My own introduction to Cricket, as to Golf, was peculiarly poignant. I and my brother, aged more or less about six or seven, were invited to play by the local Club, and we each received exactly one very slow and considerate lob. But his lob took him on the eye, and mine, kicking on a bad wicket, had me on the knee-pan. The subsequent proceedings did not interest us very much, but there is nothing like entering children early at a manly pastime.
Intellectual application will, to some extent, overcome physical difficulties. By working at least five hours a day, and by reading the Cricket Field daily and nightly, I did learn to bowl a little, with a kind of twist. This, while it lasted, in a bowlerless country, was a delightful accomplishment. You got into much better sporting society than you deserved, and, in remote parts of the pastoral districts you were looked up to as one whose name had been in Bell's Life; we still had Bell's Life then. It was no very difficult matter to bowl a rustic team for a score of runs or so, and all went merry as a wedding bell. But, alas, when Drumthwacket played Tullochgorum, there was a young Cambridge man staying with the latter chieftain. I began, as I usually did, by "yorking" Tullochgorum's Piper and his chief Butler, and his head Stalker, and then SMITH of King's came in. The ground, as usual, had four sides. He hit me over the enclosure at each of the four sides, for I changed my end after being knocked for five fours in his first over. After that, my prestige was gone. The rustics, instead of crawling about their wickets, took to walking in and smacking me. This would not have mattered, if any of the Drumthwacket team could have held a catch, and if the wicket-keeper had not let SMITH off four times in one over. My character was lost, and all was ended with me north of the Grampians, where the wickets are peculiarly suitable to my style of delivery.
As to batting, there is little that is pleasant to confess. As soon as I got a distant view of a ball, I was ever tempted to whack wildly in its direction. There was no use in waiting for it, the more I looked at it the less I liked it. So I whacked, and, if you always do this, a ball will sometimes land on the driving part of the bat, and then it usually happened that my companion, striving for a five or a six, ran me out. If he did not, I did not stay long. The wicket-keeper was a person whose existence I always treated as une quantité négligeable, and sometimes the ball would bound off his pads into the stumps. The fielders would occasionally hold a catch, anything may happen. On the other hand there was this to be said for my style of batting, that the most experienced Cricketer could not tell where or in what direction I would hit any given ball. If it was on the off, that was no reason why I should not bang it to square-leg, a stroke which has become fashionable since my time, but in those old days, you did not often see it in first-class Cricket. It was rather regarded as "an agrarian outrage." Foreigners and ladies would find Cricket a more buoyant diversion if all the world, and especially LEWIS HALL and SHREWSBURY, played on my principles. Innings would not last so long. Not so many matches would be drawn. The fielders would not catch cold.
To speak of fielding is to revive unspeakable sorrows. For a short-sighted man, whose fingers are thumbs, no post in the field is exactly grateful. I have been at long-leg, and, watching the game intently, have perceived the batters running, and have heard cries of "well fielded!" These cries were ironical. The ball had been hit past me, but I was not fortunate enough to observe the circumstance. A fielder of this calibre always ends by finding his way to short-leg. A prudent man can do a good deal here by watching the umpire, dodging when he dodges, and getting behind him on occasion. But I was not prudent. I observed that a certain player hit very much behind the leg, so there, "in the mad pride of intellectuality," I privily stationed myself. He did it very fine, very fine indeed, into my eye. The same misfortune has attended me at short-slip; it should have been a wicket, it was a black eye, or the loss of a tooth or two, as might happen. In fact, I sometimes wonder myself at the contemptuous frankness of my own remarks on the fielding at Lord's. For if a catch could be missed (and most catches can), I was the man to miss it. Swift ones used to hit me and hurt me, long ones I always misjudged, little simple poppy ones spun out of my fingers. Now the unlucky thing about Cricket, for a Duffer, is that your misfortunes do not hurt yourself alone. It is not as in a single at Golf, it is not as in fishing, or riding, or wherever you have no partner. To drop catches is to madden the bowler not unnaturally, and to lengthen the period of leather-hunting. Cricket is a social game, and its proficients soon give the cold shoulder to the Duffer. He has his place, however, in the nature of things. It is he who keeps up the enthusiasm, who remembers every run that anybody I made in any given match. In fact, at Cricket, the Duffer's mission is to be a "judge of the game;" I don't mean an Umpire, very far from that. If you once let the Duffer umpire he could ruin the stoutest side, and secure victory to the feeblest. I may say that, at least in this capacity, I have proved really useful to my party in country matches. But, in the long run, my capacity even for umpiring came to be doubted, and now I am only a critic of Cricket. There is none more relentless, not one with a higher standard, at least where no personal feelings are concerned. For I have remarked that, if a Cambridge man writes about an Oxford victory (which he seldom has to do), or if an Oxford man writes on a Cambridge victory (a frequent affliction), he always leaves you with the impression that, in spite of figures, his side had at least a moral triumph. These admirable writers have all been Duffers.
TIMES CHANGE.
Shade of William the Conqueror. "WHAT! THE PEOPLE OBJECT TO ENCLOSING A FEW ACRES OF THIS OPEN SPACE FOR STATE PURPOSES—FOR THEIR OWN BENEFIT? BY THE SPLENDOUR OF HEAVEN! I SHOULD HAVE LIKED TO HAVE HEARD THE VARLETS OBJECT TO MY MAKING MILES OF IT SUCH—FOR MINE!"
Secretary for War. "AH, YOUR MAJESTY HAD IN YOUR TIMES NO TIMES TO RECKON WITH!"