I AM willing to leave to other and more skilful hands the pleasure of
narrating the joys and trials of county cricket, club cricket, and the
splendid cricket of country houses and village greens. Not that my task
is the more modest, for, having a just regard for relative values, I
think that it is of cricket I write, such cricket as small boys play in
dreams (ah, me, those sixes that small boys hit in dreams!); such cricket
as the ghosts enjoy at nights at Lord’s. It is well for the eye to take
pleasure in shining flannels and ivory-white boots; there is a thrill in
the science of the game, the swerve of the new red ball, the quick play
of the batsmen’s feet; but I think that when good cricketers die it is
not to such elaborate sport as this that they betake themselves in the
happy playing-fields. To mow the astonished daisies in quick retort to
the hardly gentlemanly sneak; to pull like Mr. Jessop because one knows
no better; to be bowled by every straight yorker; to slog at full pitches
with close-shut eyes; thus and thus only is the cricket of Arcadia.
In its simplest form we played it in the garden after dinner, but even
here environment and our imaginations combined to make it complicated.
The lawn was small, and there were flower-beds and windows to be
considered. The former did not trouble us very much; indeed, we lopped
the French lilies with a certain glee, but a broken window was a more
serious business, and lofty drives to the off were therefore discouraged.
Yet once, I recollect, the ball was sent through the same window three
times in an afternoon. Of course, the unfortunate batsman who allowed
his enthusiasm thus to outdrive his discretion was out, as also was he
who hit the ball into the next garden. But this latter rule was rather
conventional than imposed by necessity, for we were fortunate in the
possession of a charming neighbour; and sometimes youth, adventuring in
search of cricket-balls, would be regaled with seed-cake and still
lemonade, and return rampant to his comrades. But the great zest of our
games lay in our impersonation of real famous cricketers. We would take
two county sides, and divide the rôles of their members amongst us, so
that each of us would represent two or three members of each team. The
score-sheets of these matches would convey a strange impression to the
erudition of the New Zealander. For the greatest cricketers failed to
score frequently, and, indeed, inevitably if they happened to be
left-handed bats. So far our passion for accuracy carried us, but, like
Tom Sawyer, we had to “lay on” that we bowled left-handed when it was in
the part, while realistic impersonations of lightning bowlers were too
dangerous to the batsman to be permitted.
These great contests did not pass without minor disagreements. The
rights of age were by no means waived, and in those days I was firmly
convinced that the l.b.w. rule had been invented by the M.C.C. to assist
elder brothers in getting their rights. Moreover, there was always high
argument over the allocation of the parts of the more popular cricketers.
My sister, I remember, would retire wrathfully from the game if she were
not allowed to be K. J. Key, and so, when Surrey was playing, we had to
permit her to be titular captain. Girls are very keen at cricket, but
they are not good at it. Or perhaps in the course of the game “W. G.”
would find it necessary to chase Lockwood all over the field for bowling
impudently well. Yet while we mimicked our elders we secretly thought
Olympian cricket a poor, unimaginative game without any quarrels. It was
thrilling to bat for the honour of Mr. Fry, or to make a fine catch in
the long field for Mr. Mason’s sake, but our personal idiosyncrasies also
had their value.
When we went away for our holidays it was ours to adventure with bat and
ball on unaccustomed grounds: meadow cricket was tiresome, for the ball
would hide itself in the long grass; and seaside cricket, though
exhilarating, was too public a business to be taken really seriously.
But cricket in the pinewoods was delightful—almost, I think, the best
cricket of all. The soft needles made an admirable pitch, and we had all
the trees for fielders. If you hit the ball against a tree full-pitch,
you were out, and it was strange how those patient, silent fieldsmen, who
never dropped catches, seemed to arrange themselves, as the game
progressed, in the conventional places in the field. Point would be
there, and mid-off, and some safe men in the slips. Overhead the birds
would call in the trees, and there were queer echoes when you hit the
ball hard, as though Pan were watching from some dim pavilion and crying
his applause. Really I wonder how we dared, or perhaps it were fitter to
wonder why we dare no longer.
The oddest cricket I ever played was with a gardener, a reticent,
impassive man, who came and played with me when sudden mumps had exiled
me from my holiday-making comrades. He would bowl to me silently for
hours, only parting his lips now and again to murmur the name of the
stump which he proposed to hit with his next ball, and no efforts of mine
could prevent his grim prophecies from being fulfilled. When I gave him
his innings he would pat my widest and most wily balls back to me
politely until he thought I was tired, and then he would let me bowl him.
This unequal contest was not cricket as I knew it, but it fascinated me
nevertheless. At night in my bed I would hit his bowling all over the
world and upset his stumps with monotonous ease. By day I could only
serve his humour. The devil was in the man.
The bats with which we played were normal save in size, but the balls
varied. In times of prosperity we had real leather cricket-balls, but
the balls known as “compos” were more common. When new they had a noble
appearance, but use made them rough and like dry earth in the hand, and
then they were apt to sting the fingers of the unwary cricketer. The
most perilous kind of ball of all was the size of a cricket-ball, but
made of solid rubber, and deadly alike to batsman and fieldsman. For
some reason or other the proper place in which to carry a cricket-ball
was the trousers, or rather knickerbockers, pocket. The curious
discomfort of this practice lingers in the mind. Soft balls are of no
use in real cricket; but if you bore a hole in them and fill them with
water they make very good bombs for practical anarchists.
Later came school cricket, but it is significant that the impression that
lingers is of the long drives home in the dusk from out-matches rather
than of the cricket itself. We would walk up the hills to rest the
horses, playing “touch” and imprisoning unfortunate glow-worms in wooden
matchboxes. And later still came visits to Lord’s and the Oval, when it
was my fortune to see some of our old heroes in the flesh. Certainly
they made more runs than they had been wont to do in the past, but— It
is not wise to examine our heroes too closely, though I am not alone in
thinking that first-class cricketers are lacking a little in the old
spirit. Indeed, how can they hope to keep it, they who are grown so
wise?