Cricket Witness No 1 - Class Peace

68 modernisation. It joined Royal Ascot and the Henley Regatta among the major events of the season. One had to be there. The Varsity match also commanded large crowds; in 1892 52,000 paid for admission over the three days, with a large contingent of members and guests in addition Like those other posh affairs, these two prestigious fixtures attracted a gaping throng as intrigued by the passing show of the rich and famous as fascinated by horses, boats and youthful cricketers. The Old Harrovian John Galsworthy chose the Eton and Harrow match for one of the most compelling scenes in The Man of Property the first volume of his The Forsyte Saga (1906). The seriously introverted Soames Forsyte sees his ‘property’, the beautiful but to him icily cold Irene among ‘six thousand top hats, four thousand parasols’, she the cynosure of charmed attention, he the depressed, tight-lipped, silently bitter loner. It is highly relevant to mention hereabouts another well-received item on the Lord’s menu – the annual Gentlemen and Players fixture. Sides had been cobbled together called ‘the Gentlemen of England’ for occasional games but it was in 1806, with cricket in its doldrums, that the gentlemen first tried their hand against the professionals. They did so with abject results. After a couple such games in that year, there was no further encounter until 1819. When fixtures were organised they tended, such was the frailty of unpractised gentlemen against skilled craftsmen, to be one-sided. Handicaps were occasionally used, such as eighteen gents, the pros having to bat in front of larger wickets or even that old stand-by of the clubs, the actual inclusion of a professional bowler or two. Parity came – and with it a boom time in attendances – when W.G.Grace and a flow of well-instructed and experienced amateurs arrived on the cricketing scene. Old Trafford, like the two London venues, was also thrown off guard by the sudden surge of interest in cricket in general and W.G.Grace in particular. On his first visit to Old Trafford in 1878 between 15,000 and 20,000 flocked into the ground on the Saturday in such profusion that they strayed on to the pitch and shortened the boundaries. It is perhaps artless to imagine that Billy Midwinter’s presence in the Gloucestershire team might have added a few to the gate. The Oval, too, was discomfited, for instance, on the first Monday of September 1880 when there was an ‘unprecedented attendance’ of over 20,000 to watch the Australians. The fame of W.G.Grace and the Australians was to fill and indeed overfill many cricket grounds and bring about vast improvements. The horses and carriages vanished from Lord’s where gradual reconstruction led by the end of the century to a ground capable of welcoming 30,000 patrons in reasonable comfort, By that same point the Oval could accommodate 25,000, Old Trafford the better part of 20,000 and Trent Bridge 15,000 while the three main Yorkshire venues of Headingley, Bramall Lane and Bradford Park Avenue could each hold 20,000 or more. Throughout the country at county and club level there was a rash of building projects, with pavilions, stands, scoreboards, press boxes and all mod cons for the milling crowds. Turnstiles, in effect mechanical updates The Cricket Crowd