Cricket Witness No 6 - His Captain's Hand on His Shoulder Smote

115 On the positive side, Athleticism was rejoiced in and lauded, with cricket held in particularly high regard. It was ‘the Holy Game’ or, in Lord Harris’s phrase which brought it closer to the school, ‘God’s Classroom’. As Grantland Rice recognised with his ‘one Great Scorer’, the score-book was like the divine ledger, just as Wisden soon became ‘the Cricketers’ Bible.’ Consciously or subconsciously, the game was awash with sacred ritual. The switch to white clothing in the Victorian era, the druidic white coats of the umpires, the ceremonial impedimenta of the altar-like wickets, the ‘ecclesia’ of the pavilion, the sacramental rites of ribbons, caps, colours and blues, the macabre urn of the Ashes, the Pauline and Corinthian matchings for ‘fight the good fight’ and ‘run the straight race’ in ‘play a straight bat’ or ‘it’s not cricket’ and the observance of cricket’s commandments and conventions; all these contributed to the pseudo-religiosity of the game. There were the hymnal songs in the schools; ‘and be faithful to the willow as your fathers were of old’, as the Sedbergh cricket song had it. The fifth and last verse runs: ‘And hail to the name of the brave old game Wherever men are English and the flag’s unfurled And you will there find cricket and the willow and the wicket and there’s not a game to lick it In the whole wide world.’ The tenor and terminology of the game was a gift to the headmaster or chaplain declaiming in the school chapel. The innings as metaphor for the life-cycle – ‘he’s had a good innings’ – is still extant today. One pertinent example is the Rev Thomas Waugh’s The Cricket Field of the Christian Life , published in 1894. He reveals God as the Captain- King who welcomes you if your innings has ended with your conscience clear, at which happy outcome you would, on ‘Resurrection morning’, be applauded on leaving the pavilion and met with Seraphic cries of ‘well played, sir.’ It reaches the point that it becomes difficult to determine which of Christianity and cricket is the metaphor. And all The Interlock; Reading, Playing And Watching