Nobody who has watched the game carefully can fail to be struck with the wonderful development of county cricket. The ideal county cricket really exists, speaking of first-class counties alone, in the three counties of Nottingham, Yorkshire, and, we think, Derbyshire. Regarded impartially, a county ought to be represented solely by county players, but as a matter of fact this is not the case anywhere but in Nottingham and Yorkshire. But in many counties are to be found gentlemen who like to have first-class cricket in their county, and a county cricket club is founded. The financial prosperity of the club depends in a great measure on the success of the county eleven, and if a county has three or four amateurs who materially strengthen the side, the committee make great efforts to secure their services all through the season. The natural result follows. The amateur is driven to confess that he cannot afford the expenses of travelling and living at hotels, and he must decline to play. The winning of matches being the golden key to financial prosperity, the committees have been driven to adopt a system of paying the amateur money, that their counties may play their best elevens, and the first step in obliterating the boundary line that should exist between the amateur and professional has been taken, and what thirty years ago was done in one or two instances is now a matter of universal practice.
I am now for the moment making no comment; only stating a fact. As far as the balance-sheet of the county club is concerned, you cannot assume that the club can run its eleven cheaply by playing amateurs, who in truth cost the committee as much per head as the professionals. It would involve too much worrying into detail, and might lead to other harmful consequences, to get exact statements of the cost of railway tickets, etc.; so there is a fixed payment in a majority of cases given to every amateur, and this fixed payment is on a sufficiently generous scale to enable many an impecunious amateur to devote his services to his county. Nor is this the only way of providing livelihoods for skilful amateurs. There has to be, of course, a secretary, and you can either appoint a cricketer to this post, and provide him with a clerk who can do the work while his employer is playing cricket, or else make the cricketer an under-secretary, both posts, of course, having a salary attached.[3] It is also, if report speaks truly, a matter of fairly common practice for employers somehow or other to find some employment for cricketers during the winter, of course at a salary, and it has therefore come to this, that many an amateur has found in the game of cricket a means of access to a livelihood. No distinction has yet been given between a complimentary match and a benefit; the result is much the same in both instances; the proceeds of gate-money, after deduction of expenses, are handed to the player for whom the match is played.
A short time ago there was a proposal, emanating, if I am not mistaken, from the Australian authorities, that the M.C.C. should undertake the arranging and selection of an English eleven to represent this country in a series of matches in Australia. The committee of the M.C.C. undertook the task, though not, it must be confessed, in a very sanguine spirit. Their labours did not last long. Difficulties met them on the very threshold, and these difficulties were entirely on the ground of the amateurs’ expenses. Now it must be assumed that, if the principle of paying amateurs’ expenses be allowed, there ought to be no difficulty in the way of settling with amateurs. A manager has to go out; why should not he take all the tickets, pay the coaching and railway expenses and hotel bills, receive the proper share of the gate-money, and deliver the amateur safe back in his own country without the payment to the amateur of a penny? The word expenses has a well-defined and proper meaning, known to everybody. It represents the actual cost to a player of living, travelling, and playing, from the moment he leaves this country to the moment he sets foot in it again; but it is perfectly certain that, if left to the amateur to make a sort of private bargain, other and improper developments will take place, and it is notorious that they do.
Now let us consider for a moment the position of affairs, as far as this question of amateurs and professionals is concerned, in the case of Australia. As was said before, there was some sort of discrimination between the two in the first Colonial eleven in 1878. Both the Bannermans, as noted above, were avowedly professionals, and Midwinter also, if I remember rightly, and perhaps one or two others. But the bulk were amateurs, and the mystic sign “Mr.” was placed before their names. If no authoritative statement is made, and no balance-sheet made public, nobody can be surprised if the facts are more or less conjectural. But for all that, rumour in this instance is no lying jade, and without fear of contradiction, I assert that many of the so-called Australian “amateurs” who have been to this country have made money over and above their expenses.[4] Let nobody be misled, or assume from this that any stigma attaches to any of these Australian players; it is not their fault, but some may complain of the system. The profession of a cricketer, the calling of a professional, is in every way an honourable and good one. What puzzles so many of us is that, this being the case, so many should adopt the profession, but deny the name. They seem to prefer the ambiguous position of a so-called amateur to the straightforward, far more honourable one of a professional. This is not the case in other professions. Take the case of the dramatic career. There are many actors and actresses of more or less high social standing who have been driven by their love of the work and skill to adopt the calling of an actor. There is no ambiguity about it. They become what they are. They do not call themselves amateurs and receive salaries under the guise of expenses, which is exactly what cricketers do; and many of us ask ourselves, what is the reason of this?
To this question all that can be said is that circumstances have so changed that what was easy to define formerly is difficult now. It may be impossible to have the same rules and regulations now that used to exist forty years ago. But even if this is true, there can be no doubt that in these days a most unhealthy state of things prevails. It is bad for the nominal amateur, it is bad for the game, and it is bad for the country. Cricket is the finest game ever invented, but it is after all only a game, and it is wrong that things should have developed in such a way that amateurs become professionals in all but the name, and that gate-money should be the real moving spirit and ideal of all county clubs. To be prosperous financially a county must win matches, to win matches you must get the best possible county eleven, therefore the best amateurs as well as professionals must be played; and if these amateurs cannot afford the time and the money to play, why, then, they must be paid, and paid accordingly they are. That this is the case now everybody knows, and it seems strange that the greatest game of the world should be the one game where such things occur. No complaint need be made of the Australian system, except in this, that players who are in fact professionals should be treated as such. We are always glad to give them every welcome and show them every hospitality; nevertheless, they should have the same treatment and stand on the same footing that our professionals do when they visit Australia. In the same way, if any player feels himself unable, at the invitation of the M.C.C., to go out to Australia, because he is only offered the payment of the actual cost of travelling and living, and afterwards goes out under some private arrangement, he should be treated and recognised as a professional. It is an old proverb that you cannot eat your cake and have it, and if the modern amateur does not care, on social grounds, to become a professional, then let him honestly refuse to play cricket if he cannot afford to play on receipt of his bare expenses only. Richard Daft, in old days, found himself in the same dilemma, and grasped the nettle and became a professional, and justly earned the respect of all for so doing.
Put briefly, in these days the state of things is this. A large number of amateurs directly and indirectly make something of a livelihood by cricket, and yet they are recognised as amateurs. Such cricketers are those who, under the guise of expenses, get such a sum that after paying these expenses leaves something to be carried over, as Mr. Jorrocks called it. A few others do things on a far more lordly scale. They have complimentary matches given them by their counties; in other words, they have benefits like many of the leading and deserving professionals, but still they are called amateurs; and whether it is correct to call a class of men one name, when they are obviously and openly something different, is perhaps a matter of opinion, but for my part I do not hesitate to say it is neither right nor straightforward.
Further trouble arises from the curse of gate-money. This hangs like a blight over everything. County clubs dare not take a decided line about cricket reform, lest a shortening of the game might diminish the gate-money, and professionals do not speak out because they are forced to bow the knee to Baal. County clubs are therefore in this position: they must attract gates; to do this they must have a fine eleven; to get a fine eleven they must have amateurs, and these amateurs cannot play regularly without being paid, and so paid they are. The expenses of running a first-class county eleven are therefore very great—so great, in fact, that few can stand the strain. Some years ago we used to have three or four wet seasons running occasionally. If ever this occurs again, bankruptcy awaits several county committees, as Warwickshire and Worcestershire have some reason from last season’s experience to dread. It now costs as much to run a team of amateurs as professionals, as all have to be paid. Perhaps some day, when the public get tired of seeing match after match unfinished, and refuse to pay their entrance money, and the cricket world find out that some reform is necessary, and the duration of a match is two days and not three, county clubs will find out that they cannot pay these wages for amateurs, and a remedy will be found from an unlooked-for cause.
| Attributed to | Thos. Gainsborough, R.A. |
PORTRAIT OF A YOUTH.