Cricket Witness No 1 - Class Peace

76 entered without the permit of the mess sergeant or regimental sergeant major. To stray into another profession, certainly until well after World War II, no right-thinking headmaster would have walked into the staff common room without a knock and polite request. At the lowest stratum of practicality you couldn’t easily let off steam about the boss or manager if he were alongside you. One may imagine the bastings many a naive young amateur skipper received unheard from his crusty professional colleagues shut away in their inferior but at least secluded dressing room. None of this proves the structure was morally pure. But it is worth seeing some of how it worked through contemporary eyes rather than through hindsight – and then there is a much more momentous issue. That grand old recipe of good luck and good management kept Victorian Britain out of any serious military continental conflict that might have affected life at home. With, to do the Victorians justice, a little more of the latter management and a little less of the former luck, they preserved internal peace to an impressive degree and the reign of Queen Victoria enjoyed a domestic serenity lacking during the lives of her several Hanoverian predecessors. It is commonly accepted that this more stable background was a boon for the coming to fruition of spectator sports, chief among them at this juncture, cricket. Cause and effect in history rarely operates in a singular fashion. Usually there are reversals or spiral effects. Interaction is a well-used word in historical analysis. In a small but efficacious way the playing and watching of the style, mood and ethos of cricket that emerged in mid-19 th century was part of the cause as well as an aspect of the effect. It contributed to the even and tolerant tenor that was so characteristic of the time. In 1903 John Morley, Liberal statesman and Gladstone’s biographer, delivered his trenchant verdict that since 1846 there had been ‘not even a shadow of civic convulsion.’ Cricket has not always had the pat on the bat it deserves for its decent role in the avoidance of civil convulsion. 1. Sandiford op.cit, pp. 112/127 for a meticulously researched and ingeniously argued account of this issue. 2. Keith Sandiford English Cricket Crowds during the Victorian Age in Journal of Sports History vol 9 no 3 1987. 3. Tony Laughton Captain of the Crowd; Albert Craig, Cricket and Football Rhymester (2008) pp. 195/198. 4. Peter Bailey (ed) Music Hall; the Business of Pleasure 1986. 5. Richard J.Evans The Pursuit of Power; Europe 1815-1914 (2016) – and for valuable insights into the rise of the new elites, new industrial activities and new social manners across Europe, including the United Kingdom. 6. Victor Gatrell The Hanging Tree; Execution and the English People 1770 to 1868 (2010) for an elaborate but lucid examination of this fundamental change. The Cricket Crowd