How many hours during the year, I wonder, must we spend over our
_Wisden_? A great many surely, so many, indeed, that we cannot help
thinking how small is the literature of cricket. Only two shelves out of
thirty. There are one or two novels, _Willow the King_, A. A. Milne’s
_The Day’s Play_, a few of Mr Lucas’s Essays, the complete works of P.
F. Warner, W. J. Ford’s _Middlesex Cricket_, Lord Harris’s _Lord’s and
the M.C.C._, a few volumes of reminiscence, one or two textbooks, P. G.
Wodehouse’s delightful _Mike, The Hambleden Men_, and Neville Cardus.
Poor stuff, too, for the most part. The literature of cricket can be
divided into two categories. There are the books by men who understand
cricket but do not know how to write, and the books by the men who know
how to write but do not understand cricket. In the course of a year many
books and stories dealing with the game are published, but only rarely
in a generation comes combined the sportsman and the man of letters.
Whom have we to-day: P. G. Wodehouse; but he prefers to write of golf.
A. A. Milne; but he is dabbling in grease paint. E. V. Lucas; but so
rarely nowadays. Neville Cardus; yes, the only one, the only genuine
one, perhaps. The first man to make literature out of cricket. His
essay on Tom Richardson; his description of Maclaren leaving the field
for the last time at Eastbourne; his “Greatest Test Match.” They were
written for the columns of a daily paper, but there is literature in
them, real prose, real melody, real emotion. He is alone, though,
Neville Cardus.
Hardly any poetry has been written about the game. There is Thompson’s
“Oh, my Hornby and my Barlow Long Ago,” and there is a quantity of
verse, pleasant jingly stuff of the drinking-song variety, the best of
it valedictory, such as Andrew Lang’s “Beneath the Daisies Now They
Lie.” But the few attempts that have been made at serious poetry have
not been fortunate. Edward Cracroft Lefroy, for example, to whom cricket
appealed chiefly as an æsthetic spectacle, included in his catalogue of
the physical attributes of a bowler the
Elbows apt to make the leather spin
Up the slow bat and round the unwary shin,
which is not only poor verse but proves on the part of the author an
inadequate knowledge of the no-ball rule.
But perhaps verse is not a happy medium through which to express an
enjoyment of cricket. Phrases like “unwary shin” will intrude
themselves, and, although Pindar used to celebrate with equally
appropriate ardour the feats of generals and of athletes, the very idea
of commemorating in heroic couplets Woolley’s two great test-match
innings at Lord’s seems ridiculous. We have grown so accustomed to
reading accounts of cricket matches in the prose style of the sporting
press that any other treatment is impossible. Perhaps Mr Masefield will
one day attempt an epic of the fifth test match at the Oval, but I doubt
if it would be a success. It would be a quaint performance, as though
one were to walk down the Strand in court dress of Jacobean cut. The
jargon of a cricket report is unsuited to heroic verse, but it is
indispensable. If, for instance, we were informed that Hendren,
Snared into over-confidence, stept back,
Swinging his bat as though he would eclipse
The thundered violence of Albert Trott.
Yet had he not correctly judged the flight
Of the quick spinning ball.
Aghast he heard
Behind his back the rattle of the stumps,
we should not be very much the wiser. We should prefer to learn of such
a tragedy in straightforward narrative: “Hendren hooked Mailey to the
on-boundary twice in succession; but, in an attempt to repeat the stroke
to a ball that was pitched farther up to him and that went away with the
arm, he was clean bowled.”
Indeed, A. E. Housman’s “On an Athlete Dying Young” is the best serious
poem that can be said to interpret any side of cricket, and that poem is
written to a runner. But it is universal, for it contains the tragedy of
all professional sport:
Now you will not swell the rout
Of lads that wore their honours out,
Runners whom renown outran,
And the name died before the man.
Contemporary reference to any cricketer no longer playing is made in
the past tense, “Tarrant was ...”; and how many of the enthusiastic
Ovalites who recall so eagerly the great days of “Locky and Brocky”
pause to consider that their hero is still alive?
The lack of prose literature dealing with cricket is, however, as
surprising as it is deplorable. For a hundred years ago the game must
have been able to supply an intriguing background for a novel. Lord’s
was like Paddington recreation-ground, and, when there was no match, the
public were allowed to hire a pitch there for a shilling, a sum that
included the use of stumps, bat, and ball; there were no mowing machines
then, and the grass was kept down by a flock of sheep, which was penned
up on match days. On Saturdays, four or five hundred sheep were driven
on to the ground on their way to the Smithfield Market. And then half a
dozen small boys would run out and pick out any long grass or thick
tufts that were still left. It is not surprising that there were
shooters then. And never since the days of the gladiators can there have
been such wholesale bribery and corruption as there was in the days of
Lord Frederic Beauclerk.
Enormous bets were made. Matches were played for stakes of one thousand
guineas a side--in those days no small sum, and professionals found it
hard to live on their pay; indeed, they made little effort to; and in
big matches where a lot of money was at stake it was not uncommon to
find one side trying to get themselves out while their opponents were
trying to give them easy balls to make runs off. Indeed Lord Harris
tells a story of how two professionals had a dispute at one of the
annual general meetings at Lord’s, and in the presence of the noble
lords of the M.C.C. such questions as “Who sold the match at
Nottingham?” and “Who would bowl at anything but the wicket for Kent?”
were bandied about to the consternation, Lord Harris says, “of some of
those present who had lost their money contrary to all calculation on
the matches referred to”! There were few newspaper reporters then, and
things could be done at Old Trafford news of which would come tardily to
Lord’s.
The only persons who appear to have remained incorruptible during these
early days are, strangely enough, the umpires. Perhaps they put too high
a premium on their honesty, and the bookmakers found it cheaper to have
dealings with the players, or perhaps there was a general conspiracy of
silence, no one being sufficiently without blame to cast a stone. At any
rate, the interpreters of the law seem to have given satisfaction, and
they can have had no easy time. For it was during these years that the
code of rules under which we play to-day was compiled. And it was
compiled in a most haphazard fashion. No committee sat over a table and
weighed every possible contingency and interpretation of the laws. The
authorities were worthy fellows, but lazy and unimaginative. They drew
up a rough code and waited for things to happen. If any particular
practice began to cause a nuisance they were prepared to put a stop to
it. In the meantime let the wheel turn.
It did turn, and often with uncomfortable complications. At one time,
for instance, in the days when there were only two stumps, a hole was
cut between and beneath the wickets, and when a batsman completed a run
he had to pop his bat into this hole. If the bowler succeeded in popping
the ball there before the bat the batsman was run out. It was found,
however, that bat and ball would often arrive in the hole
simultaneously, with sad results to the bowler’s fingers; and often
enough, when a fieldsman had anticipated the bat, the defeated player
would take what revenge he could by driving his bat upon the knuckles of
his conqueror. After a certain number of fingers had been broken the
authorities thought fit to substitute for the hole the present popping
crease.
Much the same thing happened in the case of leg-before-wicket. As pads
were not then invented, and as the ball was delivered with much
rapidity, it had never seemed likely that any batsman would, with
deliberate intention, place his unprotected legs in the path of a hard
ball. But one day the cricket world was thrown into consternation by the
tactics of one Ring, who placed his body in front of the wicket in such
a way that it was impossible for him to be bowled out. His shins became
very sore, but his score became very large. This gallant act of
self-sacrifice for the good of his side did not win the admiration it
deserved; it was described by a contemporary writer as “a shabby way of
taking advantage of a bowler,” so that when Tom Taylor adopted the same
tactics the bowlers “declared themselves beaten”: a leg-before-wicket
rule was drawn up, and another opportunity for Spartan courage was lost
to an effeminate age.
The rules were altered to suit each fresh development. And when we
remember the manifold and barbarous practices of that day, we cannot but
shudder when we try to imagine what fearsome and horrible atrocities
must have taken place before the rule about “obstruction of the field”
was invented. Cannot we picture some burly butcher skying the ball to
point and then, in order to save his wicket, rushing at the fieldsman
and prostrating him with his bat? Cannot we see the batsman at the other
end effecting a half-nelson upon the bowler who was about to catch his
partner? The laws of Rome were not built up without bloodshed, nor were
the laws of cricket. What opportunities for humorous narrative have been
lost!
If only there had been some naturalistic writer who would have collected
laboriously all these stories and made a novel of them. If Zola had been
an Englishman we could have forgiven him his endless descriptions of
gold-beaters and agricultural labourers, if one of the Macquarts had
been a professional cricketer and one of those interminable novels had
reconstructed the cricket world of his day. If only the caprice of
things had allowed George Moore to spend his early years near a cricket
field instead of a racing stable.
But even those few novelists who have included cricket in their panorama
of the period appear woefully ignorant of the management of the game.
What a sad mess Dickens made of it, and how well he might have done it!
How entertaining Mr Winkle might have been behind the wicket: what
sublime decisions he would have given as an umpire! But, no: Muggleton
play Dingley Dell, and the great Podder “blocked the doubtful balls,
missed the bad ones, took the good ones and sent them flying to all
parts of the field,” which is surely the most quaint procedure that any
batsman has ever followed; and as a climax Dingley Dell give in and
allow the superior prowess of all Muggleton, apparently before they have
had their own innings--an action without precedent in the annals of the
game.
And so it has happened that our one complete picture of the Homeric days
has come to us not from the novelists, the official recorders of the
hour, but from John Nyren, who wrote without any thought of posterity a
guide-book for the young cricketer. There are some books that, like
wine, acquire qualities with the passage of time, and for us to-day the
_Cricketer’s Tutor_ possesses a value that it did not have for those in
whose service it was written. To the young blood of 1840 it was merely a
manual, a sort of field service regulations; to-day it is a piece of
literature; it interprets a period; it reveals a personality.
As we read John Nyren’s advice we can see how the game was played in
1820 on rough pitches, without pads, in top hats, and with a courage the
extent of which may be gauged from the instructions that he gives to
long-stop:
When the ball does not come to his hand with a fair bound, he must
go down upon his right knee with his hands before him: then in case
these should miss it, his body will form a bulwark and arrest its
further progress.
In those days we learn that spectators were patient folk who sat on
backless seats, drank porter, smoked long pipes, and made bets about the
match. There was leisure then, and John Nyren believed that the batsman
should wait to make his runs till bowler and fieldsmen were exhausted:
I would strongly recommend the young batsman to turn his attention
to stopping: for by acting this part well, he becomes a serious
antagonist to the bowler; who, when he sees a man coming in that he
knows will stop all his length balls with ease, is always in a
degree disheartened. He has no affection for such a customer.
Besides, in this accomplishment lies the distinction between the
scientific and the random batsman.
The random batsman: it is an adjective we find often in the _Cricketer’s
Tutor_. For Nyren had an intense hatred of unskilled success. Cricket
was to him an art the technique of which could only be mastered after an
elaborate apprenticeship. He distrusted the short cut, and we find him
the most bitter opponent of the young idea. He is the eternal Tory of
yesterday, of to-day and of to-morrow. And he is very human to us as he
stands on the brink of change uttering his solemn warning. For it was
towards the end of his career that round-arm bowling was introduced, and
it is hard to realise the revolution this caused in the world of sport.
It made as much stir and roused as many bad feelings in its own province
as its contemporary the Reform Bill. This bowling was described as the
“new march of intellect--style,” and in 1827 three matches were played
between Sussex and England to test the merits of the two methods. The
county won the first two matches, and the nine professionals on the
England side were so incensed that they signed a formal petition “that
we, the undersigned, do agree that we will not play the third match
between all England and Sussex unless the Sussex bowlers bowl fair--that
is, abstain from throwing.” And the great Mr Ward, when asked his
opinion, said, “I can only say cricketers are a peaceable class of men.
With this bowling I never see a match that might not end in a wrangle.”
John Nyren was its most fierce opponent, and it is rather pathetic to
read his violent and ineffectual protest. This invention would ruin
cricket. He saw a new game that would lack the grace and skill of the
game as he and his friends had played it. The ball would come so fast
that the batsman would not have time to prepare for it.
The indifferent batsman possesses as fair a chance of success as
the most refined player. And the reason for this is obvious,
because from the random manner of delivering the ball it is
impossible for the fine batsman to have time for that finesse and
delicate management which so peculiarly distinguished the elegant
manœuvring of the chief players who occupied the field about eight,
ten, or more years ago.
And he goes on to state his belief that if the present system be
persisted in a few years longer “the elegant and scientific game of
cricket will develop into a mere exhibition of rough, coarse
horse-play.”
What would he say if he could return to the pavilion at the Oval, and
see Hitch bowling at how many miles is it an hour, and Hendren hooking
him to the square-leg boundary? And the last paragraph of his protest is
that of every man since the beginning of time who has seen his day pass,
his heroes overthrown, and a rash, irreverent generation in their place.
I can use my eyes [he writes], I can compare notes and points in
the two styles of playing, and they who have known me will bear
testimony that I have never been accustomed to express myself
rashly.
A forlorn figure, trusting so simply in the permanence of a static
world.
It is sad to think how quickly that world has passed, and how
effectively the machinery of our industrial system has already taken
cricket to itself. Nyren’s game is no longer the entertainment of a few.
It has become part of the national life, and probably, if the
Bolshevists get their way here, it will be nationalised with the cinema
and the theatre and association football. It is hard to find much in
common between the old men who smoked long pipes and drank strong porter
and watched Mr Haygarth bat three hours for sixteen runs, and the twenty
thousand who flock to the Middlesex and Surrey match because the
newspapers have told them to, and who barrack any batsman who plays
through a maiden over. Indeed, on those big days, I do not think that
you find there the survival of the old enthusiast. You will find him
rather on a cold morning shivering at the back of the mound, on the
third day of a match that is certain to be a draw, when there are only a
couple of hundred spectators. No one knows why he goes there. He will be
very cold. He will not see particularly good cricket. Professional
batsmen will play for a draw in the most professional manner. The
fielding towards four o’clock will grow slack, and half an hour before
the end the captains will decide that it is no good going on, and that
they might just as well draw stumps. Your old man in the mound knows
that this must happen. But he goes there all the same, and at three
o’clock he buys an evening paper to read an account of the match and he
sees that the reporter says: “Hardstaff was beaten and bowled by a
yorker.” And the old man will chuckle, knowing that it was a half-volley
and that Hardstaff hit over it. And in January, when he reads through
his _Wisden_, he will put a tick against that match, with the others
that he has seen, and he will add them up and find that he has spent
five more days at Lord’s this year than he did the year before. He will
remember how his grandfather used to talk to him of Fuller Pilch; and he
will smile, knowing the superiority of Hendren. And he will continue to
watch cricket as his grandfather watched it on cold days as well as
warm, when a draw is certain and when there is a chance of a great
finish. One day he believes the professional batsmen will fail, there
will be a collapse and a sensational victory, and only two hundred
people will have seen it. He knows that many matches are played in the
year and that very few of them yield great finishes, and he knows that
the only way to make sure of the big occasion is to go there whenever
stumps are pitched. And it is of him that we must think when we would
reconstruct the cricket world of 1830.
For Nyren was the Homer of cricket and the Homeric days have passed. In
1923 the soil is no longer virgin. Cricket is a different game, and for
the novelist it is less intriguing. There is no betting, there is no
dishonesty, and, though we hear whispers of the questionable diplomacy
of the northern leagues, it would hardly be possible to invent a cricket
story with a credible villain. Nat Gould found no difficulty in writing
a hundred novels of the racecourse; it is extremely difficult to write
one of the cricket field. No scope is provided for dramatic narrative.
Cricket in the lives of most of us is a delightful interlude--pleasant
hours in pleasant company; and we do not take our success or failure
very seriously. At school it is important: caps and cups are at stake,
positions of authority go to the most proficient; and it so happens that
the only great cricket story of recent times is a school story, P. G.
Wodehouse’s _Mike_. But apart from school it is hard to find in cricket
a motive of sufficient strength to allow of the development and
presentation of dramatic action. On the racecourse large sums of money
are at stake. On the success of a horse may depend the future happiness
of the hero and the heroine. But I doubt if the result of a cricket
match has in recent years ever involved much more than the temporary
loss or gain of personal prestige. In _Willow the King_ J. C. Snaith
chose a cricket match as the setting for a summer idyll, but the author
of _Brooke of Covenden_ would hardly rank that story highly among his
many very considerable achievements. The moment for the great cricket
novel has passed: irrecoverably perhaps. And in the winter months we
find ourselves returning as of old to a few books of reminiscence and to
our long yellow-backed, tattered row of _Wisden_, and of the two we find
_Wisden_ the more companionable.