Cricket Witness No 1 - Class Peace

30 Diaspora; Cricketing Migration afloat the concept. The salvaging of Lord’s was a blessing for the future of cricket. MCC retreated behind its sturdy fences and hunkered down as if hibernating until the spring of clean-cut modern cricket appeared. The entry price was raised to sixpence in the knowledge that, as at the Artillery Ground, this would detract the rumbustious elements, leaving a smaller and more docile scattering of spectators. The bookmakers who had cried the odds so freely were banished, as the money-lenders had been driven from the temple in the scriptures. Wagering, excess alcohol and ruffianly behaviour were erased. In 1822 Benjamin Aislabie became the first secretary of MCC and his was to be an influential reign. He was one of those who imparted a new look and temper to cricket as a national pastime. His contribution, patently, would be concerned more with the ‘gentlemen’ flank of the novel order. It was, however, on the ‘players’ side that the chief impetus came in respect of the national spread of refreshed ‘formal’ cricket. With an irony with which history frequently teases its adherents, this secondary success came directly from a primary failure. William Clarke was certainly not a gentleman. He was a bricklayer, but he had added the sharpened arrow of underarm leg-spin to his income-flow quiver. Born in 1798, he married late but advantageously. An outrageously politically incorrect aphorism once advised that the perfect marriage for a male was to a silent beauty who owned a pub. Reports as to whether Mary Chapman, landlady of the Trent Bridge Inn, Nottingham, was loquacious or lacking in charm is not vouchsafed to us, but William won her heart and property. They married in 1837 and contrived to obtain use of and enclose the land adjacent to their hostelry as a cricket ground. The omens were not good. Other cricketers had or were to try this combine of the ground and public house but with mixed fortunes. Daniel Day in Southampton and William Lillywhite in Brighton ventured and foundered, rather as had the landlords of the Red Horse apropos the Artillery Ground. Today we are well attuned to buying tickets for services. Then it was most uncommon. Although one of the distinctions between ‘gentle’ and ‘simple’ was that a few of the former might have paid to sit in a temporary stand (although watching from one’s private carriage was also a possibility) to avoid mixing too closely with the many of the latter, sport was free. Profit came from drink and refreshments, hence the role of publicans as sponsors. The use of the word ticket as in exchange for a service comes surprisingly late; it was not employed until the end of the 17 th century and then only sparsely. One constant problem was the slowness of handling hand- written tickets, like those used for stage coaches, in respect of cricket matches when high numbers were crowding in to an event. Indeed, the railways found this difficulty insurmountable until in the 1840s Thomas Edmundson, the redoubtable station-master at Newcastle, invented the first automatic, pre-printed ticket machine, an unassuming mechanism that also in time eased the administrative difficulties of the leisure industry both in and outdoor.