"A truly British compromise! Good business at the bottom of it, and a touch of local sentiment by way of varnish. For of course the final excuse for calling an eleven after Loamshire (let us say), and for any pride a Loamshire man may take in its doings, is that its members have been bred and trained in Loamshire. But, because any such limitation would sorely affect the gate-money, we import players from Australia or Timbuctoo, stick a Loamshire cap with the county arms on the head of each, and confidently expect our public to swallow the fiction and provide the local enthusiasm undismayed."
"My dear Verinder, if you propose to preach rank Chauvinism, I have done. But I don't believe you are in earnest."
"In a sense, I am not. My argument would exclude Ranjitsinhji himself from all matches but a few unimportant ones. I vote for Greater Britain, as you know: and in any case my best arguments would go down before the sheer delight of watching him at the wicket. Let the territorial fiction stand, by all means. Nay, let us value it as the one relic of genuine county cricket. It is the other side of the business that I quarrel with."
"Be good enough to define the quarrel."
"Why, then, I quarrel with the spectacular side of the New Cricket; which, when you come to look into it, is the gate-money side. How does Ranjitsinhji defend it?"
"Let me see. 'Its justification is the pleasure it provides for large numbers of the public.'"
"Quite so: the bricklayer and the stockbroker by the ropes, and the cynical lawyer in the pavilion! But I prefer to consider the interests of the game."
"'From a purely cricket point of view,' he goes on, 'not much can be said against it.'"
"Let us inquire into that. The New Cricket is a business concern: it caters for the bricklayer, the stockbroker, and the whole crowd of spectators. Its prosperity depends on the attraction it offers them. To attract them it must provide first-class players, and the county that cannot breed first-class players is forced to hire them. This is costly; but again the cash comes out of the spectators' pockets, in subscriptions and gate-money. Now are you going to tell me that those who pay the piper will refrain from calling the tune? Most certainly they will not. More and more frequently in newspaper reports of cricket-matches you find discussions of what is 'due to the public.' If stumps, for some reason or other, are drawn early, it is hinted that the spectators have a grievance; a captain's orders are canvassed and challenged, and so is the choice of his team; a dispute between a club and its servants becomes an affair of the streets, and is taken up by the press, with threats and counter-threats. In short, the interest of the game and the interest of the crowd may not be identical; and whereas a captain used to consider only the interest of the game, he is now obliged to consider both. Does Ranjitsinhji point this out?"
"He seems, at any rate, to admit it; for I find this on page 232, in his chapter upon 'Captaincy':—