Of course, there were others there besides Bill. There were twenty
thousand people there. There was the whole Oval crowd there. I was
there--I always try to put in a day at Lord's when the Oval crowd
charges across the river with its jolly plebeian war-cries and swarms
into the enclosure at St. John's Wood like a crowd of happy children.
It makes me feel young again to be caught in that tide of fresh
enthusiasm. I know that is how I used to feel in the good old days
of the 'eighties when I used to set out with my lunch to the Oval to
see Walter Read and Lohmann and K. J. Key and M. P. Bowden and Abel
and Lockwood and Tom Richardson and all the glorious company who
filled the stage then. What heroes they were! What scenes we saw!
What bowling, what batting, what fielding! I daresay the heroes of
to-day are as heroic as those of whom I speak; but not for me.
Cricket, to the ageing mind, is never what it used to be; it is
always looking back to some golden age when it flourished, like
chivalry, in a pure and unsullied world. My father used to talk to
me with fervour about the heroic deeds of Caffyn and Julius Cæsar,
and I talk to young people about the incomparable skill of Grace and
Steel and Lohmann, and they no doubt will be eloquent to their
children about Hobbs and Gregory. And so on. Francis Thompson
explained the secret of the golden age when he sang:
Oh, my Hornby and my Barlow long ago.
That is it. It is that "long ago" that makes our giants so
gigantesque. Cricketers, as the old gentleman said of the peaches,
are not so fine as they were in our young days. How could they be?
Why have we lived all these years if we are not allowed to have seen
greater things than these youngsters who are shouldering us out of
the way have ever seen? Of course, they don't believe in "our
Hornbys and our Barlows long ago" any more than I believed when a boy
that Caffyn and Julius Cæsar could hold a candle to W. G. or Walter
Read, and they will find that their children will think lightly of
Hobbs in comparison with some contemporary god of their idolatry.
But whatever change has taken place in cricket--or in me--I swear
there is no change in the jolly Oval crowd. It is, as it has always
been, the liveliest, most intense, most good-humoured mob that ever
shouted itself hoarse at cricket. It is as different from the Lord's
crowd as a country fair is from the Church Congress. At Lord's we
take our cricket as solemnly as if we were at a prayer-meeting. We
sit and smoke and knit our brows with portentous gravity. Sometimes
we forget ourselves and say: "Well run, sir!" or "Missed. By Jove!"
Then we turn round to see if anybody has heard us. We have even been
known to clap; but these extravagances are rare. Generally we end by
falling asleep.
But we were done out of our sleep on Monday. There's no possibility
of sleep when the Oval crowd is about and when they have brought
Billitch with them. At Lord's we never have a popular hero or a
comic figure. Cricket is far too serious a thing to turn to fun. If
Little Tich came and played at Lord's, we should not smile. We
should take him very seriously, and call him Mr. William Tich if he
came out of the front-door of the pavilion, and Tich (W.) if he came
out of the side-door. On Monday we had several bad shocks to our
sense of the solemnities of cricket. For example, we saw Fender, the
Surrey captain, lead the "gentlemen" members of his team to the
professionals' quarters and bring his team out to the field in a
body, just for all the world as though they were all one flesh and
blood. It was a painful sight, and many of us closed our eyes rather
than look upon it. We felt that Bolshevism had invaded our sanctuary
at last.
And then there was that unseemly enthusiasm for Billitch. I don't
know what there is about Bill that makes him such an idol of the Oval
crowd; but there it is. If Bill went on to bowl the ring shouted,
"Good ole Bill"; if he went off bowling it said that, "Ole Bill wants
a rest"; if he hit a ball it said, "That's one for ole Bill"; if he
missed a ball it said, "Ole Bill let that go by"; if he tapped the
wicket with his bat it was confident that "Ole Bill had found a
narsty spot"; if he made a short run it shouted, "Brayvo, ole Bill."
I think that if he had stopped to blow his nose the crowd would have
blown its nose too, for the pleasure of keeping him company.
It is not that Billitch is a comic figure, as Johnny Briggs used to
be. Nor an incomparable cricketer, as Lohmann used to be. Nor of
home product from Mitcham Common, for I think he comes from
Lancashire. But he has a certain liveliness, a sense of enjoying
everything he does, and putting his whole heart into it, that gives a
lusty spirit to the game and touches the affections of the Oval
crowd, which always mixes up its affections with its cricket. And
his name does the rest. It is an irresistible name. You can go on
saying Billitch all day without growing weary. It will suit any
circumstances and go to any rhythm. What jolly verses old Craig
would weave about it if he could come back and hawk poems to us on
sunny afternoons. But it needed the Oval crowd to discover the
riches of that name. If Billitch had come to Lord's he would not
have been Billitch at all. He would have been Hitch (W.) and as
solemn as all the rest of us. I wish we were as merry at Lord's as
they are at the Oval.