CHAPTER XI.
SUGGESTED REFORMS.
As with other games like Tennis and Racquets, so with Cricket, we may assume that the game as now played is excellent for experts who either have wealth and leisure or else are professionals. For those, and for others at intervals, let the play be nearly as it now is. Let the best go on. Let there be test-matches, county and ‘varsity matches, college and school matches, house and dormitory matches, and so on. Here we deal chiefly with reforms outside these decisive games which are likely to remain as they are.
With those who are not experts of the classes mentioned above, the play cries for adaptation. First of all, there is need for snob-cricket, stump-cricket, room-cricket (not mere bedroom practice, but an actual game), as a more regular and more enjoyable substitute. Secondly, there is need for preparation; Cricket has been described as a trinity of games, and the stump-practice suggested in a previous chapter can serve as a preparation for fielding. The exercises offered in other chapters would serve as substitutes and also as preparation for play when play itself was out of the question. Cricket is a river that needs a good source and many good tributary-streams; it needs preparatory exercises and games. Such practice would soon make the play itself far more pleasant and interesting. Thirdly, there is need of supplementation—for example, left-handed play, the use of the left side being important, not merely in fielding (what crocks most people are with their left hands!), but in change-bowling also. Why should not more players be able to bowl an over or two left-handed for a change?
Besides this, there is need of cheapness—of economy of money and of time as well, so that each player may get more work to do and less dull waiting.
Above all, there is need of some “fun for the duffers,” if the game is to spread or even to hold its own. We are rapidly becoming Americanised. No longer do the majority care to serve merely as watchers, or at the best as ninepins to a Hirst or a Rhodes, as feeders and throwers-in for an Abel, a Shrewsbury, a Fry, or a Ranji. They want to be up and doing and enjoying themselves, or else they will give up the so-called play in disgust; it isn’t play. That is their true complaint.
And so we say, let the best players and the other players at intervals have their matches and games and net-practice as before, with any changes that may be accepted (such as those which will be touched on directly). But let there be something to give pleasure to the average person, whether it be an occasional game of tip-and-run, or an occasional game with some sort of a handicap.
What the handicap shall be, whether more men in the field, or both sides fielding, or fewer men on the stronger side, or smaller bats, or larger wickets, or a time-limit, must be left to the players themselves to decide. Only, one could wish for a more democratic and representative vote instead of the whole management being left to the few experts or “aristocrats,” who, of course, will legislate from their own point of view.
The reforms suggested by so many writers do not really deal with the masses of cricketers at all. The time-limit for the innings (it might be annulled in case of a difficult wicket), the running out of boundary hits, the declaring of the innings closed at any moment, the innings of sections of sides at a time—these things do not tend to make Dick, Tom, and Harry really enjoy themselves or improve their play appreciably more than at present.
As contrasted with short games of stump-cricket (to encourage accuracy of batting and to develop new bowlers), and with the building of clubs having plain rooms for evening games, such reforms are trifling except for the very few who play well. It would be far better to tell people how to field, or even how to watch with a view to interest and improvement. Reforms must aim at giving amusement, interest, attractiveness to the play of the average cricketer.
Let us consider a common experience in a one-day College match at Cambridge, putting aside the wet or rather the difficult wicket on which every player gets a knock; we want to think of Cricket at its best—on a fine day and a good wicket. The side that wins the toss sends in its first two or three bats; they pile up some hundreds of runs; the other members sit and do nothing; the captain eventually declares; the opposing side, after its hours of “country life,” has no chance of winning, so the players either stick and try to play out time, or else make a desperate attempt and slog at everything like a set of Jessops, but unskilled. No wonder there is apathy.