Many furrows

by A. G. Gardiner

BILLITCH AT LORD'S

Of course, there were others there besides Bill. There were twenty thousand people there. There was the whole Oval crowd there. I was there—I always try to put in a day at Lord's when the Oval crowd charges across the river with its jolly plebeian war-cries and swarms into the enclosure at St. John's Wood like a crowd of happy children. It makes me feel young again to be caught in that tide of fresh enthusiasm. I know that is how I used to feel in the good old days of the 'eighties when I used to set out with my lunch to the Oval to see Walter Read and Lohmann and K. J. Key and M. P. Bowden and Abel and Lockwood and Tom Richardson and all the glorious company who filled the stage then. What heroes they were! What scenes we saw! What bowling, what batting, what fielding! I daresay the heroes of to-day are as heroic as those of whom I speak; but not for me.

Cricket, to the ageing mind, is never what it used to be; it is always looking back to some golden age when it flourished, like chivalry, in a pure and unsullied world. My father used to talk to me with fervour about the heroic deeds of Caffyn and Julius Cæsar, and I talk to young people about the incomparable skill of Grace and Steel and Lohmann, and they no doubt will be eloquent to their children about Hobbs and Gregory. And so on. Francis Thompson explained the secret of the golden age when he sang:

Oh, my Hornby and my Barlow long ago.

That is it. It is that "long ago" that makes our giants so gigantesque. Cricketers, as the old gentleman said of the peaches, are not so fine as they were in our young days. How could they be? Why have we lived all these years if we are not allowed to have seen greater things than these youngsters who are shouldering us out of the way have ever seen? Of course, they don't believe in "our Hornbys and our Barlows long ago" any more than I believed when a boy that Caffyn and Julius Cæsar could hold a candle to W. G. or Walter Read, and they will find that their children will think lightly of Hobbs in comparison with some contemporary god of their idolatry.

But whatever change has taken place in cricket—or in me—I swear there is no change in the jolly Oval crowd. It is, as it has always been, the liveliest, most intense, most good-humoured mob that ever shouted itself hoarse at cricket. It is as different from the Lord's crowd as a country fair is from the Church Congress. At Lord's we take our cricket as solemnly as if we were at a prayer-meeting. We sit and smoke and knit our brows with portentous gravity. Sometimes we forget ourselves and say: "Well run, sir!" or "Missed. By Jove!" Then we turn round to see if anybody has heard us. We have even been known to clap; but these extravagances are rare. Generally we end by falling asleep.

But we were done out of our sleep on Monday. There's no possibility of sleep when the Oval crowd is about and when they have brought Billitch with them. At Lord's we never have a popular hero or a comic figure. Cricket is far too serious a thing to turn to fun. If Little Tich came and played at Lord's, we should not smile. We should take him very seriously, and call him Mr. William Tich if he came out of the front-door of the pavilion, and Tich (W.) if he came out of the side-door. On Monday we had several bad shocks to our sense of the solemnities of cricket. For example, we saw Fender, the Surrey captain, lead the "gentlemen" members of his team to the professionals' quarters and bring his team out to the field in a body, just for all the world as though they were all one flesh and blood. It was a painful sight, and many of us closed our eyes rather than look upon it. We felt that Bolshevism had invaded our sanctuary at last.

And then there was that unseemly enthusiasm for Billitch. I don't know what there is about Bill that makes him such an idol of the Oval crowd; but there it is. If Bill went on to bowl the ring shouted, "Good ole Bill"; if he went off bowling it said that, "Ole Bill wants a rest"; if he hit a ball it said, "That's one for ole Bill"; if he missed a ball it said, "Ole Bill let that go by"; if he tapped the wicket with his bat it was confident that "Ole Bill had found a narsty spot"; if he made a short run it shouted, "Brayvo, ole Bill." I think that if he had stopped to blow his nose the crowd would have blown its nose too, for the pleasure of keeping him company.

It is not that Billitch is a comic figure, as Johnny Briggs used to be. Nor an incomparable cricketer, as Lohmann used to be. Nor of home product from Mitcham Common, for I think he comes from Lancashire. But he has a certain liveliness, a sense of enjoying everything he does, and putting his whole heart into it, that gives a lusty spirit to the game and touches the affections of the Oval crowd, which always mixes up its affections with its cricket. And his name does the rest. It is an irresistible name. You can go on saying Billitch all day without growing weary. It will suit any circumstances and go to any rhythm. What jolly verses old Craig would weave about it if he could come back and hawk poems to us on sunny afternoons. But it needed the Oval crowd to discover the riches of that name. If Billitch had come to Lord's he would not have been Billitch at all. He would have been Hitch (W.) and as solemn as all the rest of us. I wish we were as merry at Lord's as they are at the Oval.