Cricket Witness No 1 - Class Peace

37 Chapter Four Renaissance; The Revitalisation Of Cricket ‘Between 1760 and 1850 the English ceased to be one of the most aggressive, brutal, rowdy, outspoken, riotous, cruel and bloodthirsty nations in the world and became one of the most inhibited, polite, orderly, tender-minded, prudish and hypocritical’. 1 In one unequivocal and oft-cited statement the great social historian Harold Perkin incisively defined what amounted to a fundamental change in national character. In so doing he implicitly explained why and how cricket changed its ethical spots from Hanoverian black to Victorian white, literally in that a pure, creamy costume was adopted for playing purposes. Whilst a comforting thesis that racial or regional character is in the blood and inherited genetically is still espoused, the speed of this change kyboshed any hope that nature rather than nurture was at work. The virile force that engendered so radical a change was cultural, not eugenic. It amounted to a reinvention of Englishness, a new strain to which cricket made an essential contribution and was at the same time moulded by it. Jeffrey Richards, arguably the United Kingdom’s principal cultural historian, has also shown how the English character differed in the Victorian age and the first half of 20 th century compared with earlier times before about 1830. 2 We shall return later in the text to the findings of Professor Richards, for his analysis of a further change or rather relapse in the English psyche after the 1950s also had a major effect on cricket. Jeffrey Richards argues that two complementary tidal waves caused the first of these sea-changes. One was ‘Evangelicalism’ and the other was ‘Chivalry’. In broad terms, the former introduced an earnestness of motive and aim into everyday life, while the latter cultivated the late 18th century notion of ‘decency’, interpreting it as a somewhat restrained courtesy. The bedrock of Evangelicalism lay in the nonconformist or ‘dissenting’ tradition, including by this time the Methodists, the adherents of John Wesley but it also involved the ‘low’ churchmen of the Anglican communion, who opposed the less socially committed ‘high and dry’ wing. Anthony Trollope’s Barchester Chronicles superbly dramatise this conflict. In Barchester Towers , published in 1857, Bishop and Mrs Proudie and Reverend Mr Slope represent the low and Archbishop Grantly and Reverend Mr Arabin the high sets. It is interesting that the epithet ‘enthusiasm’ was used to excoriate the Evangelical movement that proved to be a powerful instrument for social as well as theological change. From the crusades to first halt the slave trade and next abolish slavery in British possessions to the campaigns to ameliorate working conditions