Lives in Cricket No 7 - Richard Daft

served with distinction in the Crimean War, finished his army service with the rank of colonel and inherited a baronetcy. He was perhaps proudest of his reputation forty years earlier as a runner over many varied distances when he wrote in 1894: ‘In those days, mind you, an amateur meant a gentleman, whether he ran for money or honour or both – I used to combine the two . . .’ But not many would have cared to tell Sir John that he was not a gentleman. Mike Huggins, in The Victorians and Sport , confirms that the key distinction was between ‘gentlemen’ and the rest, with the object of limiting and stabilising what he describes as the democratic thrust of Victorian society. In horse racing, some events were restricted to ‘gentleman riders’ to avoid competition with the lower orders, and in the 1860s, when Richard was playing cricket as a professional, gentleman riders were the subject of specific definition, which included ‘those persons generally received into society as gentlemen’ or those belonging to a select list of London clubs, or officers on full pay, magistrates, peers, or even those persons successful in a ballot by the National Hunt Committee! Receipt of payment for participating was not one of the main criteria. The definition of a gentleman or an amateur depended on who you wanted to keep out. In cricket, professionals were expected to know their place. The top professionals may have sighed for the days of Old Clarke, but the future of the game did not lie with the touring elevens. As W.F.Mandle wrote, their very success had encouraged the growth of local cricket and as it spread to the public schools as well, the middle classes and the aristocracy reasserted their control of the game and they revived county cricket. A county championship of sorts was adjudicated regularly by the cricket annuals and the press from 1864. The amateur/professional relationship continued in county cricket up to 1962. In a study published 25 years after that date appeared the following iconoclastic conclusion: All aspects of cricket were closely bound to a whole range of wider social tensions and tendencies. That it suffered less from open professional/amateur conflict (than did association and rugby football) was due to the ability of the amateur and the class he represented to disarm or subvert the clearly perceived threat of the professional and his class. Professional 25