gate-money, we import players from Australia or Timbuctoo, stick a Loamshire cap with the county arms on the head of each, and confidently expect our public to swallow the fiction and provide the local enthusiasm undismayed." "My dear Verinder, if you propose to preach rank Chauvinism, I have done. But I don't believe you are in earnest." "In a sense, I am not. My argument would exclude Ranjitsinhji himself from all matches but a few unimportant ones. I vote for Greater Britain, as you know and in any case my best arguments would go down before the sheer delight of watching him at the wicket. Let the territorial fiction stand, by all means. Nay, let us value it as the one relic of genuine county cricket. It is the other side of the business that I quarrel with?" "Be good enough to define the quarrel." "Why, then, I quarrel with the spectacular side of the New Cricket; which, when you come to look into it, is the gate-money side. How does Ranjitsinhji defend it?" "Let me see. 'Its justification is the pleasure it provides for large numbers of the public.'" 66 Quite so the bricklayer and the stockbroker by the ropes, and the cynical Q.C. in the pavilion. But I prefer to consider the interests of the game." "From a purely cricket point of view,' he goes on, 'not much can be said against it.'" "Let us inquire into that. The New Cricket is a business concern: it caters for the bricklayer, the stockbroker, and the whole crowd of spectators. Its prosperity depends on the attraction it offers them. To attract them it must provide first-class players, and the county that cannot breed first-class players is forced to hire them. This is costly; but again the cash comes out of the spectators' pockets, in subscriptions and gate-money. Now are you going to tell me that those who pay the piper are going to refrain from calling the tune? Most certainly they will not. More and more frequently in newspaper reports of cricketmatches you hear talk of what is due to the public.' If stumps, for some reason or other, are drawn early, it is hinted that the spectators have a grievance; a captain's orders are canvassed and challenged, and so is the choice of his team; a dispute between a club and its servants becomes an affair of the streets, and is taken up by the press, with threats and counter-threats. In short, the interest of the game and the interest of the crowd may not be ABEL identical; and whereas a RESIGNS captain used to consider only the interest of the game, he is now obliged to consider both. Does Ranjitsinhji point this out?" THMON LORD SALISBURY RESIGNS "He seems, at any rate, to admit it; for I find this on page 232, in his chapter upon 'Captaincy' : "The duties of a captain vary somewhat according to the kind of match in which his side is engaged, and to the kind of club which has elected him. To begin with, first-class cricket, including representative M.C.C., county and university matches, is quite different from any other-partly because the results are universally regarded as more important, partly because certain obligations towards the spectators have to be taken into consideration. The last point applies equally to any match which people pay to come to see.... The With regard to gate-money matches. captains of the two sides engaged are, during the match, responsible for everything in connection with it. They are under an obligation to the bublic to see that the match is played in such a way as the public has a reasonable right to expect." "And pray,” demanded Verinder, "what are these 'obligations towards the spectators,' and 'reasonable rights' of the public?" "Well, I suppose the public can reasonably demand punctuality in starting play; a moderate interval for luncheon and between innings; and that stumps shall not be drawn, or the match abandoned, before the time arranged, unless circumstances make it absolutely necessary." "And who is to be judge of these circumstances?" "The captain, I suppose." "In theory, yes, but he has to satisfy the crowd. It is the crowd's 'reasonable right' to be satisfied; and by virtue of it the crowd becomes the final judge. It allows the captain to decide, but will hoot him if To be sure he does not; and for the simple reason that these claims on the side of the public are growing year by year. Already no one can say how much they cover, and assuredly no one can say where they are likely to stop. You observe that our author includes even University matches under the head of exhibition cricket, in which obligations towards the spectators have to be taken into account. You remember the scene at Lord's in 1893 when Wells purposely bowled no-balls; and again in 1896 when Shine bowled two no-balls to the boundary and then a ball which went for four byes, the object in each case being to deprive Oxford of the follow-on. This policy was hotly discussed; and luckily the discussion spent itself on the question whether play could be at the same time within the laws and clean contrary to the ethics of cricket. But there was also a deal of talk about what was due to the public; talk which would have been altogether wide of the mark in the old days, when Oxford and Cambridge met to play a mere friendly match and the result concerned them alone." "And is this," I asked, "the sum of your indictment?” "Yes, I think that is all. And surely it is enough." 'Then, as I make out, your chief objections to spectacular cricket are two. You hold that it gives vast numbers of people a false idea that they are joining in a sport when in truth they are doing no more than look on. And you contend that as the whole institution resolves itself more and more into a paid exhibition, the spectators will tend more and more to direct the development of the game; whereas cricket in your opinion should be uninfluenced by those who are outside the ropes?" "That is my case." "And I think, my dear Verinder, it is a strong one. But there is just one little point which you do not appear to have considered. And I was coming to it just now--or rather Prince Ranjitsinhji was coming to it—when you interrupted us. "From a purely cricket point of view,' he was saying, 'not much can be said against exhibition cricket.' And in the next sentence he goes on: ‘At any rate it promotes skill in the game and keeps up the standard of excellence.'" "To be sure it does that." "And cricket is played by the best players to-day with more skill than it was by the best players of twenty or forty years ago?” "Yes, I believe that; in spite of all we ALFRED MYNN hear about the great Alfred Mynn and other bygone heroes." "Come then," said I, "tell me, Is Cricket an art?" "Decidedly it is.” "Then Cricket, like other arts, should aim at perfection?" "I suppose so." "And that will be the highest aim of Cricket-its own perfection? And its true lovers should welcome whatever helps to make it perfect?" "I see what you are driving at," said he. "But Cricket is a social art, and must be judged by the good it does to boys and men. You, I perceive, make it an art-in-itself, and would treat it as the gardeners treat a fine chrysanthemum, nipping off a hundred buds to feed and develop a single perfect bloom.” "True: we must consider it also as a social art. But, my dear fellow, are you not exaggerating the destruction necessary to produce the perfect bloom? You talk of the crowd at Lord's or the Oval as if all these thousands were diverted from honest practice of the game to the ignoble occupation of looking on; whereas two out of three of them, were this spectacle not provided, would far more likely be attending a horse-race, or betting in clubs and publichouses. The bricklayer, the stockbroker, the archdeacon, by going to see Lockwood bowl, depopulate no village green. You judge these persons by yourself, and tell yourself reproachfully that but for this attraction you, John Verinder, would be creditably perspiring at a practice-net in Tooting or Dulwich; whereas, the truth is Why are you hesitating?" "Because it is not a very pleasant thing to say. But the truth is, your heart and your conscience in this matter of athletics are a little younger than your body." "You mean that I am getting on for middle age." "I mean that, though you talk of it, you will never subscribe to that suburban club. You will marry; you will be made a judge; you will attend cricket-matches, and watch from the pavilion while your son takes block for his first score against the M.C.C. "And when with envy Time transported, Shall think to rob us of our joys, I, with my girls (if I ever have any), will sit Verinder pulled a wry face, and the Boy smacked him on the back and exhorted him to "buck up." "And the round world will go on as before, and the sun will patrol Her Majesty's dominions, and still where the Union Jack floats he will pass the wickets pitched and white-flannelled Britons playing for all they are worth, while men of subject races keep the score-sheet. And still when he arrives at this island he will look down on green closes and approve what we all allow to be one of the most absolutely gracious sights on earth-the ordered and moving regiments of schoolboys at cricket. Grayson, reach round to that shelf against which your chair is tilted; take down poor Lefroy's poems, and read us that sonnet of his, 'The Bowler.'' Grayson found the book and the place, and read: "Two minutes' rest till the next man goes in ! Two minutes only. Conscious of a name, The new man plants his weapon with profound Long-practised skill that no mere trick may scare. Not loth, the rested lad resumes the game : The flung ball takes one madding, tortuous bound, And the mid-stump three somersaults in air!" Ripping!" the Boy ejaculated. “Who wrote it?" “His name was Lefroy. He died young. He left Oxford a few years before we went up. And I think," continued Verinder, musing, "that I, who detest making acquaintances, would give at this moment a considerable sum to have known him. Well," he continued, turning to me and puffing at his pipe, “so you warn Grayson and me that we must prepare to relinquish these and all the other delights sung by Lefroy and Norman Gale and that other poet-anonymous, but you know the man-in his incomparable parody of Whitman: 'the perfect. feel of a fourer' "The thousand melodious cracks, delicious cracks, the responsive echoes of my comrades and the hundred thence resulting runs, passionately yearned for, never, never again to be forgotten. 'Overhead meanwhile the splendid silent sun, blending all, fusing all, bathing all in floods of soft ecstatic perspiration,' -to all this we must say good-bye. And what do you offer us in exchange?" Merely the old consolation that life is short, art is long; that while you grow old, cricket in other hands will be working out its perfection, and your son, when you have one, will start with higher ideals than you ever dreamed of." "And this perfection -will it ever be attained?" BOOK "I daresay never. For perhaps we may say after Plato, and without irreverence, that the pattern of perfect cricket is laid up somewhere in the skies, and out of man's reach. But between it and ordinary cricket we may set up a copy of perfection, as close as man can make it, and, by little and little, closer every year. This copy will be preserved, and cared for, and advanced, by those professional cricketers against whom the unthinking have so much to say; by these and by the few amateurs who, as time goes on, will be found able to bear the strain. For the search after perfection is no light one, and will admit of no half-hearted service. I say nothing here of material rewards, beyond reminding you that your professional cricketer is poorly paid in comparison with an inferior singer of the music-halls, although he gives twice as much pleasure as your lion comique, and of a more innocent kind. But he does more than this. He feeds and guards the flame of art; and when his joints are stiff and his vogue is past, he goes down as ground-man and instructor to a public school, and imparts to a young generation what knowledge he can of the high mysteries whose servant he has been quite like the philosopher in the Republic "Steady on! " interposed Grayson. "How on earth will the Boy stand up to Briggs's bowling if you put these notions in his head? He'll be awe-struck, and begin to fidget with his right foot." 66 Oh, fire ahead!" said that cheerful youth. He had possessed himself of Prince Ranjitsinhji's book and coiled himself comfortably into a wicker chair. "You're only rotting, I know. And you've passed over the most important sentence in the whole book. Listen to this, 'There are very few newspaper readers who do not turn to the cricket column first when the morning journal comes; who do not buy a halfpenny evening paper to find out how many runs W.G. or Bobby Abel has made.' That's the long and short of the matter. Verinder, which do you read first in your morning paperthe Foreign Intelligence or the Cricket News?" |