Cricket Witness No 1 - Class Peace

41 Renaissance; The Revitalisation Of Cricket not by any means been so progressive and wide-ranging without these accommodating rail links – although the sport that benefited most from rail transport was horse racing. Before rail the horses had to walk from course to course, so they had to be of an age that provided stamina enough; only when they could be conveyed was it possible to have the one and two year old sprinters competing. It led to more courses, more, faster and shorter races, bigger crowds – and everyone, owners, jockeys, punters and especially bookmakers, was happy. It is difficult to grasp the sheer scale of the cultural and socio-economic switches in British life. Cricket, reborn and fitted for this brave new world, emerged as a potent force, altered and boosted both by the alterations in cultural tone and the advantages accruing from industrialism and urbanisation. It is something of a curio that the principal focus for the cricketing reformation was the public school. It was to be the alumni of the public schools, full of vim and ambition, who would be the carriers of the game not only within but also beyond British shores. The public schools themselves underwent a major reform which in an academic nutshell encapsulates what happened to the nation at large. They ceased to be the ‘nurseries of vice’, as Thomas Bowdler, the notable censor of Shakespeare, labelled them. They had exemplified the 18 th century with displays of chaotic violence and horror. The worst ‘sink’ school in the most deprived district of the UK today looks serene in comparison; among the frequent riots there was one at Westminster School that had to be subdued by soldiers with fixed bayonets. The sturdy grammar schools of Elizabethan England had also fallen into extreme desuetude but, out of this slough of many dreadful schools there arose a few more enlightened establishments. Sometimes the neighbourhood suffered. Rugby School, founded in 1567 by a local grocer Lawrence Sheriff for local boys was superseded by a boarding establishment for rich teenagers, increasingly borne there from over a wide area by the convenient trains. It is from that long-forgotten charitable purpose of these ancient schools that the now rather misleading appellation of ‘public’ derives. While Thomas Arnold for his reign at Rugby is rightly viewed as the seminal headmaster of the new regimes, his motto of ‘Godliness and good learning’ did not embrace sport too readily. It was his disciples – Edward Thring of Uppingham; C.J.Vaughan at Harrow; H.H.Almond at Loretto and E.W.Benson at Wellington are examples – who raised the standard of Athleticism. In particular, cricket became the physical touchstone for the public school credo that strove to catch the essence of evangelicalism and chivalry Both as writer and protagonist, Thomas Hughes expounded the doctrine of ‘Muscular Christianity’, perhaps the closest to a creed that extolled the joint virtues of the evangelical-chivalric convention. It defined clearly the Victorian English gentlemen. In 1841 MCC, led by the amiable and corpulent Benjamin Aislabie, played at Rugby what was correctly described as an ‘unfinished’ rather than a drawn game. In recognition of its salient