It would be in the highest degree imprudent for any one in my position to say a word against country umpires. And, to give them their due, I have almost always found them, in what some would call these degenerate modern days, to be as accurate and as honest as their brethren in more exalted spheres; but there are brilliant exceptions! “To play eleven men and an umpire” is, I am told, a chestnut in Gloucestershire, and one story I can vouch for certainly bears out the theory. It was a match between two old-standing village rivals, and contrary to custom, the visiting team turned up with twelve men, owing to the unexpected arrival of a fairly good player. Another member of the team, conscious of his own weakness, but with perhaps more cunning than good-nature, promptly offered to stand down, “for,” said he, with a sly wink to his captain, “I can be of more use to the side if I umpire!” That comes from Gloucestershire, but it is easily beaten by the remark of the real umpire in a village match in Oxfordshire last August. “How’s that?” shouted the wicket-keeper proudly, as he captured the ball straight off the edge of the bat. “Not out,” said the umpire, “but it was a damned fine catch if he hit it.” I do not wish for a moment to insinuate that our friends in the north are not always the good sportsmen we believe them to be, so we will put the following tale under the head of “exceptions.” The match, a two-day one, was being played at Whitehaven, in Cumberland; things had gone badly with the home team, and all the morning of the second day the local umpire had been engineering his opponents out in the most courageous way. But to everybody’s astonishment, when a confident appeal was made against the last man on the side, he gave him “Not out.” Struck by this sudden conversion, a friend asked him what the meaning of it was. “Well,” he said, “if I’d a given ‘im out, they wouldn’t ‘a stayed to loonch, and my father does the caterin’”!
In one of the keenest matches I ever took part in (it was on the 16th of August 1902, and we won by four runs), two men of the opposite side were batting, one a very fair bat, and dangerous when set, the other a dubious quantity at all times. The bowler sent down a fast one to leg which the wicket-keeper failed to stop, and both men started for a bye. Meanwhile, short slip, backing up, had stopped the ball, and threw the near wicket down, while both men were apparently in the middle of the pitch. The good batsman refused to go, and the indifferent one apparently held no views on the subject, but stayed where he was, while the two umpires (I blush to record it) gave, almost unasked, an opinion favourable to their respective sides. Party feeling was running high, but I never allow any discussion in the field, and it was properly left to the umpire at the end where the wicket had been broken to give a decision. Unfortunately, it was their umpire, and the weak batsman had to go! And it was a fair decision. There was obviously a doubt, and he gave his own side the benefit of it. Who could do more? But we had our revenge on the gentleman who refused to go. He hit a lovely half-volley to square leg, which did not quite reach the boundary. My man was after it like a hare, and while they were trying to get the fourth run, he threw the wicket down full pitch from where he picked up the ball, at least 90 yards off, and with only one stump visible. A fluke, of course, but when I complimented him afterwards on his brilliant performance, which practically won us the match, he simply said, “Oh! that’s nothing, sir; I was always a bit of a slinger”!
Our great annual event is, of course, the Married v. Single match, which takes place on the last Saturday of the season. In the old days, when we played on the Common, this was the occasion of what one might almost describe as a village orgie. Men turned up from everywhere, who never honoured the club with their patronage at other times, some even dressed, most appropriately, as clowns, and the cricket was distinctly of the “Dan Leno at the Oval” variety. Well, well, Tempora mutantur et nos mutamur in illis. It was doubtless very amusing, but there were objections, latterly even objectors (whether of the conscientious variety or not doesn’t matter), and the present tea-tent is in every way preferable to its rival “down the road.” So we play on our own field now, and get a very fair amount of amusement out of it, even without the clowns. I have tried for years to get up some sort of a representative married team before the day of the match, but it’s no use. They are all too old, or too stiff, or too busy. Yet when the eventful afternoon arrives, there are generally some fourteen or fifteen Benedicts ready to do battle for the honour of their wives and families, against a meagre dozen or so of the less fortunate Bachelors. Public enthusiasm, at all times keen in village cricket, reaches its high-water mark on this great day, and the ladies especially assemble in large numbers to do honour to the brave. Sympathy is invariably and entirely with the married men—I suppose because part of the audience are the wives of the team now stripping for the fray, and the other part hope that by next summer at latest they will be in the same proud position. On paper there can be no question that the Bachelors have the strongest side, but against their youth, their practice, and their skill we place our experience and our considerable numerical advantage, so there is not much in it. Then again, they look rather contemptuously at our weather-beaten ranks; say we have no bowling, can’t run (two of us are over seventy, certainly!), and are altogether as sorry a collection of prehistoric peeps as ever took the field. Nous verrons! The Bachelors win the toss and start batting. An old man of sixty-seven, who has recently contracted a second matrimonial alliance to make sure of his place in the team, asks to keep wicket, and after buckling on a pair of lovely old faded yellow pads, he goes to say “Good-bye” to his new “missus,” and get her to pull his waistcoat down and stuff it inside the back of his trousers (this I saw myself). Then I arrange the rest of my veterans in a sort of inner and outer circle round the wickets, in places where they are least likely to be hurt, and the game begins. It is true we have no bowling, in the modern sense of the term, but it’s quite good enough for the Bachelors. At one end I put on our village umpire, who bowls fast straight underhand, literally “daisy-cutters,” and at the other a newly-married groom, just come into the parish, whose methods are precisely the same. Scoring is out of the question. You may stop the ball as long as your patience lasts, but you can’t get it away, and wicket after wicket falls, as the pick of my village eleven try in vain to turn fast sneaks into slow half-volleys. I feel quite sorry for them when the end comes, and twelve promising young cricketers, with “Mr. Extras,” have all been dismissed for 76. Then our turn comes, and the umpire and I make a good start by putting on 30 for the first wicket. But it’s not all over yet! Six wickets fall for an additional 9 runs, and the audience begins to hold its breath. We have still eight or nine batsmen, but can they possibly make 5 runs apiece? We are soon put out of suspense. The groom goes in for hitting, knocks up 15 in a few minutes, which demoralises the field, the best bowler is taken off at the critical moment, and the rest is easy. We have had a most thrilling afternoon’s cricket, and no one is any the worse except the old wicket-keeper, who is so stiff he cannot come downstairs for two days.
I feel I ought to apologise for appearing in such august company as this book affords, but it is our cheery editor’s doing, not mine. My enthusiasm for the subject is the only excuse I can offer, and that he has kindly accepted, so I need say no more. Only I shall always regret that no more capable pen than mine was found to do justice to such an inspiring theme as “Village Cricket.”
AN EIGHTEENTH CENTURY CARICATURE.
