Cricket 1903

S e pt . 17, 1903. CRICKET: A WEEKLY RECORD OF THE GAME. 431 CRICKET IN INDIA.* Although this book is primarily a record of the impressions made by the Bast on an Englishman during his travels, inci­ dentally it gives a history of the tour of the Oxford University Authentics. With those parts of the book which do not deal with cricket we have nothing to do, but we do not think that any cricketer would find them dull or uninteresting, even if he did not agree with some of the author’s conclusions. For the rest Mr. Headlam describes the adventures and the matches of the team in a light­ hearted manner, which shows clearly enough that the tour was vastly enjoyed by all who took part in it. The intense power of the sun in Indii seems to have made an abiding impression on the Aulhentics. Mr. Headlam says “ You go out on to the ground to play, and you get at once your first and probably most lasting impression of cricket in India. It is an impression of sun-dazzling, exhaust­ ing, baking, cooling, deceptive sun. It is not till you have seen it and played in it that you realise why it is that every team on tour, visiting England or Aus­ tralia, plays always, at any rate at first, a little below par, twelve annas to the rupee. Some players indeed it suits, but they are not many. For this sun is not the sun which we know at home . . . In England the sun is a thing to be thankful for, and to bask in ; in India it is a thing to curse and to dread.” And aga’n “ He (the vititor) has to get accus­ tomed to playing in a sola topi, a pith helmet....... in tbe next place he finds that making runs, especially when he has to run them out, has become a feat not only of skill, but also of endu­ rance.” Mr. Headlam incidentally defends the “ tea interval ” at home, and at the same time touches up the pavilion critics. He says “ The short hours (in India) go a long way to compensate the fieldsmen for the exhausting effects of the heat. Fielding from a quarter to three to five is endurable; at the worst it is but two hours and a quarter of purgatory, with a chance of heaven and a certainty of tea. In first-class cricket at home in July it is another matter. You go out at the same hour with a practical certainty that you will remain out till seven, watching the ball at the utmost tension, and if you take ten minutes off for tea all the pavilion critics hold up their hands in horror and ask what England is coming to. They never did it, they say, in their day, But, of course, they never played cricket under the same conditions at all.” A curious incident which took place in oneof the matches is humorouslydescribed by Mr. Headlam as follows:—“ It was at Bangalore that, a few minutes before noon, a casual spectator arriving on the ground might have been surprised to see *“ Ten Thousand miles through India and Burma.” An account of the Oxford UniversityAuthentics’ Tour ■withMr. K. J. Key in the year of the Coronation Durbar. By Cecil Headlam. Illustrated, London, J. Al. Dent & Co , 7/6 net, the players cease from playing, and kneel or lie down flat, but with all their faces in the same direction. Here, he might have thought, we have an instance of the influence of East on West, for surely the sahibs have adopted some native cus­ tom and lie turning towards the sun at noontide in accordance with some strange Mohammedan ceremonial. But the intelligent traveller would, as usual, have been wrong. We only behaved like that because we were waiting and dreading the fire of the mid-day gun, which points across the wicket and is only about a hun­ dred yards distant from it. As the barrack children or playful Tommies occasionally insert a handful of gravel into the nozzle, or because the gun, not being in the charge of gunners, is occasionally too much depressed, it is not wise to stand in its way, and, even though you are making a century, to win a cricket reputation at the cannon’s mouth. You may be quite well, but you had better lie down.” If Mr. Headlam is to be believed, one of the Authentics, when he first saw the list of the cricket fixtures for the tour, exclaimed with joy, “ I ’m jolly glad we’ve got a match at Cawnpore, because there we shall be able to see the Black Hole of Calcutta ! ” In a passage which will be much discussed by statisticians, Mr. Headlam says : “ It is interesting to note that the ancient Persians, from whom the Parsees are descended—for, being perse­ cuted as Zoroastrians, they fled to Hin­ dustan in the year A.D. 650—used to play a game called ‘ chowgangui,’ which is supposed to have been closely allied to cricket.” The accounts of the matches are entertaining, and a cricketer, whether he is a member of the Oxford University Authentics C.C. or not, will find much to interest him in the book, which is well printed and well bound. It does not contain an index, but perhaps it hardly requires one. In conclusion, we may quote a remark of the author’s on a chapter on “ Native Cricket.” “ I began to write on cricket in India, and have been led away to discuss many apparently distant topics. But cricket and purdah ladies, education and Mohammedanism—do not these suggest, somehow, that eternal contrast and com­ munion of East and West, which is the very flavour of modern India ? ” HIGHGATE v. LONDON SCOTTISH.—Played at Brondesbury on September 12. H ighgats . W.Hutchinson, lbw, b Lacey........................ P. C. Baker, b Lacey A. Camplin, b Lacey W. T. Turley, b Lacey C. Parker, b Smail ... W. B. Wilson, c Clark, b Lacey ................. ]■'. Whitlock, c Lacey, b Smail ................. J.W.Gott, c Graves, b Smail...................... E. Henchman, not out F. W. LesBion, c H. M. Marcus, b Smail .. Bye ................. Total ............ L ondon S cottish . H.W.SmaiI.st Wilson, A. Kinross, not out ... 36 b Baker .................26 B 9, lb 2, wb 1 ... 12 P. Child, b Camplin... 11 — G. M. Clark, b Baker 21 Total ................147 E. Lacey, not out .. 41 F. R. Connell, N. F. Marcus, P. Graves, H. M. Marcus, A, B Daniels, and L. Marcus did not bat. AN AMATEUR OPINION. In its issue of August 21st the New York Times, in a delightful naive manner, comments on the tour in England of the Gentlemen of Philadelphia. Evidently our contemporary has not a cricketer on its staff of leader writers :— “ It has long been a problem for the psychologist, or the sociologist, or the psychologico-sociologist, or the sociologo- psychologist, though we do not know that any of him has ever tackled it, why Philadelphians play cricket and why they are the only Americans who dd play it. Some of the curiosities in Dr. Harper’s museum at Chicago might as well ba wasting the time on that question as on some of the questions on which they do waste it. The common theory that that beautiful and secularly elaborated pas­ time requires abundant leisure, and that leisure abounds in Philadelphia, does not look like a scientific explanation, but it may be accepted until a better is offered. Meanwhile it will not be disputed to be desirable that if Philadelphians play cricket at all they should play it well. They play it so well that they can get nobody on this side of the Atlantic to play with. This season is not the first nor, we believe, the second when Phila­ delphia has sent a cricket team across the sea to beard the Briton in his lair. But the present team shows an immense improvement upon its predecessors. Its nearest predecessor, while the merits of some of its individual players were freely acknowledged in England, hardly came up to the standard of ‘ first-class county cricket.’ Mr. Lester’s team, which has just returned flushed with a highly re­ spectable proportion of victories, un­ doubtedly does come up to that standard. The batting of Mr. Lester, Mr. King, Mr. Graves, and Mr. Bohlen and others was greatly admired, while in Mr. King the team had, according to The London Times, ‘ one of the finest amateur bowlers in the world,’ and according to another authority the best bowler of the English cricket season. All this ought to be gratifying to us. The matches the Philadelphians played ware all against first-class teams. There were sixteen of them, and of these they won seven, lost six, and drew three. So well did they play the game that one of their enthusi­ astic hosts, after saying that several members of the team would be eligible, were they Englishmen, to the ‘ Players v. Gentlemen,’ and even to the All Eng­ land Eleven, ventured to look forward to the day when Philadelphia should challenge all England, even as all Aus­ tralia has done, and with an equal success. This is probably a fond imagin­ ation, seeing that there are several Eoglish counties more populous than Philadelphia. But it does show that devotion to the game has been rewarded. The showing ought to gratify all of us, since, after all, a Philadelphian is an American.” R ICHARD DAFT’S “ Nottinghamshire Marl.” — Particulars apply, Radcliffe on-Trent, Notte. [A dvt .J