At length, out of their necessity was produced a new invention. It was about the year 1750 that the “length” bowling came into fashion, and very soon afterwards the form of the cricket-bat was altered to that straight and square-faced aspect which gave it a chance of meeting the new bowling—which was assailing comparatively new wickets—on equal terms. Obviously there ought to be some kind of relation between the shape of the bat and the contour of the wicket that it is concerned to defend, and the contour of the upright 22-inch wicket demanded defence by a straight bat—that is to say, at first, merely a bat straight in itself. The gospel of the left elbow up and the meeting of the ball with bat at the perpendicular had not been preached thus early.
| Engraved by Benoist | After F. Hayman, R.A. |
CRICKET, “AFTER THE PAINTING IN VAUXHALL GARDEN.”
And I take it that virtually cricket, worthy to be called by any such great name, did not really begin before this. This game of trundling along the ground at a two-foot wide wicket, and a man with a hockey-stick defending it, is really rather a travesty of the great and glorious game. The origin of cricket it was, no doubt, and as such is to be most piously revered, but actual cricket—hardly. Consider that old print of a game in progress on the Artillery Fields, where the players are equipped with the curved bats, wear knee-breeches, and the wicket is low and wide, with two stumps upright and one across. There is not a fieldsman on the off side of the wicket—a significant fact in itself; but further, and far more significant, a spectator is reclining on the ground, entirely at his ease, precisely in the position that point would occupy to-day. There can be but one meaning to this picture—that such a thing as off hitting was absolutely unknown. Possibly it was difficult enough to hit to the off, even with the best intentions, off these bats like bandy-sticks; it is at all events certain that it was a style of stroke not contemplated by the gentleman reclining on the ground.
I have spoken above of the bat as an instrument of defence. So to style it when writing of this era is to commit an anachronism. The earlier cricketers, even of the straight-bat epoch, were guiltless of the very notion of defence. They were all for aggression, trying to score off every ball. The reason of this was, no doubt, in the first place that the idea of merely stopping the ball had not occurred to them—partly because the object of the game is to score, and because the bandy-stick style of bat must have been singularly ill designed for defence; but also there is this further reason, that chance was much more on the batsman’s side in the old days than it is now. Nowadays, if a ball is straight and the batsman misses it, it is a simple matter of cause and effect that the bails are sent flying and he is out. But with the wicket 2 feet wide, and no middle stump, this was by no means so inevitable. On the contrary, it must have been a very frequent occurrence for the ball to pass through the wicket without any disturbance of the timber. Even when the wicket was narrowed to 6 inches, there was still room for the ball to pass between the stumps, of which the fortune of the before-mentioned Small was a celebrated and flagrant instance. The old-time batsman was therefore not so essentially concerned with seeing that no straight ball got past his bat. He did not bother himself about defence. He gallantly tried to score off every ball that came to him.
Yet, for all that, his slogging was not like the slogging of to-day. He had no idea of jumping in and taking the ball at the half-volley. His notions went no further than staying in his ground and making the best he could of the ball in such fashion as it was pleased to come to him.
“These men”—the “old players,” so called in 1780—says Mr. Pycroft, quoting the authority of Beldham, backed by that of Fennex, “played puddling about their crease, and had no freedom. I like to see a player upright and well forward, to face the ball like a man”—at this time of day, the wicket had lately been raised from 1 foot to 2 feet high, but had for some while been only 6 inches wide, a small mark for the bowler.
Mr. Pycroft goes on, quoting Beldham again: “There was some good hitting in those days”—towards the close of the eighteenth century is the date alluded to, as far as I can make out—“though too little defence. Tom Taylor would cut away in fine style, almost after the manner of Mr. Budd. Old Small was among the first members of the Hambledon Club. He began to play about 1750, and Lumpy Stevens at the same time. I can give you some notion, sir, of what cricket was in those days, for Lumpy, a very bad bat, as he was well aware, once said to me, ‘Beldham, what do you think cricket must have been in those days when I was thought a good batsman?’”