It has been always cast in the teeth of us Englishmen by our Continental critics that we take our amusements seriously—that our idea of recreation is to go forth and kill something, and that anything of the nature of excitement is unknown to us; even our wars seem to them to be conducted by us in a cold-blooded, business-like, almost saturnine fashion, such as the foreigner cannot understand. Our almost fanatical excitement over the relief of Mafeking and of Ladysmith might have served to disenlighten our neighbours to a certain degree, but they probably regarded those wild bursts of enthusiasm as a mere phase of a fever, as one of the periodic alternations of heat and cold that are characteristic of a severe attack of ague. It is for the historian and the student of human nature to decide whether our nature is phlegmatic or merely proud, and whether these rare outbursts are not in reality a genuine eruption of violent volcanic feelings which have long smouldered beneath the crust of our real nature. The true account seems to be that in matters of a public and, still more, of an international character, insular pride does not allow us to reveal the fact that the Englishman possesses a certain amount of that excitability which we choose to attribute to the southern and the Latin races: it is only a special stress that reveals this side of our nature. When, however, the Englishman’s foot is on English soil, and when his only critics are of the same blood as himself, then and only then does he allow the true keenness of his disposition to run riot. The Englishman, in short, only casts aside his phlegm, his reserve, and his pride when he is in congenial society, and the presence of the necessary society is in no place more apparent than on the scenes of those sports that afford him the amusement and, in some cases, the means of life. Those scenes may be narrowed down to the football field, the race-course, and the cricket ground. It is with the last of these that our business at present lies.
It would be impossible to lay down any cast-iron reason for the fact that general interest in cricket has increased by leaps and bounds in the last twenty years. The fact is incontrovertible, whatever the cause may be, but to most of those who have watched the course of cricket events, the progress of county cricket will present itself as the primary cause of the progress of the game as a whole. At the same time, there is a fair field left for those who choose to maintain that the impetus given to county cricket is really due to the rapid spread of the game itself and the attendant enthusiasm of its admirers; while there is, as usual, a third course left to us, which is to maintain that the two things, general cricket and county cricket, have advanced pari passu, each owing much to the other. And at this point we may abandon the question as one that will produce abundant controversy and no conviction, especially as all the theorists can meet and agree as to the one common effect, differ as they may as to the cause, namely, that both players of the game and lovers of the game have increased by innumerable multiples during the last fifteen or twenty years. There are those who think it good to decry this desperate enthusiasm for a pastime—who declare that it is a symptom of national decadence, and declare that a mere game is an irrational thing, inasmuch as a rational treatment of it at once destroys its existence as a game in the true sense of the word. We are hardly prepared, however, to have our pastimes handled in this Socratic manner. A game is a game, and if it is a good game, we who love it consider that it deserves something more than casual and ephemeral treatment; hence we throw ourselves into it heart and soul, and those who like to see heart-and-soul work have only to go to the nearest county ground on a match day to see how energy and rivalry can, on the principle enunciated above, turn a game into a no-game.
Nor is it illogical at this point to assume that county cricket is to us the highest popular embodiment of our pastime; it is true that a certain and a limited number of special matches attract more attention, for sentimental reasons, than do mere county matches, but it is on the latter class of games that genuine and general interest is mainly expended, earning for those who exhibit it a certain amount of contempt from those who hold that to lavish interest on a game is to squander a valuable asset. Political economy and its votaries would doubtless tell us—indeed, they do tell us—that such labour as is expended on hitting, or on bowling, or on stopping, or on catching a mere ball, is unproductive labour, and consequently labour lost, while they show no limit to their contempt for those who, not being actual players themselves, squander—so they call it—valuable time in watching other people waste time that is equally valuable. However, the cynic and his butt, like the poor, are always with us; all that we can desire and all that we can hope for is that he will confine himself to his dwelling, and leave us to enjoy ourselves in peace, while we may fairly ask him to reflect in the recesses of his barrel as to what the watchers of cricket would do with themselves if there were no cricket to watch. That they would be better employed is possible; that they would be worse employed is probable; and he would be a poor philosopher indeed who would find fault with the open-air stage of Lord’s or the Oval, and would yet allow the music-hall and the theatre to stifle their nightly victims. The strictest of Puritans could hardly find fault with bat and ball as being the inculcators of evil principles; rather, like the study of the ingenuous arts, do they “soften our characters and forbid them to be savage.” The cynic and the rhymer have had their say, but cricket is still with us, and seems likely to stay, howl as they will.
In connection with the game’s advance, it would be unjust not to acknowledge the fillip that has been given to it by the periodical visits of Australian elevens, the first of which occurred as far back as 1878, combined with the return of their calls by our men. It was a new truth to us that there was growing up in Greater Britain a race of men who, taught by ourselves, profiting by our lessons, and in the process of time perhaps improving on our methods, were able to withstand us to our face, the pupil often proving the superior of the master; and it may be that to this fact, and the perhaps unconscious conviction that “the old man” must not be “beaten by the boy” at cricket as at chess, is due the uprise of county cricket as the readiest means of ascertaining our strength and organising our resources, though it was not till several years after the first visit of Australians that any real attempt to organise county cricket into a formal competition succeeded. Such an attempt had been made in 1872 by the Marylebone Cricket Club, which offered a cup in that year for competition among the counties, but the offer was coldly received, the counties that entered were so few that such words as “competition” and “championship” became misnomers, and the offer was withdrawn. Not that the word “champion” had not been and still was applied to some county or another as soon as the last ball of the season had been bowled, but the expression was visionary; it was merely the outcome of the views of the press or of individuals, and it naturally happened that when these views conflicted there were “two Richmonds in the field,” both styled champion by their respective supporters. It was not till the representatives of counties met in peaceful conclave, coded laws and bye-laws, with the request that the M.C.C. would exercise a fatherly and presidential rule over county cricket, that the latter became historical fact.
It seems to me that the growth and systematization of general cricket are due to the growth and systematization of county cricket, and the emulation which accompanied its increase. The counties, having set their hands to the plough, were in no mood to look back; those which, as exceptionally strong, were rated first-rate, set themselves to see that no weakness on their part should cause them to be degraded to the ranks; while the rank and file, on the other hand, spared no effort to secure their own promotion. And at this point it is well to remind those who profess to see a mere desire of money-making underlying the expansion of county cricket, that the then junior counties, many of which are now seniors, owed their existence and its prolongation not to gate-money or speculating syndicates, as is the case with many football clubs, but to the generous assistance of enthusiastic patrons, whose only motive for liberality was their own love of the game, as a game, and their desire to see it not merely extended, but perfected. At the present day there are county clubs which rely mainly for their existence on the voluntary subscriptions and donations of their supporters, men whose only reward is the opportunity of seeing good cricket brought home to their own doors, and the promotion, expansion, and improvement of the game. Gate-money is of course an important factor in a club’s receipts, but it is sheer nonsense, it is almost mendacity, to declare that the county cricket of to-day is played for gate-money and for nothing else. Yet such assertions have been made, and are still made, by men who do not reflect that the patrons who subscribe to a club do not do so with the idea of providing the public with a gratis entertainment, though—I am thinking of one patron in particular—such an act would not be without precedent: their idea is, as stated before, to provide amusement for themselves, encourage the game, and help those who help themselves. The last people to grumble at the payment of gate-money are the payers themselves, who are not slow to recognise that sixpence is not a large sum to expend for a day in the open air, with a display of skill and activity thrown in, for which the spectator pays at the rate of about one penny per hour! Lastly, and briefly—for there is no satisfaction gained by dealing with misstatements—when accounts are balanced, the surplus that remains, if any, does not go to swell the speculator’s income, but is devoted to the improvement of accommodation, the advancement of the game, or that prudent economy that provides against the cricketer’s bugbear, in every sense of the word—a rainy day.
I have suggested that we owe the increase of cricket to the growth of county cricket, and the reasons are not far to seek. When once a county is included in the first class, or aspires to it, its first effort is to enlist all its available talent, and as the reward of the great cricketer is no mean one, whether that reward come in the shape of reputation and amusement to the amateur, or of good red gold to the professional, the aim and ambition of every promising player and of the club to which he belongs is to get at least a fair trial in the higher spheres of the game. Further than that, the executive does not merely wait to receive the applications of the ambitious, but, like Porsena of Clusium, it “bids its messengers ride forth, east and west and south and north,” not exactly “to summon its array,” but to ascertain what fighting blood there is in the county ready for immediate action, and what recruits there are whose early promise may be developed into disciplined effectiveness. In other words, the cricketing pulse of the county at once begins to throb, and the executive, like a wise physician, keeps its finger on that organ, to ascertain the condition of the patient. But it is not merely by inquisition into the talent that is available that the ranks of a county eleven are filled up: the promising players are invited to attend at the county ground for inspection, practice, and tuition, being drafted into the company of the “ground” bowlers, and given opportunities in minor matches of exhibiting their natural and their trained powers, a further impulse being given to cricket by the distribution of the big matches among different centres, where such distribution is possible, and by the mission of so-called second elevens to the most distant bounds, to play matches and to discover talent. These trips may well be compared to the marches of different regiments through those districts from which, under the territorial system, they hope to draw their recruits. When to these different forms of encouragement we add the sums spent in occasional subsidies, to say nothing of the salaries of players and officials, and of the expenses entailed by the upkeep of the club’s ground and property, it will be seen that, though the sour may sneer, it would be and is impossible for a crack county to maintain its position unless its assured income from subscriptions were augmented by the humble sixpence of gate-money. It is not, of course, every county that can manage its cricket en prince in the way indicated: that implies a heavy rent-roll, a handsome and dependable income, and perhaps a snug little sum in the 2-3/4 per cents; only rich counties can do things with a lavish hand, and find themselves able to spare a lucrative match that will produce a bouncing benefit for some deserving professional. Others have to look rather wistfully at the small roll of cloth from which their coat has to be cut, and have to curtail expenses accordingly; but the county cricket club, even if run upon humble lines, recollects that Rome was not completed within the twenty-four hours, and that as nothing succeeds like success, its first and primary duty is to be successful, if possible; that it is only by pains and patience that the best men are to be discovered and utilised, and that its turn can only be served by inoculating as many people and clubs as possible with the most virulent type of cricket fever.
I am disposed to think that that county is likely to prosper which can find two or three grounds within its borders which are suitable for county cricket, and are in the centre of fairly populous districts; to which fact I attribute, in no small degree, the success of the Yorkshire County C.C. as an institution, and of its eleven as a fighting body. Not that the side has always had the pleasant experiences of 1900, 1901, and 1902, when in a series of eighty-three matches only two resulted in failure, for as recently as 1889 the big county and Sussex met at the fag-end of the season in an encounter which was to decide whether the northern or the southern county was to find its name at the bottom of the roll; but the county of so many acres has not only a large field of selection, but has also, in Sheffield, Leeds, Huddersfield, Bradford, Scarborough, York, Hull, and Dewsbury, so many centres of action that she can display her powers to tens of thousands, where other counties can only muster thousands, and can thus command a very large and consistent income. But in strict and strong relief stands out the figure of Nottingham, a county that, to the best of my knowledge, has never played a “home” match away from the Trent Bridge ground, and has never been blest with a superabundance of this world’s goods, yet has for many years not only possessed a formidable eleven of its own, but has also been able to send out a full and steady stream of professional players of all classes, some of whom, though not exactly thankless children, have proved a veritable set of serpent’s teeth when arrayed against the mother county. Nottinghamshire is a standing exception to the rule that great elevens are the outcome of great incomes.
There is no doubt that the true nucleus of a county eleven lies in the body of professional players that the executive has at its disposal. As men who are in receipt of a definite wage for their services, and as men who, by reason of their skill, obedience, and civility, have something like a right to expect a benefit match after some ten or twelve years of service, they find it a duty as well as a pleasure to keep themselves in good condition as well as in good practice, and, their services being always available, they are in the long run of more general use than the amateurs, many of whom, having other avocations, are unable to play regularly. Not that any eleven is complete without its amateurs. Among professionals a certain amount of professional jealousy is sure to arise, which sometimes grows into something stronger; while it has been proved by actual experience that in an eleven entirely composed of paid players, and of course captained by a professional, difficulties of discipline will occur, the management of the eleven being acridly criticised by those who think that in some form or other their abilities have not been duly recognised, which lack of recognition is attributable to the worst and meanest of motives. There is no such thing, fortunately, as a cricket trade-union, nor is there any place for it, but as a matter of history it is right to record that various secessions, almost amounting to mutinies, have occurred in the professional ranks at different times, which have sometimes taken the form of a strike, based either on a claim for higher pay, or on a demand that certain players who are regarded as obnoxious—almost as blacklegs—by their comrades should not take part in a given match, under no less a penalty than the refusal of the protestants to appear themselves. All these things have occurred, but just as the intestine disputes of bees may, according to Virgil, be allayed by the flinging down of a handful of dust, so a little diplomatic negotiation has settled the dispute. But nothing tends so much to bind a team together in the bonds of amity as well as of discipline as the presence of capable amateurs—men of tact and education as well as efficient cricketers, one of whom, acting as captain and supreme controller, can readily check the earlier symptoms of discontent, or, better still, by his wise administration of his office prevent the incubation of a disease so disastrous as indiscipline. The moral effect of the presence of amateurs is no whit less than their value as players, preventing as it does the somewhat sordid troubles that are apt to arise among those to whom cricket is a livelihood, and not merely a pastime. Further, a great deal has been said and written—mainly by those who know nothing of the subject—as to the exact relations existing between the amateur and the professional. Only ignorance permits a man to apply such a word as “snobbish” to the custom of providing separate accommodation for the two classes of players; worse is it when such a one hints at such a thing as stand-offishness on the part of the amateurs. There are certain differences in the education and the social position of the two classes that makes the closer intimacy of the pavilion undesirable, and undesired also by both parties. At any rate, cricketers are perfectly capable of making all such arrangements for themselves, without the intrusion and interference of others. They have their own code and their own method, nor does there exist any analogy between the regulations, especially as to the amateur status, of cricket and of other games. Cricket stands on its own pedestal, and it is good that it should.
A CRICKET MATCH (about 1750).