CRICKET
[Illustration:
_From a Painting by_ _R. James._
_TOSSING FOR INNINGS._]
CRICKET
EDITED BY
HORACE G. HUTCHINSON
[Illustration]
“_DESIPERE IN LOCO_”
LONDON: PUBLISHED AT THE OFFICES
OF “COUNTRY LIFE,” TAVISTOCK STREET,
COVENT GARDEN, W.C. & BY GEORGE
NEWNES, LTD. SOUTHAMPTON STREET,
STRAND, W.C. MCMIII
[Illustration]
PREFACE
Surely it is sheer neglect of opportunity offered by an official
position if, being an editor, one has no prefatory word to say of the
work that one is editing. It is said that that which is good requires
no praise, but it is a saying that is contradicted at every turn—or
else all that is advertised must be very bad. While it is our firm
belief that the merits of the present book—_The Country Life Cricket
Book_—are many and various (it would be an insult to the able heads
of the different departments into which the great subject is herein
divided to think otherwise), we believe also that the book has one very
special and even unique merit. We believe, and are very sure, that
there has never before been given to the public any such collection
of interesting old prints illustrative of England’s national game as
appear in the present volume. It is due to the kind generosity of
the Marylebone Cricket Club, as well as of divers private persons,
that we are able to illustrate the book in this exceptional way; and
we (that is to say, all who are concerned in the production) beg to
take the opportunity of giving most cordial thanks to those who have
given this invaluable help, and so greatly assisted in making the
book not only attractive, but also original in its attraction. In the
first place, the prints form in some measure a picture-history of the
national game, from the early days when men played with the wide low
wicket and the two stumps, down through all the years that the bat was
developing out of a curved hockey-stick into its present shape, and
that the use of the bat at the same time was altering from the manner
of the man with the scythe, meeting the balls called “daisy-cutters,”
to the straightforward upright batting of the classical examples. The
classical examples perhaps are exhibited most ably in the pictures
of Mr. G. F. Watts, which show us that the human form divine can be
studied in its athletic poses equally well (save for the disadvantage
of the draping flannels) on the English field of cricket as in the
Greek gymnasium. The prints, too, give us a picture-history of the
costumes of the game. There are the “anointed clod-stumpers” of
Broadhalfpenny going in to bat with the smock, most inconvenient, we
may think, of dresses. There are the old-fashioned fellows who were
so hardly parted from their top-hats. These heroes of a bygone age
are also conspicuous in braces. We get a powerful hint, too, from the
pictures, of the varying estimation in which the game has been held
at different times. There is a suggestion of reverence in some of the
illustrations—a sense that the artist knew himself to be handling a
great theme. In others we see with pain that the treatment is almost
comic, certainly frivolous. We hardly can suppose that the picture of
the ladies’ cricket match would encourage others of the sex to engage
in the noble game, although “Miss Wicket” of the famous painting has
a rather attractive although pensive air—she has all the aspect of
having got out for a duck’s egg.
More decidedly to the same effect—of its differing hold on popular
favour—do we get a hint from the spectators assembled (but assembled
is too big a word for their little number) to view the game. “Lord’s”
on an Australian match day, or a Gents _v._ Players, or Oxford and
Cambridge, hardly would be recognised by one of the old-time heroes, if
we could call him up again across the Styx to take a second innings. He
would wonder what all the people had come to look at. He hardly would
believe that they were come to see the game he used to play to a very
meagre gallery in his life. But he would be pleased to observe the
progress of the world—how appreciative it grew of what was best in it
as it grew older.
Another thing that the collection illustrates is the various changes
of site of the headquarters of the game, if it had a headquarters
before it settled down to its present place of honour in St. John’s
Wood. There is a picture (_vide_ p. v) of “Thomas Lord’s first
Cricket Ground, Dorset Square, Marylebone. Match played June 20,
1793, between the Earls of Winchilsea and Darnley for 1000 guineas.”
With regard to this interesting picture, Sir Spencer Ponsonby-Fane,
in his catalogue of the pictures, drawings, etc., in possession of
the Marylebone Cricket Club, has a note as follows:—“This match was
Kent (Lord Darnley’s side) _v._ Marylebone, with Walker, Beldham, and
Wills (Lord Winchilsea’s side). M.C.C. won by ten wickets. It will be
noticed that only two stumps are represented as being used, whereas,
according to _Scores and Biographies_, it is known that as far back as
1775 a third stump had been introduced; many representations, however,
of the game at a later date show only two stumps.” No doubt at this
early period there was no very fully acknowledged central authority,
and such little details as these were much a matter of local option.
The wicket shown in this picture does not seem to differ at all from
the wicket in the picture of “Cricket” by F. Hayman, R.A. (_vide_ p.
1), in the possession of the Marylebone Club, though the date of the
latter is as early as 1743. Neither does the bat appear to have made
much evolution in the interval. It is on the authority of Sir Spencer
Ponsonby-Fane, in the catalogue above quoted, that we can give “about
1750” for the date of the picture named “A Match in Battersea Fields”
(_vide_ p. 3), in which St. Paul’s dome appears in the background.
Here they seem to be playing with the three stumps, early as the date
is. Again, in the fine picture, “painted for David Garrick” by Richard
Wilson, of “Cricket at Hampton Wick” (_vide_ p. 375), three stumps
are in use, and the bat has become much squared and straightened. Of
course the pictures obviously fall into two chief classes—one in which
“the play’s the thing”; the cricket is the object of the artist’s
representation; the other in which the cricket is only used as an
incidental feature in the foreground, to enliven a scene of which the
serious interest is in the background or surroundings. But the pictures
in which the cricket is the main, if not the only, interest are very
much more numerous. A quaintly suggestive picture enough is that
described in Sir S. Ponsonby-Fane’s catalogue as, “Situation of H.M.’s
Ships _Fury_ and _Hecla_ at Igloolie. Sailors playing Cricket on the
Ice.” In this, of course, there is no historical interest about the
cricket (_vide_ p. 392). The one-legged and one-armed cricketers make
a picture that is curious, though not very pleasant to contemplate;
and the same is to be said of the rather vulgar representation of the
ladies’ cricket match noticed above. The “Ticket to see a Cricket
Match” (_vide_ p. 40) shows a bat of the most inordinate, and probably
quite impossible, length; but we may easily suppose that the artist,
consciously or unwittingly, has exaggerated the weapon of his day.
Here too are two stumps only. We may notice the price of the ticket as
somewhat remarkably high, 2s. 6d.; but it was in the days when matches
were played for large sums of money, so perhaps all was in proportion
(length of bat excepted, be it understood). There is a picture of the
“celebrated Cricket Field near White Conduit House, 1787” (_vide_ p.
17), which is named a “Representation of the Noble Game of Cricket.”
It is a picture of some merit, and evidently careful execution, and
here too the players are seen with bats of a prodigious length; so it
may be that these huge weapons came into fashion for a while, only
to be abandoned again when their uselessness was proved, or perhaps
when the legislature began to make exact provision with regard to the
implements used. In this same picture of the “Noble Game of Cricket” a
man may be seen standing at deep square leg, who is apparently scoring
the “notches,” or “notching” the runs, on a piece of stick. This at
least appears to be his occupation, and it is interesting to observe
it at this comparatively late date, and at headquarters. In the match
between the sides led by Lord Winchilsea and Lord Darnley respectively,
it is seen that there are two tail-coated gentlemen sitting on a
bench, and probably scoring on paper, for it is hardly likely that
they can have been reporting for the press at that time. England did
not then demand the news of the fall of each wicket, as it does now.
Nevertheless, that there must have been a good deal of enthusiasm for
the game, even at a pretty early date, is shown conclusively enough by
the engraving (_vide_ p. 190) of the “North-East View of the Cricket
Grounds at Darnall, near Sheffield, Yorkshire.” What the precise date
of this picture may be I do not know, but it is evident that it must
be old, from the costumes of the players, who are in knee-breeches and
the hideous kind of caps that have been reintroduced with the coming
of the motor-car. Also the umpires, with their top-hatted heads and
tightly-breeched lower limbs, show that this picture is not modern.
And yet the concourse of spectators is immense. Even allowing for some
pardonable exaggeration on the part of the artist, it is certain that
many people must have been in the habit of looking on at matches,
otherwise this picture would be absurd; and this, be it observed, was
not in the southern counties, which we have been led to look on as
the nurseries of cricket, but away from all southern influence, far
from headquarters, in Yorkshire, near Sheffield. To be sure, it may
have been within the wide sphere of influence of the great Squire
Osbaldeston, but even so the picture is suggestive. The scorers are
here seated at a regular table. A very curious representation of the
game is that given in the picture by James Pollard, named “A Match on
the Heath” (_vide_ p. 29). It is a good picture. What is curious is
that, though the period at which Pollard was producing his work was
from 1821 to 1846, the bats used in the game are shown as slightly
curved, and, more notably, the wicket is still of the two stumps only.
There are only two alternative ways of accounting for this: either they
still played in certain places with the two-stump wicket, or else,
which is not likely, Pollard was very careless, and no cricketer, and
took his cricket apparatus from some older picture. I observe, by the
way, that I have, on the whole, done less than justice to the ladies,
as they are portrayed playing the game, for though it is true that the
one picture is, as noticed, vulgar enough, there is another, “An Eleven
of Miss Wickets” (_vide_ p. 248), that is pretty and graceful. While
some of the pictures in this collection are interesting mainly for
their curiosity, or as being something like an illustrated history or
diary of events and changes in the game, there are others that are real
works of art and beauty, sometimes depending mainly on their expression
of the game itself, and sometimes only using it as an adjunct to
the scenery. Of the former kind, we must notice most especially the
remarkable series of drawings by Mr. G. F. Watts, R.A., which show the
batsman in the various positions of defence or attack. To very many it
will be a revelation that the great artist could lend his pencil to
a matter of such trivial importance (as some base souls may deem it)
as the game of cricket; but without a doubt that great knowledge of
anatomy, which has been one of the strong points in all his paintings,
has been learned in some measure from these studies, which also give
it a very high degree of expression. There is a force, a vigour, a
meaning about these sketches which are interesting enough, if for no
other reason than because they show so vividly the inadequacy of the
mechanical efforts of photography, when brought into competition, as
a means of expression, with the pencil of a really great artist. You
feel almost as if you must jump aside out of the way of the fellow
stepping forward to drive the leg volley, or of the fearful man drawn
back to cut, so forcefully is the force expressed with which the
batsman is inevitably going to hit the ball (_vide_ p. 67). One of the
most charming pictures of those who have taken cricket for their theme
is that which is lent by His Majesty the King to the M.C.C., and is
styled “A Village Match.” It is by Louis Belanger, of date 1768 (_vide_
p. 361). Charming, too, is the picture attributed to Gainsborough,
“Portrait of a Youth with a Cricket-bat”; it is said to be a portrait
of George IV. as a boy, but it seems doubtful. The bat here is curved,
but hardly perceptibly; it shows the last stage in evolution before the
straight bat was reached (_vide_ p. 208). Our frontispiece is a jolly
scene—the ragged boys tossing the bat for innings—“Flat or Round?”
and the fellow in the background heaping up the coats for a wicket. We
all of us have played and loved that kind of cricket. A wonderfully
good and detailed picture is that of “Kent _v._ Sussex” (_vide_ p.
137). It is a picture of a match in progress on the Brighton ground,
and Brighton is seen in the background; in the foreground is a group of
celebrated cricketers in the spectators’ ring, yet posed, in a way that
gives a look of artificiality to the whole scene, so as to show their
faces to the artist. Even old Lillywhite, bowling, is turning his head
quaintly, to show his features. One of the most conspicuous figures is
the great Alfred Mynn, who was to a former generation what W. G. Grace
has been to ours. All the figures are portraits, and every accessory to
the scene is worked out most carefully. The drawing is by W. H. Mason.
Sir Spencer Ponsonby-Fane has a note on this picture: “As a matter of
fact, this match, as here represented, did not take place, the men
shown in the engraving never having played together in such a match,
but they all played for their respective counties about 1839-1841.”
Very delightful, too, is the picture that is the last in our book (p.
433), “At the End of the Innings”—an old veteran with eye still keen,
and firm mouth, telling of a determination to keep his wicket up and
the ball down “as well as he knows how,” and with an interest in the
game of his youth unabated by years. A jolly painting is that of “Old
Charlton Church and Manor House” (_vide_ p. 415), with the coach and
four darting past, and the boys at cricket on the village green. And
last, but to many of us greatest of all, there is the portrait of Dr.
W. G. Grace, from Mr. A. Stuart Wortley’s picture, which sums up a
modern ideal of cricket that we have not yet found ourselves able to
get past (_vide_ p. 228).
There are other pictures, not a few, that we might select for notice,
but already this ramble goes beyond due prefatory limits. There are the
sketches in which the cricket is made to point or illustrate political
satires. To do full justice to these, one would need to be well versed
in the history (other than the cricketing history) of the period. But
enough has been said. One could not let such a gallery of old masters
go without an attempt to do the showman for them in some feeble way.
They need neither help nor apology. They are good enough to win off
their own bat.
In our modern instances we have been no less lucky: with Mr. Warner
to bat, Mr. Jephson to bowl, Mr. Jessop to field, and the rest of the
good company, we do not know that any other choice could have made our
eleven better than it is; but after all, that is for the public to say;
it is from the pavilion, not the players, that the applause should
come.
CONTENTS
CHAP. PAGE
1. SOME POINTS IN CRICKET HISTORY 1
2. EARLY DEVELOPMENTS OF THE CRICKETING ART 29
3. BATTING 48
4. BOWLING 79
5. FIELDING 117
6. COUNTY CRICKET 137
7. AMATEURS AND PROFESSIONALS 193
8. EARLIER AUSTRALIAN CRICKET 217
9. ENGLISH AND AUSTRALIAN CRICKET FROM 1894 TO 1902 251
10. UNIVERSITY CRICKET 296
11. COUNTRY-HOUSE CRICKET 342
12. VILLAGE CRICKET 361
13. FOREIGN CRICKET 381
14. CRICKET IN SOUTH AFRICA 396
15. CRICKET IN NEW ZEALAND 409
16. CRICKET GROUNDS 415
INDEX 443
[Illustration]
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
Tossing for Innings _Frontispiece_
Cricket as played in the Artillery Ground, London,
in 1743 _To face page_ 1
The Royal Academy Club in Marylebone Fields ” ” 2
A Match in Battersea Fields ” ” 3
An Exact Representation of the Game of Cricket ” ” 6
The Game of Cricket ” ” 16
The Cricket Field near White Conduit House ” ” 17
The Noble Game of Cricket ” ” 18
A Match on the Heath ” ” 29
“Cricket.” After the painting in Vauxhall Garden ” ” 36
A Ticket for a Cricket Match in 1744 ” ” 40
William and Thomas Earle ” ” 41
Mr. James Henry Dark ” ” 44
Mr. Thos. Hunt ” ” 45
“Block or Play” ” ” 52
“Forward Play” ” ” 53
The Draw or Pull ” ” 65
The Leg Volley ” ” 66
The Cut ” ” 67
Eighteenth-Century Bats ” ” 70
Celebrated Bats ” ” 71
War-worn Weapons ” ” 72
Relics of Past Engagements ” ” 73
George Parr ” ” 74
N. Felix ” ” 75
The Bowler (Alfred Mynn) ” ” 79
William Lillywhite ” ” 84
John Wisden ” ” 85
Alfred Mynn ” ” 92
James Cobbett ” ” 93
William Lillywhite ” ” 98
William Clarke, etc. ” ” 99
Lord’s Ground early in the Nineteenth Century ” ” 106
One Arm and One Leg Match ” ” 107
A Match at the Gentlemen’s Club, White Conduit
House, Islington ” ” 110
The Kennington Oval in 1849 ” ” 117
The Cricket Field at Rugby ” ” 124
A Match in the Eighties ” ” 125
Kent _v._ Sussex at Brighton ” ” 137
A Cricket Match (about 1756) ” ” 148
A Curious County Club Advertisement ” ” 152
Grand Female Cricket Match ” ” 153
The Batsman (Fuller Pilch) ” ” 156
An Old “Play” Bill ” ” 174
Rural Sports ” ” 182
The Cricket Ground at Darnall, near Sheffield ” ” 190
The Earl of March ” ” 193
Mr. J. H. Dark, Hillyer, The Umpire Martingell ” ” 200
Fuller Pilch ” ” 201
Portrait of a Youth ” ” 208
William Doorinton ” ” 209
George Parr ” ” 214
Thomas Box ” ” 222
Dr. W. G. Grace ” ” 228
Youth with a Cricket Bat ” ” 236
An Eleven of Miss Wickets ” ” 248
The Honourable Spencer Ponsonby ” ” 260
A Cricket Song ” ” 272
A Lyric of the Cricket Field ” ” 273
Salvadore House, Tooting, Surrey ” ” 298
Cricket Ground, Todmorden ” ” 299
Cricket at Rugby in 1837 ” ” 304
Cambridge University Students playing Cricket, 1842 ” ” 305
The Corinthians at Lord’s in 1822 ” ” 320
A Match in 1805 ” ” 328
Miss Wicket and Miss Trigger ” ” 344
A Country-House Cricket Match ” ” 352
A Village Match in 1768 ” ” 361
“‘Out,’ so don’t fatigue yourself, I beg, Sir!” ” ” 370
A Cricketer ” ” 371
Village Cricket in 1832 ” ” 374
Cricket at Hampton Wick ” ” 375
An Eighteenth-Century Caricature ” ” 381
A Parliamentary Match ” ” 386
A Match at Igloolie between H.M. Ships _Fury_ and
_Hecla_ ” ” 392
A State Match ” ” 398
The Soldier’s Widow or Schoolboys’ Collection ” ” 402
Old Charlton Church and Manor House ” ” 415
Cricket’s Peaceful Weapons ” ” 432
At the End of the Innings (William Beldham) ” ” 433
[Illustration:
_From a Painting by_ _Francis Hayman, R.A._
_CRICKET, AS PLAYED IN THE ARTILLERY GROUND, LONDON, IN 1743._]
[Illustration]
CHAPTER I
SOME POINTS IN CRICKET HISTORY
By THE EDITOR
Cricket began when first a man-monkey, instead of catching a cocoanut
thrown him playfully by a fellow-anthropoid, hit it away from him
with a stick which he chanced to be holding in his hand. But the date
of this occurrence is not easy to ascertain, and therefore it is
impossible to fix the date of the invention of cricket. For cricket
has passed through so many stages of evolution before arriving at the
phase in which we find it to-day that it is difficult to say when the
name, as we understand its meaning, first became rightly applicable
to it. The first use of the name “cricket” for any game is indeed a
matter entirely of conjecture. It is not known precisely by Skeat,
nor Strutt, nor Mr. Andrew Lang. But whether the name was applied by
reason of the cricket or crooked stick, which was the early form of
the bat, or whether from the cross stick used as a primitive bail, or
from the cricket or stool, at which the bowler aimed the ball, really
does not very much matter, for all these etymological vanities belong
rather to the mythological age of cricket than the historical. Neither
is it of great importance whether cricket was originally played under
another name, such as club-ball, as Mr. Pycroft infers, on rather
meagre authority, as it seems to me, from Nyren. Nyren did not hazard
the inference. The fact is that the form in which we first find cricket
played, and called cricket, is quite unlike our cricket of to-day, so
that we do not need to go seeking anything by a different name. They
played with two upright stumps, 1 foot high, 2 feet apart, with a cross
stump over them and a hole dug beneath this cross stump. The cross
stump is evidently the origin of our bails. Nyren does not believe in
this kind of cricket, but he gives no reason for his disbelief, for the
excellent reason that he can have had no reason for his scepticism; and
the fact is proved by the evidence of old pictures. He was a simple,
good man; he never saw anything like cricket played in that way, so he
did not believe any one else ever had. He did not perhaps understand
much about the law of evidence, but he wrote delightfully about
cricket. The fourth edition of his guide, which a friend’s kindness
has privileged me to see, is dated 1847, some time after the author’s
death.
[Illustration:
_Engraved from a Painting by_ _Francis Hayman, R.A._
_THE ROYAL ACADEMY CLUB IN MARYLEBONE FIELDS._]
[Illustration: _A MATCH IN BATTERSEA FIELDS._]
Yes, in spite of Nyren, they bowled at this cross-stick and wicket
which the ball could pass through again and again without removing
the cross piece, and the recognised way of getting a man out was not
so much to bowl him as to catch or run him out. You ran him out by
getting the ball into the hole between the stumps before he got his bat
there—making the game something like rounders. Fingers got such nasty
knocks encountering the bat in a race for this hole that bails and a
popping crease were substituted—at least the humane consideration is
stated to have been a factor in the change.
It is not to be supposed that even we, for all our legislation, have
witnessed the final evolution of cricket. Legislate we never so often,
something will always remain to be bettered—the width of the wicket
or the law of the follow on. About the earliest records that have come
down to us there is a notable incompleteness that we must certainly
regret. The bowler gets no credit for wickets caught or stumped off
his bowling. What would become of the analysis of the underhand bowler
of to-day if wickets caught and stumped were not credited to him? But
at the date of these early records all the bowling was of necessity
underhand. Judge then of the degree in which those poor bowlers have
been defrauded of their just rights. Whether or no the name of our
great national game was derived from the “cricket” in the sense of
the crooked stick used for defence of the wicket, it is certain, from
the evidence of old pictures, if from nothing else, that crooked
sticks, like the modern hockey sticks, filled, as best they might,
the function of the bat. They are figured as long and narrow, with
a curving lower end. There was no question in those days of the bat
passing the four-inch gauge. They must have been very inferior, as
weapons of defence for the wicket, to our modern bats—broomsticks
rather than bats—more than excusing, when taken in connection with the
rough ground, the smallness of the scores, even though the bowling was
all underhand and, practically, there was no defence. The solution of
these problems, however, is, I fear, buried in the mists of antiquity,
and one scarcely dares even to hope for a solution of them, or the
fixing of the date of the changes. There are other problems that do not
seem as if they ought to be so hopelessly beyond our ken. In Nyren’s
cricketer’s guide, one of the laws of cricket, therein quoted, provides
that the wickets shall be pitched by the umpires, yet in part of his
time, if not all of it—and when the change was made I cannot find
out—it must have been the custom for the bowler to choose the pitch,
for he records special praise of the chief bowler of the old Hambledon
Club, that on choosing a wicket he would be guided not only by the kind
of ground that would help him individually best, but also would take
pains to see that the bowler from the other end had a nice bumping knob
to pitch the ball on—for by this time “length” bowling, as it was
called, had come into general use. Nyren’s words are that he “has with
pleasure noticed the pains he—Harris—has taken in choosing the ground
for his fellow-bowler as well as himself.”
In 1774 there was a meeting, under the presidency of Sir William
Draper, supported by the Duke of Dorset, the Earl of Tankerville, Sir
Horace Mann, and other influential supporters of cricket, to draw up
laws for the game, and therein it is stated that the “pitching of ye
first wicket is to be determined by ye cast of a piece of money,” but
it does not then say by whom they are to be pitched, nor does this
function come within the province of the umpires as therein defined.
This, therefore, is the first problem which I would ask the help of
all cricketing readers towards solving—the date at which the pitching
of the stumps ceased to be the business or privilege of the bowler. It
was the introduction of “length” bowling, no doubt—previously it was
all along the ground—real bowling as in bowls—that forced them to
straighten the bats. Mr. Ward, in some memoranda which he gave Nyren,
and which the latter quoted at large, says of these bats, used in a
match that arose from a challenge on behalf of Kent County, issued by
Lord John Sackville, to play All England in 1847: “The batting could
neither have been of a high character, nor indeed safe, as may be
gathered from the figure of the bat at that time, which was similar to
an old-fashioned dinner-knife curved at back and sweeping in the form
of a volute at the front and end. With such a bat the system must have
been all for hitting; it would be barely possible to block, and when
the practice of bowling length balls was introduced, and which (_sic_)
gave the bowler so great an advantage in the game, it became absolutely
necessary to change the form of the bat in order that the striker
might be able to keep pace with the improvement. It was therefore made
straight in the pod, in consequence of which, a total revolution, it
may be said a reformation too, ensued in the style of play.”
Then follows a record of the score of the match, which need not be
detailed. England made 40 and 70, and Kent 53 and 58 for nine wickets,
a gallant win. “Some years after this,” Mr. Ward continues—it is to
be presumed Nyren quotes the _ipsissima verba_, for whenever he wants
to put in anything off his own bat it appears above his initials in a
note—“the fashion of the bat having been changed to a straight form,
the system of blocking was adopted”—that is to say, some years after
1740.
The date is vague. Let us say early in the second half of the
eighteenth century, and I think we may go so far as to say that
cricket, as we understand it, began then too. It can hardly have been
cricket—this entirely aggressive batting. The next date of importance
as marking an epoch, if we may speak of the next when we have left
the last so much to conjecture, is 1775. On 22nd of May of that year
there was a great match “in the Artillery Ground between five of the
Hambledon Club and five of All England, when Small went in, the last
man, for fourteen runs and fetched them. Lumpy”—a very famous bowler
baptized Edward, surnamed Stevens—“was bowler upon the occasion, and
it having been remarked that his balls had three times passed between
Small’s stumps, it was considered to be a hard thing upon the bowler
that his straightest ball should be so sacrificed; the number of the
stumps was in consequence increased from two to three.”
[Illustration:
_Engraved in 1743 by H. Roberts._ _After L. P. Boitard._
_AN EXACT REPRESENTATION OF THE GAME OF CRICKET._]
That is plain enough, but what is not plain is the height of the stumps
at that time.
Mr. Pycroft puts the height of the stumps at 1 foot, with a width
of only 6 inches, up to 1780, and it is evident from what Nyren
says—(_a_) that he had never seen stumps of 1 foot high and 2 feet
wide; and (_b_) that they were not of 22 inches high until 1775.
Therefore here is evidence in support of Mr. Pycroft’s 1 foot high and
6 inch wide wicket, to say nothing of the unimpeachable value of his
own statements. But he himself adduces nothing that I can find in its
support, nor does he attempt to give us the date of the first narrowing
of the stumps; and with regard to the alteration from two low stumps to
three 22-inch stumps I am obliged to find him at variance with Nyren.
The point, therefore, that I want to light on is the date and
circumstances of the change from wickets of two stumps 1 foot high and
2 feet apart, to wickets of two stumps 1 foot high, and only 6 inches
apart. This very drastic change appears to have been accomplished
without a word of historical comment upon it. There was a deal of
discussion at the time of the introduction of the third stump about the
probable effect on the game of this change, some arguing that it would
shorten the game—that every one would get out quickly.
Mr. Ward took the opposite view, that it would lead to more careful
and improved batting, and cites a remarkable match played in 1777
between the Hambledon Club and All England, in which, despite the third
stump, England made 100 and 69; and Hambledon, in a single innings,
made the wonderful score of 403. Aylward, who seems to have gone in
eighth wicket down, scored 167, individually, notwithstanding that he
had the mighty “Lumpy” against him.
Mr. Ward’s memoranda therefore give us some interesting facts.
So far as we can see back, the distance between the wickets has always
been 22 yards, but up to about some time in the first half of the
eighteenth century the wicket consisted of two stumps 1 foot high, 2
feet apart, with a cross stump, and a hole between them.
Later, this was changed for two stumps, first of 1 foot and then of 22
inches high, 6 inches apart, with a bail and a popping crease.
About 1750 “length” bowling was introduced, superseding the
all-along-the-ground business, and nearly concurrently the bats
straightened instead of curved. And I think we can scarcely say
“cricket” began before that, whatever “club-ball” or “stool-ball” may
have done.
In 1775 a third stump was added.
This last date, I know, does not agree with Mr. Pycroft, but I cannot
quite make out what his original sources are. He writes: “From an MS.
my friend”—he has mentioned so many friends in the previous paragraph
that it is impossible to identify the one he means—“received from
the late Mr. William Ward, it appears that the wickets were placed 22
yards apart as long since as the year 1700. We are informed also that
putting down the wickets, to make a man out in running, instead of the
old custom of popping the ball into the hole, was adopted on account
of severe injuries to the hands, and that the wicket was changed at
the same time—1779-80—to the dimensions of 22 inches by 6, with a
third stump added.” So, on the authority of the “MS. received by his
friend”—it may have been the very memoranda given to Nyren, for Mr.
Pycroft has mentioned Nyren in the preceding paragraph—Pycroft cites
Ward as lumping together the double change from the two low stumps to
the three higher stumps in 1779-80, whereas, in his memoranda to Nyren,
Mr. Ward distinctly names 1775 as the date at which the third stump was
added.
Curiously enough, Pycroft must have known all about this, really, but
it slipped his memory, for, a page or two further, we find him quoting
almost Nyren’s or Ward’s words: “In a match of the Hambledon Club in
1775, it was observed, at a critical point in the game, that the ball
passed three times between Mr. Small’s two stumps without knocking off
the bail, and then, first a third stump was added, and seeing that the
new style of balls which rise over the bat rose also over the wickets,
_then but 1 foot high_, the wicket was altered to the dimensions of 22
inches by 8, and again, to its present dimensions of 27 inches by 8
in 1817.” Though I find all up to that point in Nyren, I do not find
the italicised words, but I have no doubt they present the fact quite
accurately. They tell us nothing, however, as to the date at which the
wicket was first narrowed.
Another curious piece of information Mr. Ward gives us, by the way.
“Several years since—I do not recollect the precise date—a player
named White, of Ryegate, brought a bat to a match which, being the
width of the stumps, effectually defended his wicket from the bowler,
and in consequence a law was passed limiting the future width of the
bat to 4-1/4 inches. Another law also decreed that the ball should not
weigh less than 5-1/2 oz. or more than 5-3/4 oz.” Nyren appends a note
to this: “I have a perfect recollection of this occurrence, also that
subsequently an iron frame, of the statute width, was constructed for,
and kept by, the Hambledon Club, through which any bat of suspected
dimensions was passed, and allowed or rejected accordingly.” “Several
years since,” says Mr. Ward, or Nyren, writing, as I presume, about the
year 1833, so that perhaps we may put this invention of the gauge about
1830, or a little earlier. I wonder who has this iron gauge now. Has it
been sold up for old iron?
That is a third very practical problem that one would like answered.
And is it not curious to see how the rules were made and modified to
meet the occasions as they arose. The misfortune of that
Honest Lumpy who did ‘low,
He ne’er could bowl but o’er a brow—
in bowling so many times between the stumps of the too greatly blessed
Small—whence the introduction of the third stump. And White with
his barn-door bat, from “Ryegate,” as it pleases them to spell it,
compelling the use of the gauge.
We are too apt to think of the laws as “struck off at one time,” like
the American Constitution, instead of regarding them as something of
slow growth in the past, that will have to grow, with our growth, in
the future. We shall get into trouble if we regard them as something
too sacred to touch and do not legislate as occasion arises.
We have altered them greatly since that meeting at the Star and Garter
in Pall Mall in 1774, when they seem first to have been committed to
writing, and by the end of the twentieth century it is likely that we
shall have modified them considerably from this present form. We have
a notion that our forefathers played the game in such a sportsmanlike
manner, taking no possible advantage but such as was perfectly open
and above-board, that they required scarcely any rules to guide them,
but some sad things that the stern historian has to notice about the
influence that betting had at one time on cricket—this, and also a
sentence or two from these very memoranda of Mr. Ward, whom Nyren
extols as the mirror of all cricketing chivalry—may show us, I think,
that our cricketing forefathers had something human in them too. How
is this for a piece of artful advice? “If you bring forward a fast
bowler as a change, contrive, if fortune so favours you, that he shall
bowl his first ball _when a cloud is passing over_, because, as this
trifling circumstance frequently affects the sight of the striker,
you may thereby stand a good chance of getting him out.” And again,
a little lower on the same page: “Endeavour, by every means in your
power—such as, by changing the bowling, by little alterations in the
field, or by any excuse you can invent—to delay the time, that the
strikers may become cold or inactive.”
A very cunning cricketer, this Mr. Ward.
Previously he had said: “If two players are well in, and warm with
getting runs fast, and one should happen to be put out, supply his
place immediately, lest the other become cold and stiff.” Now just
compare these two last suggestions with each other, you will say, I
think, that the last is fair and just and proper counsel, instilling a
precaution that you have every right to take, but the former, according
to the modern sense of what is right and sportsmanlike, seems to me to
be counselling something perilously near the verge of sharp practice.
You send your man out quickly, that the other may not grow cold,
and what happens? Your purpose is defeated by the bowler and field
purposely dawdling in order that the man _may_ grow cold. It does not
strike one as quite, quite right, though no doubt it is not against the
rules. But it is tricky, a little tricky. And so again we draw a date,
without his suspecting it, of a new moral epoch, from our invaluable
Mr. Ward. About 1833, or a little later, we grew a trifle more delicate
and particular in some small points of cricketing behaviour and
sportsmanlike dealing. The betting, and the like evil practices at one
time connected with the game, were a grosser scandal which carried
their own destruction with them.
If any man, therefore, can throw light on these three dark points, I
shall be very grateful to him—the date at which the first high wicket
was narrowed down to 6 inches, the date at which the bowler ceased
to have the pitching of the wicket, and the present habitation of
that famous piece of old iron, the gauge used on the barn-door bat of
White of Ryegate. Nyren, the matchless historian of the game, reveals
himself, in his little history, as a very estimable man, of some
matchless qualities for his task—an unbounded love of his subject and
a sweet nature perfectly free of the slightest taint of jealousy. He
writes of no other cricketing societies, except incidentally, than of
those men of Hambledon in Hampshire. _Quorum pars magna fui_, as he
says, with a single explosion of very proper pride, and a note appended
thereto explaining apologetically that he has some certain knowledge
of Latin. But after this single expression, very fully justified, for
he was the beloved father of the Hambledon Club for years, he speaks
of himself again hardly at all, just as if he had no hand in its
successes, preferring to find some generous word to say of all the
rest—of Beldham, Harris, Aylward, Lumpy. Beldham was not nearly so
handsome to him, speaking of him to Mr. Pycroft. “Old Nyren was not
half a player as we reckon now,” was Beldham’s verdict. However, the
old man was fifty then.
At least he was a very good type of an Englishman and cricketer,
whatever his class as a player, or he could never have written that
book. And how much Hambledon may have owed to Nyren we can never know.
As it is, Hambledon has the credit that Nyren specially claims for
it of being the _Attica_, the centre of early civilisation, of the
cricketing world. But there may have been other Atticas—only, like the
brave men before Agamemnon, unsung, for want of their Homeric Nyrens.
The fact of the matter is, we know little but gossip of how the cricket
world went before the year 1786, when Bentley takes up the running and
records the scores. A sad fire occurred in the M.C.C. Pavilion—at
that time the Club played where the Regent’s canal now runs, after
being built out of Dorset Square—and burnt all the old score
books—irreparable loss.
Mr. Pycroft made an excursion into the home of the Beldhams, and
brought out much valuable gossip, along with the unhandsome criticism
on Nyren. “In those days,” says Beldham—1780, when Mr. Beldham was a
boy—“the Hambledon Club could beat all England, but our three parishes
around Farnham at last beat Hambledon.”
“It is quite evident,” adds Mr. Pycroft to this, “that Farnham was the
cradle of cricket.”
Something that Beldham and others may have said to Mr. Pycroft may have
made this fact “quite evident” to him, but I cannot see that he has
transmitted any such evidence to us. This much, however, I think we may
say with confidence, that all that was best of cricketing tradition
and practice _in the south of England_—that is to say, as far as was
in touch at all with its influences—clustered in the little corner of
Surrey in which the parish of Farnham is. But that is not to say that
there were not other nuclei of cricket in the north and elsewhere, and
I think there is evidence to lead us to think there were other centres,
perhaps less energetic.
The “county” boundaries were not so rigid in those days. “You find
us regularly,” says Beldham to Mr. Pycroft—“us” being Farnham and
thereabouts—“on the Hampshire side in Bentley’s book,” and it is quite
true.
Then, from this little nucleus, cricket in the south extended. Beldham
had a poor opinion of the cricket of Kent at first. Crawte, one of the
best Kent men, was “stolen away from us,” in Beldham’s words. Aylward,
the hero of the 167 runs, was taken, also to Kent, by Sir Horace Mann,
as his bailiff, but “the best bat made but a poor bailiff, we heard.”
Sussex was a cricketing county from an early date, but Beldham had a
poor opinion of its powers likewise.
The elements of the nucleus formed round Farnham were disseminated,
as much as anything, by the support that certain rich and influential
people gave the game. We have seen how Sir Horace Mann stole away
Aylward. Other great supporters of the game were Earl Darnley, Earl
Winchelsea, Mr. Paulet, and Mr. East—all before the centuries had
turned into the eighteens.
“Kent and England,” says Mr. Pycroft, “was as good an annual match in
the last as in the present century.” But in those days, as even his own
later words show us, “Kent,” so called, sometimes had three of the best
All England men given in, even in a match against “England.” They were
not so particular then—what they wanted was a jolly good game, with a
good stake on it.
“The White Conduit Fields and the Artillery Ground,” Pycroft goes on,
“supplied the place of Lord’s, though in 1817 the name of Lord’s is
found in Bentley’s matches, implying, of course, the old Marylebone
Square, now Dorset Square, under Thomas Lord, and not the present,
by St. John’s Wood, more properly deserving the name of Dark’s than
Lord’s. The Kentish battlefields were Sevenoaks—the land of Clout, one
of the original makers of cricket balls—Coxheath, Dandelion Fields, in
the Isle of Thanet, and Cobham Park, also Dartford Brent and Pennenden
Heath; there is also early mention of Gravesend, Rochester, and
Woolwich. The Holt, near Farnham, and Moulsey Hurst, were the Surrey
grounds.
[Illustration: _THE GAME OF CRICKET_.]
[Illustration:
_From an Engraving._ _Published in 1787._
_THE CRICKET FIELD NEAR WHITE CONDUIT HOUSE._]
But there was cricket further afield. In 1790 the Brighton men were
playing, and in the following year we find an eleven of old Etonians,
with four players given, playing the M.C.C. team; also with four
professionals, in Rutlandshire. This M.C.C. team went on to play eleven
“yeomen and artisans of Leicester,” defeating them sorely, and in the
same year the Nottingham men met with a similar fate at the hands of
the Club.
From these matches and their results we are now able, I think, to infer
two things—first, that cricket had been played for some long while,
not as an imported invention, but as an aboriginal growth, in these
northern counties before these teams visited them from the south, and
secondly, that the southern counties had brought it to a much higher
pitch of perfection, for they could never have gone down so ninepinlike
before any eleven of the Marylebone Club. Likely enough the inspired
doctrine, of the straight bat and the left elbow up, of that gifted
baker of gingerbread, Harry Hall of Farnham, had not travelled so far
as the home of these northern folk, and in that case they would have
been at a parlous disadvantage to those who had been brought up by its
lights. They had not perhaps been so long in the habit of coping with
“length” balls, which made the adoption of the left elbow up almost a
necessity of defence. When the bowling came all along the ground it did
not matter. Also there was in the south that prince of bowlers, Harris,
whose magical deliveries shot up so straightly from the ground that
it was almost essential for playing them to get out to the pitch of
the ball. And if they had not this bowling, what was to educate them,
unassisted, to a higher standard of batting? But they were not left
unassisted, for the masterly elevens from the south began to come among
them, and taught them many things, no doubt, both by example and by
precept.
This was in 1791. 1793 brings a wider ray of light on the scene of
cricket history. Essex and Herts come on the scene as cricketing
counties—of second class, as we should call them now, to Kent and
Surrey, but players and lovers of cricket all the same. They combined
elevens apparently, and played twenty-two against an eleven of England,
which beat them in a single innings. Mr. Pycroft has a specially
interesting note in this connection. He was told by two old cricketers,
one a Kent man and the other an Essex man, that when they were boys,
cricket in both these counties was a game of the village, rather than
of clubs. “There was a cricket bat behind the door, or else up in the
bacon rack, in every cottage.” Of course in London it was a game played
in clubs, for they only could find the spaces where land was valuable.
It was in the year of 1793 that “eleven yeomen at Oldfield Bray, in
Berkshire, had learned enough to be able to defeat a good eleven of the
Marylebone Club.”
I am scandalised by the wholesale way I have to steal early history
from Mr. Pycroft’s book. The only excuse is that I do not know where
to go to better it, though probably I may supplement it from chance
sources.
[Illustration: The LAWS of the NOBLE GAME of CRICKET.
as revised by the Club at S^t. Mary-le-bone.
_From the Frontispiece to the Laws._]
In 1795 he tells us of matches in which the captains were respectively
the Hon. Colonel Lennox—who fought a duel with the Duke of York—and
the Earl of Winchelsea. A munificent supporter of the game was my
Lord of Winchelsea, and used to rig out his merry men in suits of
knee-breeches, shirts, hosen, and silver caps. It was a kind of feudal
age of cricket, when the great captains prided themselves on the powers
of their retainers, and staked largely on the result.
“In 1797,” says Pycroft, “the Montpelier Club and ground attract our
notice,” and then goes on to speak of Swaffham in Norfolk, as a country
of keen but not very successful cricketers. Lord Frederick Beauclerk
took down an eleven that appears to have beaten three elevens combined
of the Norfolk folk, and that in a single innings. This Lord Frederick
Beauclerk, with the Hon. H. and Hon. J. Tufton, got up the first Gents
_v._ Players match in 1798; but though the Gents, after the generous
fashion of the day, were reinforced by the three chief flowers of the
professional flock—namely, Tom Walker, Beldham, and Hammond—the
Players beat them. In the same year Kent essayed to play England,
only to be beaten into little pieces, and in 1800 they began the new
century more modestly by playing with twenty-three men against twelve
of England.
For of course, after all has been said, the centre of the national
game, as of everything national, was then, as now, smoky London.
Lord’s Pavilion was then, as it had been since 1787, on the site
that Dorset Square occupies now. In London the men collected who
loved cricket, and had the money to bet on the game and to engage the
services of the players. There were keener cricketers, more general
interest in cricket, then than a little later in the century. Three to
four thousand spectators sometimes came to see a match at Lord’s, and
royalties sometimes took a hand in the game.
In the first years of the new century, Surrey was the great cricketing
county. Only two of the All England eleven, Lord Frederick Beauclerk
and Hammond, came from any other county. Hammond was wicket-keeper to
the famous Homerton Club—“the best,” says Mr. Ward, quoted by Pycroft,
“we ever had. Hammond played till his sixtieth year, but Brown and
Osbaldestone put all wicket-keeping to the rout”—by the pace of their
bowling, of course.
About the first decade of the century the counties seem to have been
divided off more strictly, for cricketing purposes, than before.
Hampshire and Surrey, as we saw, ran in double harness, the men of
Hants helping Surrey in a match, and the Surreyites mutually helping
Hampshire. But now they no longer play together. Broadhalfpenny and
even Windmill Down have gone to thistles, and the gallant Hambledon
Club is no more. Godalming is mentioned as the strongest local centre
of the game, and in 1808 Surrey had the glory of twice beating
England in one season. But in 1821 the M.C.C. is again playing the
“three parishes,” Godalming, Farnham, and Hartley Row, and it is
in the accounts of this very same year that we tumble on a dark
and significant observation. “About this time,” said Beldham to Mr.
Pycroft, “we played the Coronation match, M.C.C. against the Players
of England. We scored 278 and only six wickets down, when the game was
given up. I was hurt, and could not run my notches; still James Bland
and the other Legs begged of me to take pains, for it was no sporting
match, ‘any odds and no takers,’ and they wanted to shame the gentlemen
against wasting their—the Legs’—time in the same way another time.”
“James Bland and the other Legs.” At this distance of time we may
perhaps repeat the epithet or nickname, and even class a named man
under it, without the risk of an action for libel. Perhaps even the
term “Legs” did not imply all the qualities which attach to it to-day,
but in any case it is surely something of a shock to come on the
presence of these questionable gentlemen just casually stated, not with
any note of surprise, but merely as if they were a common and even
essential accompaniment of a cricket match.
Of course we knew quite well that our forefathers betted large stakes
between themselves, often on single-wicket matches. This was a
favourite style of match with Mr. Osbaldestone—the Squire,—because
his bowling was so fast that no one, practically, could hit it in front
of the wicket, and hits did not count for runs, in single-wicket,
behind the wicket. In double-wicket matches he often “beat his side,”
we are told—beat his own side—“by byes,” no long-stop being able to
stop his bowling effectively. The chief check to the Squire’s career
seems to have been the discovery of the famous Browne of Brighton, who
bowled, some said, even faster. Beldham, however, made a lot of runs
off the latter on one special occasion. This is a digression, into
which the consideration of single-wicket matches for money—and is it
a wonder we do not have more of them now?—beguiled me. But perhaps it
is a good thing that we do not have them, for they may well have been
the root and source of all the subsequent “leg-work.” The Coronation
match is the first occasion on which Mr. Pycroft notices the “Legs,” in
his order of writing, but lower down on the very same page he quotes
some words of Mr. Budd, who shared, with Lord Frederick Beauclerk,
the credit of being the best amateur cricketer of the day, relative
to a match at Nottingham—M.C.C. _v._ Twenty-two of Notts—in which
the same evil influence is apparent. “In that match,” he says, “Clarke
played”—the future captain of the All England travelling team. “In
common with others, I lost my money, and was greatly disappointed at
the termination. _One paid player was accused of selling_, and _never
employed after_.”
Mr. Budd must have done his level best to avert defeat, too, for
Bentley records that he caught out no less than nine of the Notts men;
but _one paid player was accused of selling_, and Clarke was on the
other side! However it happened, Notts won. Mr. Pycroft also says that
in old Nyren’s day the big matches were always made for £500 a side,
apart, as we may presume, from outside betting. Nowadays a sovereign
or a fiver on the ‘Varsity match is about the extent of the gambling
that cricket invites. The James Bland referred to above had a brother,
Joe—_Arcades ambo_, bookmakers both. These, with “Dick Whittom of
Covent Garden—profession unnamed,—Simpson, a gaming-house keeper, and
Toll of Esher, as regularly attended at a match as Crockford and Gully
at Epsom and Ascot.”
Mr. Pycroft scouts the idea that a simple-minded rustic of Surrey or
Hampshire would long hold out against the inducements that these gentry
would offer them, “at the Green Man and Still,” to sell a match, and
indeed some of the naïve revelations that were made to him by rustic
senility when he went to gossip with it, over brandy and water, might
confirm him in a poor opinion of the local virtue.
“I’ll tell the truth,” says one, whom he describes as a “fine old man,”
but leaves in kindly anonymity. “One match of the county I did sell, a
match made by Mr. Osbaldeston at Nottingham. I had been sold out of a
match just before, and lost £10, and happening to hear it, I joined two
others of our eleven to sell, and get back my money. I won £10 exactly,
and of this roguery no one ever suspected me; but many was the time I
have been blamed for selling when as innocent as a babe.” Then this old
innocent, with his delightful notions of _cavalleria rusticana_ and the
wooing back of his £10, goes on to tell the means—hackneyed enough in
themselves—by which the company of the Legs seduced the obstinacy of
rustic virtue. “If I had fifty sons,” he said, “I would never put one
of them, for all the games in the world, in the way of the roguery that
I have witnessed. The temptation was really very great—too great by
far for any poor man to be exposed to.”
There is a pathetic dignity about this simple moralising that contrasts
well with the levity of his previous confession, but the state of
things that it shows is really very disgusting. It is another tribute
to the merit of this first of English games that it should have lived
through and have lived down such a morbid condition.
“If gentlemen wanted to bet,” said Beldham, “just under the pavilion
sat men ready, with money down, to give and take the current odds.
These were by far the best men to bet with, because, if they lost,
it was all in the way of business; they paid their money and did not
grumble.” The manners of some of the fraternity must have changed, not
greatly for the better, since then. “Still,” he continues, “they had
all sorts of tricks to make their betting safe.” And then he quotes,
or Mr. Pycroft quotes—it is not very clear, and does not signify—Mr.
Ward as saying, “One artifice was to keep a player out of the way by
a false report that his wife was dead.” It was as clever a piece of
practical humour as it was honest. What a monstrous state of things it
reveals!
And then Beldham, inspirited by Mr. Pycroft’s geniality and brandy
and water, goes on to assure him—as one who takes a view which the
majority would condemn as childishly charitable—that he really does
not believe, in spite of all that has been said, that any “gentleman,”
by which he means “amateur,” has ever been known to sell a match, and
he cites an instance in which for curiosity’s sake he put the honesty
of a certain noble lord to the test by covertly proposing selling a
match to him. But though his lordship, who seems to have been betting
against his own side, had actually £100 on the match, even this
inducement was not enough to tempt the nobleman from the paths of
virtue.
We will hope that no amateur did fall, and may join with Beldham in
“believing it impossible,” but the fiction that they did was used by
the Legs to persuade any man of difficult honesty to go crooked. “Serve
them as they serve you,” was the argument, or one of the arguments,
used. That “fine old man” whom Mr. Pycroft drew out so freely gives
no edifying pictures of the players of the day: “Merry company of
cricketers, all the men whose names I had ever heard as foremost in
the game, met together, drinking, card-playing, betting, and singing,
at the Green Man—that was the great cricketers’ house—in Oxford
Street—no man without his wine, I assure you, and such suppers as
three guineas a game to lose and five to win—that was then the sum for
players—could never pay for long.”
That was their rate of payment, and that their mode of life—perhaps
not the best fitted for the clear eye and the sound wind.
It appears that this degrading condition of cricket was brought to an
end by its own excesses; it became a crying scandal. “Two very big
rogues at Lord’s fell a-quarrelling.” They charged each other with
all sorts of iniquities in the way of selling matches, all of which
accusations, when compared with the records, squared so nicely with the
truth that they carried conviction, and “opened the gentlemen’s eyes
too wide to close again to those practices.”
Mr. Pycroft has a note on his own account about the match at Nottingham
in which his informant confessed to him that he was paid to lose. There
were men on the other side who were paid to lose too, but, perhaps
because there were twenty-two of them, they could not do it, but won in
their own despite.
It must have produced funny cricket, this selling of a match both
ways, and Mr. Pycroft picked up a story of a single-wicket match in
which both were playing to lose, where it was only by accident that a
straight ball ever was bowled, but when it came it was always fatal.
It reminds us of the much-discussed wides and no-balls bowled in the
‘Varsity match to avert the follow-on: but, thank heaven, there is
no suspicion of fraudulent financial motives in even the queerest of
cricketing tactics to-day.
It is truly wonderful how all heavy betting has gone out. Partly, no
doubt, this is because men play more in clubs. When individuals used
to get up matches the players’ expenses came very heavy; therefore
they made the matches for a considerable stake to cover them, but the
practice cannot have comforted the losers much. Nowadays the club pays
players out of the subscribed funds.
Why the single-wicket game is all given up is hard to say, for it is an
age of individual emulation, but we are content with the better part
of the game of eleven aside. And when first was that number, which
seems to have some constant attraction for the cricketer, introduced?
We cannot tell. It seems usual from the dawn of history. Moreover, the
length of the pitch was always, so far as the historic eye can pierce,
twenty-two yards—twice eleven, and twice eleven inches was the height
of the stumps when they were first raised from the foot-high wicket.
Mr. Budd told Mr. Pycroft of a curious single-wicket match in which he
was something more than _magna_, even _maxima_, _pars_. It was against
Mr. Braund, for fifty guineas. Mr. Braund was a tremendously fast
bowler. “I went in first, and, scoring seventy runs, with some severe
blows on the legs—nankin knees and silk stockings, and no pads in
those days—I consulted my friend and knocked down my wicket, lest the
match should last to the morrow, and I be unable to play”—on account
of the injuries to his nankin knees, I suppose. “Mr. Braund was out
without a run. I went in again, and making the seventy up to a hundred,
I once more knocked down my own wicket, and once more my opponent
failed to score.”
Another interesting match that Mr. Pycroft records was Mr. Osbaldeston
and William Lambert against Lord Frederick Beauclerk and Beldham. Mr.
Osbaldeston, on the morning of the match, which was fixed under “play
or pay” conditions, found himself too ill to play, so Lambert tackled
the two of them, and actually beat them. I am sorry to say I find a
record of a little temper shown—perhaps naturally enough—in this
match, as on another occasion, when he was bowling to that barn-door
bat of the Hambledon Club, Tom Walker, by Lord Frederick Beauclerk; but
after all, what man is worth his salt without a temper? And no doubt
both occasions were very trying.
The date of these single-wicket matches was about 1820, which brings
matters up to about the time at which a stopper should be put on the
mouth of this gossiping and cribbing Muse of History, for we are coming
to the days as to which men still living are able to tell us the things
that they have seen.
[Illustration:
_From a Painting by_ _James Pollard._
_A MATCH ON THE HEATH._]
[Illustration: The LAWS of the NOBLE GAME of CRICKET.
as revised by the Club at S^t. Mary-le-bone.]