Cricket Witness No 1 - Class Peace

55 all, professional cricketers were born and bred in the upper ranks of their class, an even greater proportion of county amateurs were nursed in the utmost tier of theirs. In the Edwardian period a half of county players were amateurs, overwhelmingly young men from a tight chain of major public schools. Apart from their privileged induction into the game, they also, of course, were the scions of wealthy families who could, for the most part, fund their cricketing activities. Half the county players were drawn from 2% of the population. 10 The vast network of clubs, with the public schools adding the blue-blooded icing to the fruity cake of ordinary Saturday afternoon endeavour, created a nationwide attachment to cricket. In participation and by following, cricket was, for half a century, the leading national sport, played and enjoyed by all classes. Good fortune allows us an apposite glimpse about how one cricket club was formed. This was in 1868. Gad’s Hill in Kent, where Charles Dickens had settled himself in as country gentleman, was about to start a cricket club. The famous author, who had already showed his interest by having cricket played on his estate, acting as umpire or scorer and entertaining there the nearby Higham cricket club, agreed to be chairman. He contributed £5 for its initial funding and said he would ‘overlook its business affairs.’ He wrote a three page letter from America to his son Harry about how the club should be organised. It was intended for both ‘gentlemen’ and ‘working men’ and his instruction to Harry began ‘the first thing to be avoided is, the slightest appearance of patronage....the second thing to be avoided is, the deprival of the men of their just right to manage their own affairs.’ His solution was in itself a little condescending although at the same time ingenious. He commanded Harry to appoint himself as captain so that he could ensure the ‘gentlemen’ would toe the line with regard to the split membership. Dickens proposed that the gentlemen should pay twice the subscription as the working men but that all should have an equal vote. ‘Draw up the club rules (but) whatever you do, let the men ratify; and let them feel their little importance, and at once perceive how much better the business begins to be done.’ It is a trifle pious and torturous but it illustrates a progressive essay in bringing fairness and unity to what, basically, was an unjust and divisive situation. The Dickens biographer Peter Ackroyd commented, ‘here we have Dickens’ dream of society in miniature, an harmonious arrangement of all the classes in which the paternalism of the gentleman captain is linked with the recognition of the ‘little importance’ of the workers.’ 11 Clubs And County Clubs