CHAPTER X
UNIVERSITY CRICKET
By Home Gordon and H. D. G. Leveson-Gower
To thousands who have never been near the banks of the Cam or the Isis, “the ‘Varsity match” forms one of the episodes of each recurring year. It is a social festival; perhaps, also, it is the last great manifestation of cricket as a game, and not as a money-making business, which is to be found among first-class fixtures. But the University match is more than this, for it is the Mecca of all who have gone down from Oxford or Cambridge, the opportunity for the renewal of former acquaintances, possibly the only occasion when you come across those who were amongst your greatest friends in the day of arcades ambo. It is good to meet old comrades, good to hear the ring of the old jests, good to see how time is treating those who are your own contemporaries—ay, and good to give one kindly thought to those who have drifted to all the quarters of the Empire, and to remember those who have been removed from us by Death.
The University match is, however, more than an excuse for reunion. It is the battle of the “Blues,” the struggle between eleven picked representatives of Oxford and the eleven contemporary delegates of Cambridge. All old University men, and all the undergraduates of to-day, with their families, relations, and friends, young and old, unite in shouting for their own side. It is as cheery a display of enthusiasm as one could care to show to that hypothetical individual, “the intelligent foreigner”—the foreigner one really encounters being “a chiel amang us takin’ notes” for hostile purposes. But little care we for international complications when Blue meets Blue. It is a grim, grand struggle for mastery, and some illustration of the evenness of the fight can be gathered from the fact that after sixty-eight contests Cambridge should only lead by four.
But the value of the University match exceeds all yet indicated, for it is the supreme and unsullied manifestation of genuine amateurism. When cricket is degenerating into a business, when too many eke out a pseudo-amateurism in unsatisfactory ways, when individuals play for their averages and sides play against the clock, we hail the University match as the recurrent triumph of the true amateur, the keenest, manliest, most entrancing, and most spirited match of the year—and likewise the one haloed by the richest traditions. All these views are apt to be forgotten when county committees are clamouring for valuable Blues to neglect their University trial matches in order to help their shires in championship fixtures. That is why this article is heralded by a pæan of genuine enthusiasm, and it is this that we would say to undergraduates in years to come—you may represent your county as long as your purse and your skill permit, but no living man can participate in thirty-six matches for Oxford or for Cambridge, nor more than four times meet the opposing Blues. Therefore, take University cricket as the happy fruit of early manhood, and believe that nothing in after years is quite equal, quite identical with its delightful experiences.
With these preliminary observations concluded, let us first see where the game is played. Of course the University struggle is at Lord’s, and probably every one who reads the present volume, even if he has not been himself to headquarters, has a pretty good idea of what the ground is like. Even in the last twenty years it has undergone a number of changes in order to bring it to the level of latter-day requirements. Of course the original picturesqueness of the surroundings has been impaired. The present pavilion has been ingloriously compared to a railway station. The extension of the grand stand has rendered all the north side unsightly, and the huge mound at the south-east corner looks like part of the auditorium at Earl’s Court. Even the tennis-court has been shifted. But all said and done, 15,000 people can get a decent view of the game at Lord’s, and the turf itself has been improved beyond measure. Time was when the pitch at Lord’s was proverbially treacherous, and old scores bear eloquent testimony to this. To-day a superb wicket can be provided for a big match, one equal to any in England, despite the fact that comparatively few drawn games take place at St. John’s Wood.