricket of his time. “ I can’t help thinking,” said Mr. Gale, “ that ours was a better game than that which is played now. I am quite con­ vinced that the present system of placing the field is not as good as it might be. The old-fashioned point used to stand thing as he can now with impunity. The Australians are not afraid to send a man in close, and never were; it is quite a study to watch some of them in the field. I always think that there were great advantages in the old training which a boy received at school. In early years I had to fag at long-stop, and if a boy could always stop a ball in that position, he could field anywhere. Single wicket matches were very useful in teaching boys to cover a lot of ground, especially when more than four on a side were playing, and you had to run everything out, whether before or behind the wicket. If you did not learn to anticipate you were not of much use at this kind of game.” “ The very badness of the out-fielding ground tended to make a boy smart in the field,” he said, “ for if he did not judge the ball accurately he either received a nasty blow or missed it altogether, which meant a long run after it. At Lord’s, before the turf was relaid, the ground was slightly up aud down hill even close in front of the pavilion, and a fieldsman could never guess what the ball would do before it reached him. It was about 1868 that it was in its worst state, owing to some disagreements between the lessee of the ground and the club about liability to keep it in order, and in that year W. G. Grace scored 134 not out against the Players, only one other man on the side making double figures in the first innings. The pitch was so infamously bad that I went on the ground and cut a lot of grass off the pitch with seeds in it, and then wrote a letter to Bell’s Life enclosing specimens. I wonder that Grace was not knocked to pieces during that innings ; his body sounded like a tub when the balls kept on hitting him. I should suppose that he never showed MR. FREDERICK GALE. Although he has vowed a vow that he will never write anything more about cricket either in books or magazines, Mr. Gale, so well kuown to all the world as “ The Old Buffer,” does not consider himself precluded from talk- about the game. Country cricket has always been his speciality, and without any doubt he has written more on this subject than any other man living or dead. Incidentally by his writings he has done a great deal of good to country cricket, for he has always been so keen on the subject of good field­ ing and esprit de corps that nobody could read his books without profiting by them. Mr. Gale was in the Winchester eleven of 1840 and 1841, and was good enough to have played much ia first-class cricket, but after one or two appearances in the Kent eleven in 1845, and also in a few other important matches, at the instigation pt Fuller Pilch, who managed the Beverley Club at Canter­ bury, of which club Mr. Gale was a member, he dropped out of public cricket for a few years for want of time andmoney. For gentle­ men never received expenses, except in the cases of Alfred Mynn and Felix, who were absolutely essential to the eleven of the Gentlemen of England, and who received an honorarium which covered their expenses. Frequently Mr. Gale dis­ covered promising players, bringing them into the notice of the committee, who, in those days, had not the same opportunities of knowing all about rising players that they have now, when no player who is worth his salt can plead that he has escaped notice, he did a vast amount of good to the county. As far as one man could do by writing, (From a photo by H. B. Collis , Westgate Studio , Canterbui and by I six or seven yards off, looking the bats­ man in the face, while on the other side was another man worrying him behind bis left shoulder, and with mid-off at a right angle with both wickets, some fifteen yards away from the batsman, covered by a man fielding very deep in the long field, on a level with the wicket, a batsman was shut in and could not go for any mortal MR. FREDERICK GALE. ry .)