AMATEURS AND PROFESSIONALS
By the HON. R. H. LYTTELTON
It would not appear to be a difficult task to make a clear and accurate
definition of the two common words found at the head of this chapter.
Forty years ago the making of such a definition would have been easy,
and if we could regard things from an ideal point of view, it would
be easy now. There are, however, so many difficulties at present in
the way, so many changes in the carrying on of the game of cricket,
so much acquiesced in which formerly would not have been dreamt of,
that the old boundary line has been obliterated—all is confusion, and
in too many cases there can hardly be said to be any difference or
distinction between the amateur and professional in these days in the
world of cricket.
It is strange that such should be the case, and it is also strange that
these difficulties should exist so much more in the case of cricket
than any other game. Whether this always will be the case appears to
be doubtful. In the case of rowing there seem to be dangers ahead, and
perhaps in the world of football also. But if I am not misinformed,
the rowing authorities are not troubled in the matter as far as this
country is concerned. It is owing to the fact that in America there
do not appear to be the same regulations on this vexed question as
in England—and the American invasion of England includes the chief
prizes of Henley as well as the tube railways of London. The rowing
authorities have a very difficult task before them. To come to a
right decision, and yet not to offend the feelings of a nation we all
respect, and have every wish to be, from a sporting point of view, on
good terms with, is by no means an easy task, but I can only hope that
a satisfactory decision will be attained.
Cricket, however, seems to stand altogether on a different footing to
any other game. The boundary line between the two classes of amateurs
and professionals has become blurred and indistinct, if indeed it has
not entirely disappeared. As far as I know, no such state of things
exists in other games, such as golf, tennis, football, or billiards.
The reason why this is so seems to be twofold. The first is that if
a man wants to play as much cricket as he likes he must practically
devote five months of the year to nothing else. A match takes three
days to finish, and the whole of each day is taken up by the game, and
in this respect cricket stands alone. You may play golf or tennis every
day if you have the opportunity; but two or three hours is enough for
this, and the rest of the time may be spent in the counting-house.
First-class cricket, however, now is of so exacting a nature that
it really amounts to this, that nearly half the year must be wholly
devoted to the game, and comparatively few amateurs can afford to do
this. The other reason is somewhat on a par with the experiences of
rowing men, and is because of the Australian invasion. International
cricket between this country and Australia has come to stay, and it
is much to be hoped this will always remain. Nothing in cricket is so
interesting, and no other matches contain so many exciting elements,
and in no other class of match is such a high standard of skill shown.
In Australia, however, there does not seem to be any very clear
distinction between the amateur and professional. In 1878, when they
first came to England, the two Bannermans and, I think, Midwinter were
classed as professionals, the rest as amateurs. In subsequent years
there was no distinction drawn, and without going too minutely into the
merits of the case, they are now all called amateurs. It may not be
obvious what difference this makes to English cricket, but nevertheless
on more than one occasion there has been friction, and it is notorious
that the bone of contention is to be found in the fact that the
English professionals have a somewhat well-founded idea in their
minds that the Australian cricketers are really professionals like
themselves, and they should in both countries stand on the same footing.
It is necessary, however, that some comparison be made of the
conditions that existed thirty years ago, with the state of things now.
This is a delicate and thorny subject, and it is almost, if not quite,
impossible to avoid treading on corns; but the matter is a critical one
for the welfare of the great game, and some clear understanding should
be arrived at, and to attain this the public should know all the facts,
that they may come to a right opinion.
It has been said that a definition of the words amateur and
professional forty years ago would have been easy, and this is true.
The question of money for the amateur was purely a personal one for
himself. He played cricket according to his means. If he was of a
sufficiently high class, and was qualified to play for a leading
county, he played on the home ground if his business, if he had one,
allowed him, and if he could not afford railway and hotel fares, he
did not play the return match, it may be two hundred miles away. No
doubt there were far fewer matches in those days, for Surrey, the chief
county in the ‘sixties, only played on an average ten or eleven matches
a year. For an amateur of Surrey to have played in all these matches
was no doubt a tolerably arduous task, but it was not an impossible
one. If the first-class amateur could not afford to play away from
the neighbourhood of his home, he simply declined to play. The reason
was obvious, but tact forbade the cause being inquired into, and the
amateur was not thought any the worse of on this account. No doubt
cricket was not in one sense the serious thing it is now. There were no
carefully compiled and intolerably wearisome tables of statistics that
drown one in these days; nevertheless there was just as much keenness
for success, but championships and records did not constitute the
_summum bonum_; it was the genuine sport that was chiefly considered.
In other words, the game was generally carried on, in the best sense,
in more of the amateur spirit than now, and this notwithstanding the
fact that far more so-called amateurs play first-class cricket now than
formerly. There was more cricket in matches of the class of Gentlemen
of Worcestershire against Gentlemen of Warwickshire; the famous touring
pure amateur clubs, such as Quidnuncs, Harlequins, I Zingari, and Free
Foresters, played as they do now; and there were as many club matches
played by the M.C.C. and Surrey clubs as were in those days wanted, and
in these the amateur was able to take his part.
The ambition of every player in these days is to reach such a measure
of skill as to earn him a place in the picked eleven of England
against Australia, and very properly is this the case. To represent
the Gentlemen against the Players at Lord’s is still the goal of many,
but not so much now as it was. For a University man a place in his
University eleven is as keen an object of ambition now as it used to
be, and though the bowling may be weak and the fielding not so good
as it ought to be, still University cricket is the same as it always
has been—the embodiment of the purest amateur spirit of the game.
But forty years ago, to be selected to represent the Gentlemen or
the Players, as the case might be, set the seal on both amateurs and
professionals, in the same way as to be selected to play for England
against Australia does now. The amateur came up cheerfully to share
in the annual defeat that almost invariably awaited him; the bowling
for most of them was too good, and his record, speaking generally, at
Lord’s at any rate, would be laughed at by the modern critic, stuffed
out as he is with centuries, statistics, and comparisons, but to be
selected made him happy.
The reader may now naturally ask, When and how does the amateur of
forty years ago differ from the amateur of the present day? The
question will be discussed more fully later on, but the answer is
simply this, that in former times no amateur ever received one penny
for his services, whether disguised under the name of expenses or by
the receipts of a benefit match, euphemistically called a complimentary
match. Here at once is the difference, and for the present it is
sufficient merely to state the fact, and file it, as it were, for
future reference.
The professional of old was drawn from the same sources as he is now.
He comes from the shop, from the factory, from the pit, and from the
slum. He had by no means so much cricket as he has now in the way of
first-class county matches, but he filled up his time, if he arrived
at a certain height of skill, by playing a series of touring matches
against local twenty-twos, and these matches, if they did nothing else,
gave an impetus to local cricket. There can be no doubt, however,
that an enormous change has taken place in the type of professional
cricketer. The first-class modern player moves altogether in a higher
plane. He earns far more money in populous centres, such as Bradford,
London, and Manchester. He has been known to clear £2000 and more by
a benefit match. A spectator coming on to Lord’s at five o’clock in
the afternoon, during the annual match between Gentlemen and Players,
might easily for a moment be uncertain which side were fielding. There
could have been no mistake in old days. Older cricketers well remember
Jemmy Grundy in an old velvet cap more fitted for the North Pole than
an English cricket ground, such a cap as a poacher would wear. You can
see prints of Hayward and Carpenter in spotted shirts and large belts
and ties, and Jemmy Shaw bowling his hardest in a yellow shirt that did
duty apparently for the whole summer. Now, without any disrespect to
the amateurs, the professional is as smartly dressed as his opponents.
He is clad in spotless white; he is smart; and, in fact, as far as
appearance goes, he is an amateur, and good at that. Two reasons may be
given for this. In the first place, he is more highly paid; in the next
place, the great number of county matches brings him more frequently
into contact with amateurs; and it is also true that county committees
look more closely after the players than they did. The life of a
professional is a very hard life in the way of work, and though a sound
batsman, who is of steady habits, like poor Shrewsbury, can play for a
long while, the fast bowlers are overweighted with the constant labour
of bowling on too perfect wickets, and they cannot keep their pace and
skill for much more than six or seven years.
The professionals who are not good enough to play for a first-class
county have by no means so good a time. They get engaged by clubs
such as are found all over South Lancashire and in the West Riding
of York, and they bowl for several hours all the week to members of
the club at the nets, and on Saturdays play for the club in league
matches. The results of these matches are tabulated in the local
newspapers and in the sporting papers published on Sundays, and in
their own district cause no end of excitement. The end of the season
finds one of these clubs champion of the local league; and cricket is
carried on very much like football in this respect. There are senior
and junior leagues, there are Pleasant Sunday afternoon leagues, and
in each of them there exists a carefully considered system of tables
and elaborately calculated records of averages, and the leading
cricketers, like the leading football players, are heroes. The game,
however, as played in such matches, is of a distinctly lower type,
and if report speaks truly, the umpires have often more than their
proper share in determining the issue of the match. The professional
supplements his income in other ways. He generally supplies bats and
balls and other cricket materials, and sometimes, if he is a man of
business, he establishes himself finally in a shop, more frequently in
a public-house, and settles down for life.
[Illustration:
_MR. J. H. DARK._ _THE UMPIRE._
(_Proprietor of Lords_). (_Wm. Caldecourt_).
_WM. HILLYER._ _WM. MARTINGELL._]
[Illustration: _FULLER PILCH_,
_Who was considered, till the days of Dr. W. G. Grace, the best Batsman
that had ever appeared_.]
The descriptions of the amateur and professional as given above are
accurate enough, and many of us who can remember the former state of
things probably think that, in comparing the epoch of 1860 to 1870 with
that of 1892 to 1902, the condition of things was better, as far as the
amateur is concerned, in the ‘sixties, and worse for the professional,
and that now the position is exactly reversed. An amateur should be
either one thing or the other, but nobody can say in these days what he
is. The change has taken place gradually, and began from causes that
sprang into existence perhaps thirty years ago, and these we will now
try to explain.
Nobody who has watched the game carefully can fail to be struck with
the wonderful development of county cricket. The ideal county cricket
really exists, speaking of first-class counties alone, in the three
counties of Nottingham, Yorkshire, and, we think, Derbyshire. Regarded
impartially, a county ought to be represented solely by county players,
but as a matter of fact this is not the case anywhere but in Nottingham
and Yorkshire. But in many counties are to be found gentlemen who like
to have first-class cricket in their county, and a county cricket club
is founded. The financial prosperity of the club depends in a great
measure on the success of the county eleven, and if a county has three
or four amateurs who materially strengthen the side, the committee
make great efforts to secure their services all through the season.
The natural result follows. The amateur is driven to confess that he
cannot afford the expenses of travelling and living at hotels, and he
must decline to play. The winning of matches being the golden key to
financial prosperity, the committees have been driven to adopt a system
of paying the amateur money, that their counties may play their best
elevens, and the first step in obliterating the boundary line that
should exist between the amateur and professional has been taken, and
what thirty years ago was done in one or two instances is now a matter
of universal practice.
I am now for the moment making no comment; only stating a fact. As far
as the balance-sheet of the county club is concerned, you cannot assume
that the club can run its eleven cheaply by playing amateurs, who in
truth cost the committee as much per head as the professionals. It
would involve too much worrying into detail, and might lead to other
harmful consequences, to get exact statements of the cost of railway
tickets, etc.; so there is a fixed payment in a majority of cases given
to every amateur, and this fixed payment is on a sufficiently generous
scale to enable many an impecunious amateur to devote his services
to his county. Nor is this the only way of providing livelihoods for
skilful amateurs. There has to be, of course, a secretary, and you can
either appoint a cricketer to this post, and provide him with a clerk
who can do the work while his employer is playing cricket, or else
make the cricketer an under-secretary, both posts, of course, having
a salary attached.[3] It is also, if report speaks truly, a matter of
fairly common practice for employers somehow or other to find some
employment for cricketers during the winter, of course at a salary, and
it has therefore come to this, that many an amateur has found in the
game of cricket a means of access to a livelihood. No distinction has
yet been given between a complimentary match and a benefit; the result
is much the same in both instances; the proceeds of gate-money, after
deduction of expenses, are handed to the player for whom the match is
played.
A short time ago there was a proposal, emanating, if I am not mistaken,
from the Australian authorities, that the M.C.C. should undertake
the arranging and selection of an English eleven to represent this
country in a series of matches in Australia. The committee of the
M.C.C. undertook the task, though not, it must be confessed, in a very
sanguine spirit. Their labours did not last long. Difficulties met
them on the very threshold, and these difficulties were entirely on
the ground of the amateurs’ expenses. Now it must be assumed that, if
the principle of paying amateurs’ expenses be allowed, there ought to
be no difficulty in the way of settling with amateurs. A manager has
to go out; why should not he take all the tickets, pay the coaching
and railway expenses and hotel bills, receive the proper share of
the gate-money, and deliver the amateur safe back in his own country
without the payment to the amateur of a penny? The word expenses has a
well-defined and proper meaning, known to everybody. It represents the
actual cost to a player of living, travelling, and playing, from the
moment he leaves this country to the moment he sets foot in it again;
but it is perfectly certain that, if left to the amateur to make a sort
of private bargain, other and improper developments will take place,
and it is notorious that they do.
Now let us consider for a moment the position of affairs, as far as
this question of amateurs and professionals is concerned, in the case
of Australia. As was said before, there was some sort of discrimination
between the two in the first Colonial eleven in 1878. Both the
Bannermans, as noted above, were avowedly professionals, and Midwinter
also, if I remember rightly, and perhaps one or two others. But the
bulk were amateurs, and the mystic sign “Mr.” was placed before their
names. If no authoritative statement is made, and no balance-sheet
made public, nobody can be surprised if the facts are more or less
conjectural. But for all that, rumour in this instance is no lying
jade, and without fear of contradiction, I assert that many of the
so-called Australian “amateurs” who have been to this country have made
money over and above their expenses.[4] Let nobody be misled, or assume
from this that any stigma attaches to any of these Australian players;
it is not their fault, but some may complain of the system. The
profession of a cricketer, the calling of a professional, is in every
way an honourable and good one. What puzzles so many of us is that,
this being the case, so many should adopt the profession, but deny the
name. They seem to prefer the ambiguous position of a so-called amateur
to the straightforward, far more honourable one of a professional. This
is not the case in other professions. Take the case of the dramatic
career. There are many actors and actresses of more or less high social
standing who have been driven by their love of the work and skill to
adopt the calling of an actor. There is no ambiguity about it. They
become what they are. They do not call themselves amateurs and receive
salaries under the guise of expenses, which is exactly what cricketers
do; and many of us ask ourselves, what is the reason of this?
To this question all that can be said is that circumstances have so
changed that what was easy to define formerly is difficult now. It may
be impossible to have the same rules and regulations now that used to
exist forty years ago. But even if this is true, there can be no doubt
that in these days a most unhealthy state of things prevails. It is
bad for the nominal amateur, it is bad for the game, and it is bad for
the country. Cricket is the finest game ever invented, but it is after
all only a game, and it is wrong that things should have developed in
such a way that amateurs become professionals in all but the name,
and that gate-money should be the real moving spirit and ideal of all
county clubs. To be prosperous financially a county must win matches,
to win matches you must get the best possible county eleven, therefore
the best amateurs as well as professionals must be played; and if these
amateurs cannot afford the time and the money to play, why, then, they
must be paid, and paid accordingly they are. That this is the case now
everybody knows, and it seems strange that the greatest game of the
world should be the one game where such things occur. No complaint need
be made of the Australian system, except in this, that players who are
in fact professionals should be treated as such. We are always glad to
give them every welcome and show them every hospitality; nevertheless,
they should have the same treatment and stand on the same footing that
our professionals do when they visit Australia. In the same way, if any
player feels himself unable, at the invitation of the M.C.C., to go out
to Australia, because he is only offered the payment of the actual cost
of travelling and living, and afterwards goes out under some private
arrangement, he should be treated and recognised as a professional.
It is an old proverb that you cannot eat your cake and have it, and
if the modern amateur does not care, on social grounds, to become a
professional, then let him honestly refuse to play cricket if he cannot
afford to play on receipt of his bare expenses only. Richard Daft, in
old days, found himself in the same dilemma, and grasped the nettle
and became a professional, and justly earned the respect of all for so
doing.
Put briefly, in these days the state of things is this. A large number
of amateurs directly and indirectly make something of a livelihood
by cricket, and yet they are recognised as amateurs. Such cricketers
are those who, under the guise of expenses, get such a sum that after
paying these expenses leaves something to be carried over, as Mr.
Jorrocks called it. A few others do things on a far more lordly scale.
They have complimentary matches given them by their counties; in other
words, they have benefits like many of the leading and deserving
professionals, but still they are called amateurs; and whether it is
correct to call a class of men one name, when they are obviously and
openly something different, is perhaps a matter of opinion, but for my
part I do not hesitate to say it is neither right nor straightforward.
Further trouble arises from the curse of gate-money. This hangs like
a blight over everything. County clubs dare not take a decided line
about cricket reform, lest a shortening of the game might diminish the
gate-money, and professionals do not speak out because they are forced
to bow the knee to Baal. County clubs are therefore in this position:
they must attract gates; to do this they must have a fine eleven; to
get a fine eleven they must have amateurs, and these amateurs cannot
play regularly without being paid, and so paid they are. The expenses
of running a first-class county eleven are therefore very great—so
great, in fact, that few can stand the strain. Some years ago we
used to have three or four wet seasons running occasionally. If ever
this occurs again, bankruptcy awaits several county committees, as
Warwickshire and Worcestershire have some reason from last season’s
experience to dread. It now costs as much to run a team of amateurs
as professionals, as all have to be paid. Perhaps some day, when the
public get tired of seeing match after match unfinished, and refuse
to pay their entrance money, and the cricket world find out that some
reform is necessary, and the duration of a match is two days and not
three, county clubs will find out that they cannot pay these wages for
amateurs, and a remedy will be found from an unlooked-for cause.
[Illustration:
_Attributed to_ _Thos. Gainsborough, R.A._
_PORTRAIT OF A YOUTH._
(_Said to be of George, Prince of Wales, afterwards George IV._)]
[Illustration: _WILLIAM DORRINTON._]
Having thus given vent to a growl on an unpleasant subject, the
features of professional and amateur play may now be discussed. There
used to be great differences in old days, far more than there is now,
but in one respect there is a great difference still, and that is in
bowling. We all know what sort of bowling will be seen in a University
match, or in Free Forester and Quidnunc matches. There will be one or
two fair slow bowlers, but that is all. Good fast bowling has not been
seen for some years in amateur elevens, but for this the amateurs are
hardly to blame. The modern wicket, shaved and heavy rolled, has made
it practically impossible for any really fast bowler to do any good,
unless he is one of the shining lights, like Richardson or Lockwood.
Amateurs like Messrs. Jessop, Kortright, and Bradley have an occasional
day of success, but these bowlers, being naturally fast, depend mainly
for their success on the agility of the field in the slips, and on
their capacity to make the ball bump. To attain this they generally
have but a short career. They take out of themselves by adopting a
gigantic long run and banging the ball down from straight over their
head at a terrific pace. Flesh and blood cannot stand this for more
than a short time. A human being is but human after all; he is not a
machine built to order like a steam engine, and work like what he has
to undergo knocks him up. The professionals have always had much the
best of it as regards bowling, and they have so still; but why this is
so is not easy to see. Between the ages of twelve and eighteen there is
no reason to suppose that the professional practises more at bowling
than the amateur; the probability is the other way. A young amateur
is at school during this period, where cricket is more systematically
carried on than at the board school, which the professional leaves at
thirteen and exchanges for a shop or a factory. But the tendency in
amateur bowlers is to promise well as a boy, and not to come up to
expectations as a man, and especially is this the case when, as so
often happens, there is a corresponding improvement in batting.
In my experience of more than thirty years, the only instance I
can call to mind of an amateur who bowled above medium pace like a
professional—that is to say, with a professional’s accuracy and
method—was Mr. Appleby, who died last year. Mr. Appleby had a
beautiful easy action, and was always to be relied on to keep a length
and direction, as J. T. Hearne did for many years. Mr. Jackson is still
in the middle of his career, and next to Mr. Appleby, bowls more nearly
approaching to the professional standpoint; but, good bowler as he
is, he does not strike one as quite like a professional bowler. Slow
bowlers are not quite in the same class. Here the amateur is more at
home. Mr. W. G. Grace and the late Mr. David Buchanan were worthy of
being classed with Alfred Shaw, Peate, and Rhodes. Mr. Grace must be
so much used to hearing his merits discussed entirely from the batting
point of view, and has done so little bowling as compared with batting,
that it may interest the present generation that for some years as
a bowler he was as effective as the best professional. His method,
however, was very different. At a time when a wicket was supposed to
be worth only ten runs, and when nearly every bowler bowled more for
maidens than they do now, Mr. Grace was the first to show the way of
a deliberate system of getting wickets by getting men out, other than
by merely bowling them. He habitually placed a deep square leg in the
right place, and tempted men like Oscroft, Charlwood, and many more to
send chances there, and many a time and oft has the trick come off. He
frequently bowled in a way that showed what idea was in his head. A
very common device of his was in regard to l.b.w. He never objected to
being hit over the ropes, as he would silently argue that an ordinary
batsman, having once tasted the sweets of a mighty leg hit over the
ropes, would very much like to repeat the feat, and Mr. Grace would
drop down a tempting ball on the leg stump, and if, as often happened,
the batsman did hit at it and did miss it, he was out l.b.w. To this
day, to batsmen like those who come from Australia for the first time,
and have therefore never seen Mr. Grace bowl, I would as soon put on
Mr. Grace to bowl for a few overs as any man in England. He is and
always has been quite unlike any other bowler, both in the way he
delivered the ball and the strange way he placed his field.
Mr. Buchanan was another bowler who copied Mr. Grace in one sense, for
though he did not bowl for catches to leg, he carried out the theory
of bowling for catches on the off side more than any bowler before or
since. A bold hitter might hit Mr. Buchanan, if he was quick on his
feet and had a good eye, but for all that there were few bowlers who so
rarely bowled a bad-length ball. Neither were there many bowlers who
made such absolute fools of batsmen as Mr. Buchanan did. The picked
professionals who played against him in Gentlemen and Players matches
at Lord’s and the Oval as a rule displayed all the feebleness that
was possible. Daft, Lockwood, and Oscroft were exceptions to this.
Lockwood, who had a wonderful cut, more than any other, realised the
danger of hitting at the pitch of Mr. Buchanan’s off ball. Instead of
doing this, he got back and cut the ball behind the wicket for three
runs—it might have been four, but Lockwood was a slow runner. Mr.
Buchanan did not like to have a third man, and his nervous system was
seriously insulted at Lockwood’s method, which forced him to change the
disposition of his field in a way he did not like. Mr. Grace and Mr.
Buchanan were two amateur slow bowlers who really studied the art of
bowling, and both of them, Mr. Grace in particular, studied the play of
their batting opponents; but when you have mentioned Messrs. Appleby,
Grace, and Buchanan, and for a short time Mr. Steel, you have nearly
exhausted the list of bowlers who during the last thirty years may be
said to have challenged comparison with the best professionals.
In batting it is very different. Mr. Grace, of course, must be
left out of any calculation. Apart from him, however, the amateurs
can quite hold their own in batting. It is not fair to take as an
illustration the performances of each in Gentlemen _v._ Players
matches, because the bowling on one side is so superior to the other.
But in international test matches, both here and in Australia, Messrs.
Stoddart, Ranjitsinhji, Maclaren, Jackson, and Steel have been fully
as good and successful as Shrewsbury, Barnes, Gunn, Hayward, and
Tyldesley. As far as style is concerned, the older professionals, such
as Shrewsbury and Barnes, had a more distinctive difference of method
than their modern successors. Hayward and Tyldesley far more closely
resembled the amateur method of Messrs. Jackson and Palairet than
Shrewsbury and Barnes did that of Messrs. Steel and Stoddart. It is
not easy to explain on paper the difference, but every decent judge of
the game could see that a difference was there. Some of the players,
like Ulyett and Bates, could and did hit as hard and as often as the
amateur, but in the professional there was little real grace of style.
It is strange that this is so, for grace and ease are qualities that
must be born, not made, but it is true, nevertheless, speaking of the
older cricketers. Nowadays it would seem that Tyldesley and Hayward
have nothing to fear, as far as style is concerned, from any amateur,
always excepting Mr. Palairet. As far as mere run-getting is the point
of discussion, there would seem to be very little in it one way or the
other. In the great series of test matches, both here and in Australia,
during the last ten years there have been Stoddart, Maclaren,
Ranjitsinhji, and Jackson, as there have been Shrewsbury, Hayward,
Tyldesley, and Gunn, the amateurs perhaps having a shade the better of
it.
The fielding also is and always has been tolerably even. In this,
however, there is a great difference now as compared with old times.
Thirty years ago the professional wicket-keeper was a class, even two
classes, above the amateur. Lockyer, Pooley, Plumb, and Pinder formed
a class that the amateurs could not show any comparison with. Possibly
the rougher wicket and the, generally speaking, faster bowling made the
position more unpleasant than it is now, but undoubtedly the amateur
has improved beyond all knowledge in wicket-keeping, and there is not
much to choose now. In other respects also the quality seems tolerably
equal. The observer will undoubtedly notice a change in the figure
of the ordinary professional now. The old Yorkshire eleven, with the
well-known figures of Roger Iddison, Luke Greenwood, and Rowbotham, and
the Nottingham eleven with Bignall and Wild, seem quite out of date
now, though Hirst looks promising in this respect. But Gunn, Maurice
Read, Tyldesley, Wainwright, Hirst, Braund, and several others were
and are fully equal in fielding to any that the amateurs can bring to
compare with them.
It would appear, then, that in batting and fielding there is little
to choose between amateurs and professionals, but in bowling there is
great superiority among the professionals. Of course this superiority,
_cæteris paribus_, is so important that as long as it exists the
professional must win the vast majority of matches. As a general rule
this has been the case, but when Mr. Grace was in his prime, that is,
between 1869 and about 1887, his tremendous skill gave the amateurs the
predominance that, as far as appearances go, does not look likely to
occur again.
[Illustration:
_From a Painting by_ _W. Bromley._
_GEORGE PARR._]
Some good judges of the game have maintained that the common practice,
which has prevailed for some time, of engaging professional bowlers
to bowl to boys at school and undergraduates at the universities,
and to the amateurs generally belonging to clubs, is a bad one, and
that amateur inferiority in bowling is to be traced to this custom.
Something no doubt may be done by practising bowling, but it is
probable that the bowler even more than the batsman is _nascitur non
fit_. Unless there is a natural break and some spin or mysterious
quality which makes the ball hang or kick in a bowler, he can hardly
acquire it. The utmost he can attain to, if he does not possess these
virtues, is experience in estimating the quality of his opponents, and
a modicum of skill in varying length and pace. But these will not avail
him much if the natural gifts of a bowler are not in him by nature.
Even these will go if, as frequently happens in these days of easy
wickets, the bowler gets too much work thrown on him, for the cricket
life of a very fast bowler is not more than six years on the average.
In the matter of generalship, or the managing of a side, professionals
have hitherto shown very little skill. The professionals themselves
would probably prefer to be led by an amateur. George Parr, Daft,
Emmett, Alfred Shaw, and Abel have at different times acted as
captains, but none are to be compared to Messrs. V. E. Walker, A. N.
Hornby, J. Shuter, and Maclaren. A professional who is captain seems
always to think it proper to give every bowler a chance, whether a
change of bowling is wanted or not, and a natural bias towards members
of his own county is not always successfully resisted.
From what has been said in this chapter, the reader will be able to
learn that, as far as England is concerned, the relations between
amateurs and professionals stand on an altogether different footing in
cricket from what they do in other games. In Australia, unless we have
been misinformed, most if not all the players who come to this country
earn, on an average of years, a fairly substantial sum by cricket
played over here. They are really professionals, and it is probable
that in their own country they are so regarded. If this is so, we have
the curious fact of a totally different standard prevailing in the two
countries. But this, as far as England is concerned, is not important.
What is important is that there should be some distinct understanding
on the subject, and the present nebulous state of things put an end to.
If it is necessary to have something paid to amateurs, the greatest
care should be taken that nothing beyond _bona fide_ expenses are paid,
and we believe that by the Surrey club this is done now. Not until
there is established some clear and understood principle under which a
true definition of the word “amateur” is arrived at, will the present
unsatisfactory state of things be put an end to, and it is earnestly to
be hoped that some day this will be done.
[Illustration]