[CHAPTER VII.]
COUNTRY CRICKET.
(By F. Gale.)

I can remember the first cricket match I ever saw as well as if it happened yesterday; and moreover I can give the names and description of many of the players.

The locus in quo was the meadow opposite the Green Lion at Rainham, in Kent, which is situated halfway between London and Dover. The cricket field is now built over. It adjoined the vicarage garden, in which a stand was erected for my brother and myself, and from which we, as little boys, saw the first game of cricket we ever witnessed, in the summer of 1830, as we had come into Kent from a Wiltshire village where cricket was not known.

Our grand stand was immediately behind the wicket. Farmer Miles, a fine-set-up man, was the best bowler, and he bowled under-arm, rather a quick medium pace, and pitched a good length and bowled very straight, his balls curling in from the leg; for be it remembered that but two years had elapsed since it was allowable to turn the hand, knuckles uppermost, in delivery. I was seven years old at the time, and was perfectly fascinated at the sight; and as the gardener, an old cricketer, stood by me all day and explained the game, before the sun had set I had mastered most of the main points in it. One thing I am certain of, which is that there was an on-break from Farmer Miles’ bowling; for I watched the balls pitch and curl.

MITCHAM GREEN

The dress of the cricketers was white duck trousers and flannel jackets, and some wore tall black hats and some large straw hats. A few old fogies, veterans who played, had a silk pocket-handkerchief tied round the left knee so that they could drop down on it without soiling their white trousers; for in the rough out-fielding when the balls jumped about anyhow old-fashioned fieldsmen would drop on one knee, so that if the ball went through their hands by a false bound their body was in the way. Josiah Taylor, the brazier, was long-stop, and played in black leather slippers with one spike in the heel which he claimed as his own invention, as cricket-shoes were little known. The umpire was Ost, the barber, who appeared in a long blue frock-coat like Logic’s, the Oxonian, in ‘Tom and Jerry,’ and who volunteered ‘hout’ to a fieldsman who stopped a bump-ball; and when remonstrated with by men of both sides remarked, ‘Surely first “bounce” is “hout” at cricket and trap.’ This occasioned a change of umpire. There were two very hard hitters, Charles Smart, a tall young fellow, son of a rich farmer, and ‘Billy Wakley,’ a very stout tall young farmer; there were many hits to the long-field off and on, which were well held; and Charles Watson, a promising lad of about sixteen, the butcher’s son, who played for the first time in a man’s match, immortalised himself by making a long catch close to the vicarage hedge. The batting mostly consisted of hard-hitting, and the catching was good. The booth was made up of rick-cloths strained over a standing skeleton woodwork frame; and on the right of it was a round table with six or eight arm-chairs placed on either side; a large brass square tobacco-box out of which those who sat round the privileged table could help themselves by putting a halfpenny into a slit which caused the box to open (on the same principle as the chocolate and sweet-stuff automatic pillars seen now at railway stations), kept company with a stack of clay-pipes. The arm-chairs were for the accommodation of the principal farmers and magnates of the parish who subscribed to the matches and who sat in state and smoked their pipes—as cigars were little known—and drank their grog out of rummers—large glasses which stood on one gouty leg each and held a shilling’s worth of brandy and water; and for the accommodation of the smokers, the ostler, who always appeared in his Sunday best costume, which consisted of a ‘Sam Weller’ waistcoat with black calico sleeves, brown drab breeches, and top-boots, provided a stable horn lanthorn, the candle in which he lit with the aid of the flint and steel tinder box, and brimstone matches; for lucifers were not yet invented.