Cricket 1911

O ctober 28, 1911. EUGBY FOOTBALL AND CEICKET. 565 ^Vlr. HcnrvJ /Vla^ers H indman .* TUDENTS of the game’s history will recall Mr. Hyndman as an occasional member of the Sussex and Cambridge elevens. His cricket career was a brief one, for he went abroad in I860, at the age of twenty-four, and thereafter seems to have been lost to the game. His association with cricket, though brief and not actually brilliant, was long enough and successful enough to show him a player of parts, who might have done bigger things if other matters had not claimed his energies. In his recently-published book, the veteran Socialist leader has some interesting references to cricket. As quite a small boy he spent two years and a-half at Torquay with a tutor, under whose roof were to befound at the same time three cricketers who were afterwards in theCambridge Eleven, two more who played for many years for their respective counties, and Chester Macnaghten, who became head of Rajkumar College, Rajkote, and so responsible for the education of Ranjitsinhji. On leaving Torquay he found himself with a clergyman at Stockport. “ I was a pretty good cricketer in those days,” he says, “ and before I knew that this was scarcely a method of improving my knowledge of mathematics I found myself playing in the first eleven of the Manchester Club, and going about the country with the men of the team to the various matches, quite on my own account. This was in 1858,” when he was in his seventeenth year. Proceeding to Trinity College, Cambridge, Mr. Hyndman took part in a lot of cricket, but did not succeed in obtaining his Blue. “ It is very odd, and I don’t pretend to account for it at all,” he writes. 441 have myself led a very active and adventurous life. I have had my turns of popularity and success as well as my periods of the most harassing worry and disappointment conceivable—enough, one would think, to obliterate finally matters of passing interest from nineteen to twenty-two. Yet, having been in the “ Sixteen ” at Cambridge and playing in the Sussex County team, I declare that I feel at this moment, fifty years later, my not playing for Cambridge against Oxford in the University cricket match as a far more unpleasant and depressing experience than infinitely more important failures have been to me since.” —But is it, in truth, so very odd ? Do not the disappoint­ ments and the joys of youth live in memory, clear, unforgettable, as those of later years do not?— “ Nay, when but the other day I heard that two famous cricketers of that time, chatting over the men at our year at a Club, both declared that I ought to have been in the eleven in my first year and every year thereafter I felt quite a little glow of satisfaction. Very funny that, I consider.” But that Mr. Hyndman should not have won his Blue is not surprising. He never did himself justice at Cambridge. Outside college matches, his highest score there was 35 for the University eleven against the Free Foresters in 1864. Also he came up from a private tutor’s, without the prestige of a school career. As a matter of fact his name was down for seven years at Harrow and he ought to have gone there after his so-called dame-school period was over. “ But my female relations had some­ how conceived a horror of public schools without having any fear3 of the drawbacks of private tutors. So I went through a training of the latter, which has the great disadvantage of leading boys to think themselves men before they have really ceased to be boys.” It was whilst at Cambridge that Mr. Hyndman came across the greatest bowler he ever saw or batted against—the famous, but ever- thirsty, William Buttress, whom Calverley mentioned in an ode. “ . . .h e could do what he liked with the ball and he bowled at batsmen’s weak points to an extent and with a precision I never saw equalled. The spin he put on was amazing. At the end of the match the ball itself was all cut about with the imprints of his nails. . . . The difficulty was to keep Buttress sober. The United All England Eleven contrived to do so in one match at Lord’s against the All England Eleven for the first day, and he actually bowled Hayward, Daft and George Parr, the three greatest batsmen of their time, out in one over. For the next forty-eight hours he was in a state of hopeless imbecility. Buttress was a genius, and I wonder nobody has ever studied and practised his methods. I was a member of the Marylebone Club for more than thirty years, and I never saw * The Record of an Adventurous Life.—By H. M. Hyndman. London : Macmillan & Co., Ltd., St. Martin’s Street. Price, 15s. net. any bowler try to do so.” Many other old cricketers, the late Tom Sherman of the number, have regarded Buttress as the finest medium- paced bowler they ever encountered. Mr. Hyndman whilst at Cambridge had rooms in Rose Street, and whilst there received a visit from George Meredith which lasted a fortnight. Almost half a century later the famous novelist, in a letter to tbe author, sa id :—“ I think of the old days, my visit to Cambridge, your performance on the flute ; remembering well the little bit of Beethoven, and your fine stand in the cricket field: some 50!—and the Hauptman duets with my wife at the piano— all as yesterday.” Mr. Meredith was fond of cricket, and in his delightful home at Box Hill would talk freely about the game when he had a sympathetic listener. It is, perhaps, only natural that Mr. Hyndman should have something to say on present-day cricket as compared with that of the past. He writes :—“ It is the fashion nowadays to say that the play is much better than it used to be. I am not so sure about that. As to the grounds, there is no comparision, and the “ boundary” for hard through hits saves the batsman greatly as compared with running them out. Otherwise, I see no great improvement, while certainly batsmen play more at the pitch and less at the ball. Consequently, I observe that when there comes a little continuous bad weather and the ground at all approximates to the sort of wicket we used often to have even in county matches, the scores, good pitch and all, are then no larger than they were forty or fifty years a g o ; while nothing like the same risks are taken, as a rule, in order to finish the game out one way or the other. The only two men I ever saw who played almost equally well on bad grounds and on £.-ood were llanjitsiuhji and W . G. Grace. The former was a genius: the latter h*id worked up batting to an exact science............. As to bowling, that is certainly siraighter on the whole than it used to be, though I think Alfred Shaw would have held his own, even on that point, with any of the men of to-day, and the straightness is partly to be attributed to the raising of the arm in delivering the ball well above the level of the shoulder.” On page 22 of his book the author gives an amusing account of how an opponent in one of the Gentlemen of Sussex matches was missed off his first ball and stayed to score over 200. He is under the impression that the successful player was “ W .G.,” but we would suggest that it was Mr.— now the Rev.—H. B. Biron, who ran up 214 for Cambridge Quidnuncs in 1864, and so credited himself with the first innings of over two hundred ever played in Sussex. Cricket did not play a very important part in Mr. Hyndman’s life, and it is therefore not surprising to find comparatively few allusions in his book to the game. But he has touched life at many points, and whatever the subject with which he is dealing—with Italy, life in Australia over 40 years ago, George Meredith, the Mormons, William Morris, or Polynesia, to mention only a few which come to mind at the moment—he is invariably interesting, for not only has he been a keen observer, but he has also been in the habit of thinking for himself. A large portion of the book is not concerned either with Socialism or politics, and, to quote the author, “ it is this, perhaps, which will be of most interest to the general reader.” A few words in conclusion concerning Mr. Hyndman’ s record as a cricketer may not be out of place. From 1862 to 1865 inclusive he did good work for the Gentlemen of Sussex, and in two seasons, 1864 and 1865, he played in the Sussex county eleven. In 1863 he ran up 62 for the Gentlemen of Sussex v. Gentlemen of Hampshire on Tom Box’s ground at Brighton ; in the following year, on the new Hove ground, he scored 58 v. Hampshire and 62 v. Middlesex, and for the Gentlemen of the county more than once opened the innings with Mr. C. H< Smith, father of C. L. A., the Sussex cricketer of to-day. In 1865 he played for the county in three matches against Kent, two against the M.C.C., and one against Notts. ; but his only innings of note was 48 not out against the M.C.C., at Hove. For the Surrey Club v. M.C.C. in May of that season he made “ a pair of them.” He scored 45 in his first innings for Gentlemen of Sussex v. Gentle­ men of Kent at Hove,, a ground which seems to have suited him far better than Fenner’s. This was not the present ground, be it noted ; that was not opened till some years later. Mr. Hyndman was a good field, usually at cover or long-leg, and a fair change bowler. *