Captaining a village team is not all a bed of roses; but if you are really a cricketer at heart, you will soon acquire the absolute confidence of people of all classes, especially of the humbler order. It is not an unpleasant thing, as you walk across the green on your way to the train, to hear a pack of little boys on their way to school, who look on you as a kind of big dog that won’t bite, all chattering about the match the day before. ‘Ah! Sir, I heerd my father say that he won a pot over the match,’ says one. ‘That boy, Sir, got the stick for playing truant yesterday morning,’ says another. ‘Well! if I did,’ replies the culprit, ‘I see the beginning of the match, and you did not—there!’ That boy may be another Fuller Pilch some day.
And if you are sitting in the tent when your side is in, revolving many things in your mind, and you feel that the whites of the eyes of Mr. Chummy the sweep, a good cricketer formerly, who sits on a form just outside the tent, behind a very short pipe, are glancing round on you, what a comfort it is, if you turn round, to see an almost imperceptible nod of Mr. Chummy’s head—for he never speaks during a match—which says, ‘Going on all right—we shall win!’ That nod of the head is only intelligible to a cricketer, just as a very ‘shy’ rise of a trout is only perceptible to a genuine fisherman. Those, too only who have known some celebrated cricketer from childhood, and have watched his career and promotion from the little boys’ to the big boys’ eleven, and eventually to the parish eleven, and have seen his cricket talent developed from year to year until he appears in his county team, can imagine how painful is the excitement to those who are interested in his success. It has been my fate to go through—I had almost said the agony of—that state of suspense many times, and I must relate one instance. A young player, twenty years old, after my earnest entreaty, was allotted a place in the county eleven. He broke ground in London against Notts, and at his début had to stand the fire of Alfred Shaw and J. C. Shaw. Directly I saw him play the first ball my mind was quite at rest, as he showed that he had not the stage sickness. He got twelve runs in an hour and a quarter. His next public appearance in London was a ‘caution,’ as he scored 20 not out, in his first innings against Cambridge University; and, going in first, scored 82 in his second innings. This occurred nearly twenty years ago, when cricketers played with their bats and not with their pads, and boundary hits, except against the pavilion, were unknown; so fifty runs was a grand score. I never shall forget my feelings when the colt had made 47, within 3 of his 50; I could look no more; when, all of a sudden, I heard a roar from the crowd which told me that our village boy had done it. The secretary of the club said, ‘He must have his sovereign for fifty runs,’ and he promised me that if he made thirty more, which would make a total of 100, including his 20 not out, he would give him two sovereigns, if I would give him one for his first fifty. I undertook to raise that capital; whereupon, a stranger, a very tall, handsome, gentlemanly man, said, ‘And I will give him a sovereign too; for’ (turning to myself) ‘your excitement, which I found was only occasioned by interest in a village boy, and not heavy betting as I imagined, has done me real good. I have been for thirty years in India and am going back again in a month, and nothing pleased me more than to find this keen love of sport still existing.’ He would not give his name, and I could never find out who he was; possibly he is alive and may read this, and may let us know who he was, for I am sure he has not forgotten it. Richard Humphrey was the colt, and I sent for him into the Pavilion, and the ‘illustrious stranger’ shook hands with him and gave him the sovereign.
The foregoing remarks about clubs apply to a country place with some pretensions to first-rate cricket and a village green. In a rural out-of-the-way place where the population consists of a class which cockney writers call ‘Hodge,’ and which we call ‘chaw-bacons,’ bats and balls and stumps and all implements must be provided by subscription. In all other cases those who want to play cricket must pay for their own cricket things. If a good ground is provided the cricket ought to grow of itself. ‘And this country cricket must cost a good deal of money,’ perhaps you will remark. Of course it does; so does fishing, or shooting, or hunting, or any other sport. There are many men who want to skim the cream of the cricket and to play in a good home match who will not play in an out match because ‘they have not time,’ really because they are too stingy. If you mean cricket you must back it everywhere with all your heart and all your strength. Whatever you do, never forget the wind-up match and supper at the end of the season, and get some good cricketers from amongst your foes to join, and above all a parson or two if possible. In these days, I need not say ‘abolish all ribald songs and drunkenness,’ as cricketers have good manners now.
As a last word, I must say something for country umpires. When changes in the game are proposed, a lot of outsiders who try their hardest to prevent penal laws being made intelligible, on the ground that ‘the change will put too much on the umpires’ shoulders—especially country umpires,’ are talking nonsense. In the days of Caldecourt, John Bayley, Tom Barker, and Good at Lord’s, umpires did their duty without fear or favour, and did not let men ‘cheat’, and the same stamp of umpires still exists in counties and on many a village green; and if there are any umpires on public grounds who cannot administer the law fearlessly, they had better be supplanted by those who can. If batsmen in the past had shamelessly stopped the ball with their pads without ‘offering’ at the ball with their bat, country umpires would have given them out for unfair play, on the same principle as wilfully obstructing the field. I suppose they would call it l.b.w; and the crowd would have given the retiring batsman (?) a very cold reception; or perhaps a very hot one: neither extreme of heat or cold is pleasant. The late Chief Justice Cockburn said of county magistrates: ‘They may sometimes administer bad law, but generally good justice;’ and the remark applies to village-green umpires.
[CHAPTER VIII.]
BORDER CRICKET.
(By Andrew Lang.)
Mr. Gale has been saying his very pleasant say on country cricket in England. A Border player, in his declining age, may be allowed to make a few remarks on the game as it used to be played in ‘pleasant Teviotdale,’ and generally from Berwick all along the Tweed. The first time I ever saw ball and bat must have been about 1850. The gardener’s boy and his friends were playing with home-made bats, made out of firwood with the bark on, and with a gutta-percha ball. The game instantly fascinated me, and when I once understood why the players ran after making a hit, the essential difficulties of comprehension were overcome. Already the border towns, Hawick, Kelso, Selkirk, Galashiels, had their elevens. To a small boy the spectacle of the various red and blue caps and shirts was very delightful. The grounds were, as a rule, very rough and bad. Generally the play was on haughs, level pieces of town-land beside the rivers. Then the manufacturers would encroach on the cricket-field, and build a mill on it, and cricket would have to seek new settlements. This was not the case at Hawick, where the Duke of Buccleuch gave the town a capital ground, which is kept in very good order.
In these early days, when one was only a small spectator, ay, and in later days too, the great difficulty of cricket was that excellent thing in itself, too much patriotism. Almost the whole population of a town would come to the ground and take such a keen interest in the fortunes of their side, that the other side, if it won, was in some danger of rough handling. Probably no one was ever much hurt; indeed, the squabbles were rather a sham fight than otherwise; but still, bad feeling was caused by umpires’ decisions. Then relations would be broken off between the clubs of different towns, and sometimes this tedious hostility endured for years. The causes were the excess of local feeling, and perhaps the too great patriotism of umpires. ‘Not out,’ one of them said, when a member of the Oxford eleven, playing for his town-club, was most emphatically infringing some rule. ‘I can not give Maister Tom out first ball,’ the umpire added, and his case was common enough. Professional umpires, if they could be got, might be expected to prove more satisfactory than excited amateurs who forgot to look after no balls, or to count the number of balls in an over. But even professionals, if they were attached to the club or school, were not always the embodiment of justice.
The most exciting match, I think, in which I ever took part was for Loretto against another school. In those days we were very weak indeed. When our last man went in, second innings, we were still four runs behind our opponent’s first score. This last man was extremely short-sighted, and the game seemed over. But his partner, a very steady player, kept the bowling, and put on some thirty-eight more. We put our adversaries in to get this, and had lowered eight wickets for twenty-eight. I was bowling, and appealed to the umpire of our opponents for a palpable catch at wicket. ‘Not out!’ Next ball the batsman was caught at long-stop, and a fielder triumphantly shouted, ‘Well, how’s that?’