Or, the history and the science of the game of cricket. Second edition, London: Longman, Brown, Green, and Longmans. 1854.
The Reverend James Pycroft chiefly known for writing The Cricket Field, one of the earliest books about cricket, published in 1851 and next to Nyren, and Haygarth, the most important. Pycroft presented cricket as a noble, manly and essentially British activity. He favourably compared the virtues of Victorian cricket with the disgraceful state of play at the turn of the century when “Lord’s was frequented by men with book and pencil, betting as openly and professionally as in the ring at Epsom, and ready to deal in the odds with any and every person of speculative propensities”. He wrote a number of other books on religion and Oxford University.
Note: the contents page below gives the full contents of the book which is available here in pdf format. This page only consists of the chapters of most value to this site, that is to say, the first six chapters and chapter nine.
Contents
Original contents page
Epigraph
"'T was in the prime of summer time,
An evening calm and cool,
And five and twenty happy boys
Came bounding out of school.
Away they aped with gamesome minds
And souls untouched with sin;
To a level mead they came, and there
They drove the wickets in."
Thomas Hood (1799 - 1845)
Preface to the second edition
This Edition is greatly improved by various additions and corrections, for which we gratefully acknowledge our obligations to the Rev. R. T. King and Mr. A. Haygarth, as also once more to Mr. A. Bass and Mr. Whateley of Burton. For our practical instructions on Bowling, Batting, and Fielding, the first players of the day have been consulted, each on the point in which he respectively excelled. More discoveries have also been made illustrative of the origin and early history of Cricket; and we trust nothing is wanting to maintain the high character now accorded to the “Cricket Field,” as the Standard Authority on every part of our National Game.
J. P.
May, 18. 1854.
Preface to the first edition
The following pages are devoted to the history and the science of our National Game. Isaac Walton has added a charm to the Rod and Line; Col. Hawker to the Dog and the Gun; and Nimrod and Harry Hieover to the “Hunting Field:” but, the “Cricket Field” is to this day untrodden ground. We have been long expecting to hear of some chronicler aided and abetted by the noblemen and gentlemen of the Marylebone Club,—one who should combine, with all the resources of a ready writer, traditionary lore and practical experience. But, time is fast thinning the ranks of the veterans. Lord Frederick Beauclerk and the once celebrated player, the Hon. Henry Tufton, afterwards Earl of Thanet, have passed away; and probably Sparkes, of the Edinburgh Ground, and Mr. John Goldham, hereinafter mentioned, are the only surviving players who have witnessed both the formation and the jubilee of the Marylebone Club—following, as it has, the fortunes of the Pavilion and of the enterprising Thomas Lord, literally through “three removes” and “one fire,” from White Conduit Fields to the present Lord’s.
How, then, it will be asked, do we presume to save from oblivion the records of Cricket?
As regards the Antiquities of the game, our history is the result of patient researches in old English literature. As regards its changes and chances and the players of olden time, it fortunately happens that, some fifteen years ago, we furnished ourselves with old Nyren’s account of the Cricketers of his time and the Hambledon Club, and, using Bentley’s Book of Matches from 1786 to 1825 to suggest questions and test the truth of answers, we passed many an interesting hour in Hampshire and Surrey, by the peat fires of those villages which reared the Walkers, David Harris, Beldham, Wells, and some others of the All England players of fifty years since. Bennett, Harry Hampton, Beldham, and Sparkes, who first taught us to play,—all men of the last century,—have at various times contributed to our earlier annals; while Thomas Beagley, for some days our landlord, the late Mr. Ward, and especially Mr. E. H. Budd, often our antagonist in Lansdown matches, have respectively assisted in the first twenty years of the present century.
But, distinct mention must we make of one most important Chronicler, whose recollections were coextensive with the whole history of the game in its matured and perfect form—William Fennex. And here we must thank our kind friend the Rev. John Mitford, of Benhall, for his memoranda of many a winter’s evening with that fine old player,—papers especially valuable because Fennex’s impressions were so distinct, and his observation so correct, that, added to his practical illustrations with bat and ball, no other man could enable us so truthfully to compare ancient with modern times. Old Fennex, in his declining years, was hospitably appointed by Mr. Mitford to a sinecure office, created expressly in his honour, in the beautiful gardens of Benhall; and Pilch, and Box, and Bayley, and all his old acquaintance, will not be surprised to hear that the old man would carefully water and roll his little cricket-ground on summer mornings, and on wet and wintry days would sit in the chimney-corner, dealing over and over again by the hour, to an imaginary partner, a very dark and dingy pack of cards, and would then sally forth to teach a long remembered lesson to some hob-nailed frequenter of the village ale-house.
So much for the History: but why should we yenture on the Science of the game?
Many may be excellently qualified, and have a fund of anecdote and illustration, still not one of the many will venture on a book. Hundreds play without knowing principles; many know what they cannot explain; and some could explain, but fear the certain labour and cost, with the most uncertain return, of authorship. For our own part, we have felt our way. The wide circulation of our “Recollections of College Days” and “Course of English Reading” promises a patient hearing on subjects within our proper sphere; and that in this sphere lies Cricket, we may without vanity presume to assert. For in August last, at Mr. Dark’s Repository at Lord’s, our little treatise on the “Principles of Scientific Batting” (Slatter: Oxford, 1835) was singled out as “the book which contained as much on Cricket as all that had ever been written, and more besides.” That same day did we proceed to arrange with Messrs. Longman, naturally desirous to lead a second advance movement, as we led the first, and to break the spell which, we had thus been assured, had for fifteen years chained down the invention of literary cricketers at the identical point where we left off; for, not a single rule or principle has yet been published in advance of our own; though more than one author has been kind enough to adopt (thinking, no doubt, the parents were dead) our ideas, and language too!
“Shall we ever make new books,” asks Tristram Shandy, “as apothecaries make new mixtures, by pouring only out of one vessel into another?” No. But so common is the failing, that actually even this illustration of plagiarism Sterne stole from Burton!
Like solitary travellers from unknown lands, we are naturally desirous to offer some confirmation of statements, depending otherwise too much on our literary honour. We, happily, have received the following from—we believe the oldest player of the day who can be pronounced a good player still—Mr. E. H. Budd:—
“I return the proof-sheets of the History of my Contemporaries, and can truly say that they do indeed remind me of old times. I find one thing only to correct, which I hope you will be in time to alter, for your accuracy will then, to the best of my belief, be wholly without exception:—write twenty guineas, and not twenty-five, as the sum offered, by old Thomas Lord, if any one should hit out of his ground where now is Dorset Square.
“You invite me to note further particulars for your second edition: the only omission I can at present detect is this,—the name of Lord George Kerr, son of the Marquis of Lothian, should be added to your list of the Patrons of the Old Surrey Players; for, his lordship lived in the midst of them at Farnham; and, I have often heard Beldham say, used to provide bread and cheese and beer for as many as would come out and practise on a summer’s evening: this is too substantial a supporter of the Noble Game to be forgotten.”
We must not conclude without grateful acknowledgments to some distinguished amateurs representing the science both of the northern and the southern counties, who have kindly allowed us to compare notes on various points of play. In all of our instructions in Batting, we have greatly benefited by the assistance, in the first instance, of Mr. A. Bass of Burton, and his friend Mr. Whateley, a gentleman who truly understands “Philosophy in Sport” Then, the Hon. Robert Grimston judiciously suggested some modification of our plan. We agreed with him that, for a popular work, and one “for play hours,” the lighter parts should prevail over the heavier; for, with most persons, a little science goes a long way, and our “winged words,” if made too weighty, might not fly far; seeing, as said Thucydides[1], “men do find it such a bore to learn any thing that gives them trouble.” For these reasons we drew more largely on our funds of anecdote and illustration, which had been greatly enriched by the contributions of a highly valued correspondent—Mr. E. S. E. Hartopp. When thus the science of batting had been reduced to its fair proportions, it was happily undertaken by the Hon. Frederick Ponsonby, not only through kindness to ourselves personally, but also, we feel assured, because he takes a pleasure in protecting the interests of the rising generation. By his advice, we became more distinct in our explanations, and particularly careful of venturing on such refinements of science as, though sound in theory, may possibly produce errors in practice.
“Tantæ molis erat Cricetanum condere Campum.”
For our artist we have one word to say: not indeed for the engravings in our frontispiece,—these having received unqualified approbation; but, we allude to the illustrations of attitudes. In vain did our artist assure us that a fore-shortened position would defy every attempt at ease, energy, or elegance; we felt bound to insist on sacrificing the effect of the picture to its utility as an illustration. Our principal design is to show the position of the feet and bat with regard to the wicket, and how every hit, with one exception, the Cut, is made by no other change of attitude than results from the movement of the left foot alone.
J. P.
Barnstaple April 15th, 1851.
Chapter I – Origins of the game of cricket
The Game of Cricket, in some rude form, is undoubtedly as old as the thirteenth century. But whether at that early date Cricket was the name it generally bore is quite another question. For Club-Ball we believe to be the name which usually stood for Cricket in the thirteenth century; though, at the same time, we have some curious evidence that the term Cricket at that early period was also known. But the identity of the game with that now in use is the chief point; the name is of secondary consideration. Games commonly change their names, as every schoolboy knows, and bear different appellations in different places.
Nevertheless, all previous writers acquiescing quietly in the opinion of Strutt, expressed in his “Sports and Pastimes,” not only forget that Cricket may be older than its name, but erroneously suppose that the name of Cricket occurs in no author in the English language of an earlier date than Thomas D’Urfey, who, in his “Pills to purge Melancholy,” writes thus:—
"Herr was the prettiest fellow
At foot-ball and at Cricket;
At hunting chase or nimble race
How featly Herr could prick it."
The words "How featly" Strutt properly writes in place of a revolting old-fashioned oath in the original.
Strutt, therefore, in these lines quotes the word Cricket as first occurring in 1710.
About the same date Pope wrote,—
"The Judge to dance his brother Sergeants call,
The Senators at Cricket urge the ball."
And Duncome, curious to observe, laying the scene of a match near Canterbury, wrote,—
"An ill-timed Cricket Match there did
At Bishops-bourne befal."
Soame Jenyns, also, early in the same century, wrote in lines that showed that cricket was very much of a "sporting" amusement:—
"England, when once of peace and wealth possessed,
Began to think frugality a jest;
So grew polite: hence all her well-bred heirs
Gamesters and jockeys turned, and cricket-players."
Ep. I. b. ii., init.
However, we are happy to say that even among comparatively modern authors we have beaten Strutt in his researches by twenty-five years; for Edward Phillips, John Milton’s nephew, in his “Mysteries of Love and Eloquence” (8vo. 1685), writes thus:—
“Will you not, when you have me, throw stocks at my head and cry, ‘Would my eyes had been beaten out of my head with a cricket-ball the day before I saw thee?'”
We shall presently show the word Cricket, in Richelet, as early as the year 1680.
A late author has very sensibly remarked that Cricket could not have been popular in the days of Elizabeth, or we should expect to find allusions to that game, as to tennis, football, and other sports, in the early poets; but Shakspeare and the dramatists who followed, he observes, are silent on the subject.
As to the silence of the early poets and dramatists on the game of cricket—and no one conversant with English literature would expect to find it except in some casual allusion or illustration ia an old play—this silence we can confirm on the best authority. What if we presumed to advance that the early dramatists, one and all, ignore the very name of cricket. How bold a negative! So rare are certain old plays that a hundred pounds have been paid by the Duke of Devonshire for a single copy of a few loose and soiled leaves; and shall we pretend to have dived among such hidden stores? We are so fortunate as to be favoured with the assistance of the Rev. John Mitford and our loving cousin John Payne Collier, two English scholars, most deeply versed in early literature, and no bad judges of cricket; and since these two scholars have never met with any mention of cricket in the early dramatists, nor in any author earlier than 1685, there is, indeed, much reason to believe that “Cricket” is a word that does not occur in any English author before the year 1685.
But though it occurs not in any English author, is it found in no rare manuscript yet unpublished? We shall see.
Now as regards the silence of the early poets, a game like cricket might certainly exist without falling in with the allusions or topics of poetical writers. Still, if we actually find distinct catalogues and enumerations of English games before the date of 1685, and Cricket is omitted, the suspicion that Cricket was not then the popular name of one of the many games of ball (not that the game itself was positively unknown) is strongly confirmed.
Six such catalogues are preserved; one in the “Anatomy of Melancholy,” a second in a well-known treatise of James I., and a third in the “Cotswold Games,” with three others.
- For the first catalogue, Strutt reminds us of the set of rules from the hand of James I. for the “nurture and conduct of an heir-apparent to the throne,” addressed to his eldest son, Henry Prince of Wales, called the BAΣIAIKΟN ΔΩPON, or a “Kinge’s Christian Dutie towards God.” Herein the king forbids gaming and rough play: “As to diceing, I think it becometh best deboshed souldiers to play on the heads of their drums. As to the foote-ball, it is meeter for laming, than making able, the users thereof.” But a special commendation is given to certain games of ball; “playing at the catch or tennis, pallemalle, and such like other fair and pleasant field-games.” Certainly cricket may have been included under the last general expression, though by no means a fashionable game in James’s reign.
- For the second catalogue of games, Burton in his “Anatomy of Melancholy,” “the only book,” said Dr. Johnson, “that ever took me out of bed two hours sooner than I wished to rise,”— gives a view of the sports most prevalent in the seventeenth century. Here we have a very full enumeration: it specifies the pastimes of “great men,” and those of “base inferior persons;” it mentions “the rocks on which men lose themselves” by gambling; how “wealth runs away with their hounds, and their fortunes fly away with their hawks.” Then follow “the sights and shows of the Londoners,” and the “May-games and recreations of the country-folk.” More minutely still. Burton speaks of “rope dancers, cockfights,” and other sports common both to town and country; still, though Burton is so exact as to specify all “winter recreations” separately, and mentions even “foot-balls and ballowns,” saying “Let the common people play at ball and barley-brakes,” there is in all this catalogue no mention whatever of Cricket.
- As a third catalogue, we have the “Cotswold Games,” but cricket is not among them. This was an annual celebration which one Captain Dover, by express permission and command of James I., held on the Cotswold Hills, in Gloucestershire.
- Fourthly: cricket is not mentioned in “The compleat Gamester,” published by Charles Browne, in 1709.
- “I have many editions of Chamberlayne’s ‘State of England,'” kindly writes Mr. T. B. Macaulay, “published between 1670 and 1700, and I observe he never mentions cricket among the national games, of which he gives a long list.”
- The great John Locke wrote in 1679, “The sports of England for a curious stranger to see, are horse-racing, hawking, hunting, and Bowling: at Marebone and Putney he may see several persons of quality bowling two or three times a week: also, wrestling in Lincoln’s Inn Fields every evening; bear and bull-baiting at the bear garden; shooting with the long bow, and stob-ball, in Tothill Fields; and cudgel playing in the country, and hurling in Cornwall.” Here again we have no Cricket. Stob-ball is a different game.
Nevertheless we have a catalogue of games of about 1700, in Stow’s “Survey of London,” and there Cricket is mentioned; but, remarkably enough, it is particularised as one of the amusements of “the lower classes.” The whole passage is curious:—
“The modern sports of the citizens, besides drinking (!), are cock-fighting, bowling upon greens, backgammon, cards, dice, billiards, also musical entertainments, dancing, masks, balls, stage-plays, and club-meetings in the evening; they sometimes ride out on horseback, and hunt with the lord mayor’s pack of dogs, when the common hunt goes on. The lower classes divert themselves at foot-ball, wrestling, cudgels, ninepins, shovel-board, cricket, stow-ball, ringing of bells, quoits, pitching the bar, bull and bear baitings, throwing at cocks, and lying at ale-houses.” (!)
The lawyers have a rule that to specify one thing is to ignore the other; and this rule of evidence can never be more applicable than where a sport is omitted from six distinct catalogues; therefore, the conclusion that Cricket was unknown when those lists were made would indeed appear utterly irresistible, only—audi semper alteram partem—in this case the argument would prove too much; for it would equally prove that Club-ball and Trap-ball were undiscovered too, whereas both these games are confessedly as old as the thirteenth century!
The conclusion of all this is, that the oft-repeated assertions that Cricket is a game no older than the eighteenth century is erroneous: for, first, the thing itself may be much older than its name; and, secondly, the “silence of antiquity” is no conclusive evidence that even the name of Cricket was really unknown.
Thus do we refute those who assert a negative as to the antiquity of cricket: and now for our affirmative; and we are prepared to show—
- First, that a single-wicket game was played as early as the thirteenth century, under the name of Club-ball.
- Secondly, that it might have been identical with a sport of the same date called “Handyn and Handoute.”
- Thirdly, that a genuine double-wicket game was played in Scotland about 1700, under the name of “Cat and Dog.”
- Fourthly, that “Creag,”—very near “Cricce,” the Saxon term for the crooked stick, or bandy, which we see in the old pictures of cricket,—was the name of a game played in the year 1300.
First, as to a single-wicket game in the thirteenth century, whatever the name of the said game might have been, we are quite satisfied with the following proof:—
“In the Bodleian Library at Oxford,” says Strutt, “is a MS. (No. 264.) dated 1344, which represents a figure, a female, in the act of bowling a ball (of the size of a modern cricket-ball) to a man who elevates a straight bat to strike it; behind the bowler are several figures, male and female, waiting to stop or catch the ball, their attitudes grotesquely eager for a ‘chance.’ The game is called Club-ball, but the score is made by hitting and running, as in cricket.”
Secondly, Barrington, in his “Remarks on the More Ancient Statutes,” comments on 17 Edw. IV. A.D. 1477, thus:—
“The disciplined soldiers were not only guilty of pilfering on their return, but also of the vice of gaming. The third chapter therefore forbids playing at cloish, ragle, half-bowle, quekeborde, handyn and handoute. Whosoever shall permit these games to be played in their house or yard is punishable with three years’ imprisonment; those who play at any of the said games are to be fined 10l., or lie in jail two years.
This,is the most severe law ever made in any country against gaming; and, some of those forbidden seem to have been manly exercises, particularly the “handyn and handoute,” which I should suppose to be a kind of cricket, as the term hands is still (writing in 1740) retained in that game.”
Thirdly, as to the double-wicket game, Dr. Jamieson, in his Dictionary, published in 1722, gives the following account of a game played in Angus and Lothian:—
“This is a game for three players at least, who are furnished with clubs. They cut out two holes, each about a foot in diameter and seven inches in depth, and twenty-six feet apart; one man guards each hole with his club; these clubs are called Dogs. A piece of wood, about four inches long and one inch in diameter, called a Cat, is pitched, by a third person, from one hole towards the player at the other, who is to prevent the cat from getting into the hole. If it pitches in the hole, the party who threw it takes his turn with the club. If the cat be struck, the club bearers change places, and each change of place counts one to the score, like club-ball.”
The last observation shows that in the game of Club-ball above-mentioned, the score was made by “runs,” as in cricket.
In what respect, then, do these games differ from cricket aa played now? The only exception that can be taken is to the absence of any wicket. But every one familiar with a paper given by Mr. Ward, and published in “Old Nyren,” by the talented Mr. C. Cowden Clarke, will remember that the traditionary “blockhole” was a veritable hole in former times, and that the batsman was made Out in running, not, as now, by putting down a wicket, but by popping the ball into the hole before the bat was grounded in it. The same paper represents that the wicket was two feet wide,—a width which is only rendered credible by the fact that the said hole was not like our mark for guard, four feet distant from the stumps, but cut like a basin in the turf between the stumps; an arrangement which would require space for the frequent struggle of the batsman and wicket-keeper, as to whether the bat of the one, or the hand of the other, should reach the blockhole first.
The conclusion of all is, that Cricket is identical with Club-ball,—a game played in the thirteenth century as single-wicket, and played, if not then, somewhat later as a double-wicket game; that where balls were scarce, a Cat, or bit of wood, as seen in many a village, supplied its place; also that “handyn and handoute” was probably only another name. Fosbroke, in his Dictionary of Antiquities, said, “club-ball was the ancestor of cricket:” he might have said, “club-ball was the old name for cricket, the games being the same.”
The points of difference are not greater than every cricketer can show between the game as now played and that of the last century.
But, lastly, as to the name of Cricket. The bat, which is now straight, is represented in old pictures as crooked, and “cricce” is the simple Saxon word for a crooked stick. The derivation of Billiards from the Norman billart, a cue, or from ball-yard, according to Johnson, also Nine pins and Trapball, are obvious instances of games which derived their names from the implements with which they are played. Now it appears highly probable that the crooked stick used in the game of Bandy might have been gradually adopted, especially when a wicket to be bowled down by a rolling ball superseded the blockhole to be pitched into. In that case the club having given way to the bandy or crooked bat of the last century, the game, which first was named from the club “club-ball,” might afterwards have been named from the bandy or crooked stick “cricket.”
Add to which, the game might have been played in two ways,—sometimes more in the form of Club-ball, sometimes more like Cricket; and the following remarkable passage proves that a term very similar to Cricket was applied to some game as far back as the thirteenth century, the identical date to which we have traced that form of cricket called club-ball and the game of handyn and handoute.
From the Gentleman’s Magazine, vol. lviii. p. 1., A.D. 1788, we extract the following:—
“In the wardrobe account of the 28th year of King Edward the First, A.D. 1300, published in 1787 by the Society of Antiquaries, among the entries of money paid one Mr. John Leek, his chaplain, for the use of his son Prince Edward in playing at different games, is the following:
“‘Domino Johanni de Leek, capellano Domini Edwardi fil’ ad Creag’ et alios ludos per vices, per manus proprias, 100 s. Apud Westm. 10 die Aprilis, 1305.”‘
The writer observes, that the glossaries have been searched in vain for any other name of a pastime but cricket to which the term Creag’ can apply. And why should it not be Cricket? for, we have a singular evidence that, at the same date, Merlin the Magician was a cricketer!
In the romance of “Merlin,” a book in very old French, written about the time of Edward I., is the following:—
“Two of his (Vortiger’s) emissaries fell in with certain children who were playing at cricket.”—Quoted in Dunlop’s “History of Fiction.”
The word here rendered cricket is la crosse; and in Richelet’s Dict, of Ant. 1680, are these words:
“Crosse, à Crosier, Bâton de bois courbé par le bout d’en haut, dont on se sert pour jouer ou pousser quelque balle.”
“Crosseur qui pousse—’Cricketer.'”
Creag’ and Cricket, therefore, being presumed identical, the cricketers of Warwick and of Gloucester may be reminded that they are playing the same game as was played by the dauntless enemy of Robert Bruce, afterwards the prisoner at Kennilworth, and eventually the victim of Mortimer’s ruffians in the dark tragedy of Berkeley Castle.
To advert to a former observation that cricket was originally confined to the lower orders, Robert Southey notes, C. P. Book. iv. 201., that cricket was not deemed a game for gentlemen in the middle of the last century. Tracing this allusion to “The Connoisseur,” No. 132. dated 1756, we are introduced to one Mr. Toby Bumper, whose vulgarities are, “drinking purl in the morning, eating black-puddings at Bartholomew Fair, boxing with Buckhorse,” and also that “he is frequently engaged at the Artillery Ground with Faukner and Dingate at cricket, and is esteemed as good a bat as either of the Bennets.” Dingate will be mentioned as an All-England player in our third chapter.
And here we must observe that at the very date that a cricket-ground was thought as low as a modern skittle-alley, we read that even
“Some Dukes at Mary’bone bowled time away;”
and also that a Duchess of Devonshire could be actually watching the play of her guests in the skittle-alley till nine o’clock in the evening.
Our game in later times, we know, has constituted the pastime and discipline of many an English soldier. Our barracks are now provided with cricket grounds; every regiment and every man-of-war has its club; and our soldiers and sailors astonish the natives of every clime, both inland and maritime, with a specimen of a British game; and it deserves to be better known that it was at a cricket match that “some of our officers were amusing themselves on the 12th June, 1815,” says Captain Gordon, “in company with that devoted cricketer the Duke of Richmond, when the Duke of Wellington arrived, and shortly after came the Prince of Orange, which of course put a stop to our game. Though the hero of the Peninsula was not apt to let his movements be known, on this occasion he made no secret that, if he were attacked from the south, Halle would be his position, and, if on the Namur side, Waterloo.”
Chapter II – The General Character of Cricket
The game of cricket, philosophically considered, is a standing panegyric on the English character: none but an orderly and sensible race of people would so amuse themselves. It calls into requisition all the cardinal virtues, some moralist would say. As with the Grecian games of old, the player must be sober and temperate. Patience, fortitude, and self-denial, the various bumps of order, obedience, and good-humour, with an unruffled temper, are indispensable. For intellectual virtues we want judgment, decision, and the organ of concentrativeness—every faculty in the free use of all its limbs—and every idea in constant air and exercise. Poor, rickety, and stunted wits will never serve: the widest shoulders are of little use without a head upon them: the cricketer wants wits down to his fingers’ ends. As to physical qualifications, we require not only the volatile spirits of the Irishman Rampant, nor the phlegmatic caution of the Scotchman Couchant, but we want the English combination of the two; though, with good generalship, cricket is a game for Britons generally: the three nations would mix not better in a regiment than in an eleven; especially if the Hibernian were trained in London, and taught to enjoy something better than what Father Prout terms his supreme felicity, “Otium cum dig-gin-taties,”
It was from the southern and south-eastern counties of England that the game of Cricket spread—not a little owing to the Propaganda of the metropolitan clubs, which played chiefly first at the Artillery Ground, then at White Conduit Fields, and thirdly at Thomas Lord’s Grounds, (of which there were two before the present “Lord’s,”) as well as latterly at the Oval, Kennington, and on all sides of London—through all the southern half of England; and during these last twenty years the northern counties, and even Edinburgh, have sent forth distinguished players. But considering that the complement of the game is twenty-two men, besides two Umpires and two Scorers; and considering also that cricket, unlike every other manly contest, by flood or field, occupies commonly more than one day; the railways, as might be expected, have tended wonderfully to the diffusion of cricket,—giving rise to clubs depending on a circle of some thirty or forty miles, as also to that club in particular under the canonised saint, John Zingari, into whom are supposed to have migrated all the erratic spirits of the gipsy tribe. The Zingari are a race of ubiquitous cricketers, exclusively gentlemen-players; for cricket affords to a race of professionals a merry and abundant, though rather a laborious livelihood, from the time the first May-fly is up to the time the first pheasant is down. Neither must we forget the All England and United Elevens, who, under the generalship of Clarke or Wisden, play numbers varying from fourteen to twenty-two in almost every county in England. So proud are provincial clubs of this honour that, besides a subscription of some 70l, and part or all of the money at the field-gate being willingly accorded for their services, much hospitality is exercised wherever they go. This tends to a healthy circulation of the life’s blood of cricket, vaccinating and inoculating every wondering rustic with the principles of the national game. Our soldiers, we said, by order of the Horse Guards, are provided with cricket-grounds adjoining their barracks; and all of her Majesty’s ships have bats and balls to astonish the cockroaches at sea, and the crabs and turtles ashore. Hence it has come to pass that, wherever her Majesty’s servants have “carried their victorious arms” and legs, wind and weather permitting, cricket has been played. Still the game is essentially Anglo-Saxon. Foreigners have rarely, very rarely, imitated us. The English settlers and residents everywhere play; but of no single cricket club have we ever heard dieted either with frogs, sour crout, or macaroni. But how remarkable that cricket is not naturalised in Ireland! the fact is very striking that it follows the course rather of ale than whiskey. Witness Kent, the land of hops, and the annual antagonists of “All England.” Secondly, Farnham, which, as we shall presently show, with its adjoining parishes, nurtured the finest of the old players, as well as the finest hops,—cunabula Trojæ the infant school of cricketers. Witness also the Burton Clubs, assisted by our excellent friend next akin to bitter ale. Witness again Alton ale, on which old Beagley throve so well, and the Scotch ale of Edinburgh, on which John Sparkes, though commencing with the last generation, has carried on his instructions, in which we ourselves once rejoiced, into the middle of the present century. The mountain mists and “mountain dew” suit better with deer-stalking than with cricket: our game disdains the Dutch courage of ardent spirits. The brain must glow with Nature’s fire, and not depend upon a spirit lamp. Mens sana in corpore sano: feed the body, but do not cloud the mind. You, sir, with the hectic flush, the fire of your eyes burnt low in their sockets, with beak as sharp as a woodcock’s from living upon suction, with pallid face and shaky hand,—our game disdains such ghostlike votaries. Rise with the lark and scent the morning air, and drink from the babbling rill, and then, when your veins are no longer fevered with alcohol, nor puffed with tobacco smoke,—when you have rectified your illicit spirits and clarified your unsettled judgment,—”come again and devour up my discourse.” And you, sir, with the figure of Falstaff and the nose of Bardolph,—not Christianly eating that you may live, but living that you may eat,—one of the nati consumere fruges, the devouring caterpillar and grub of human kind—our noble game has no sympathy with gluttony, still less with the habitual “diner out,” on whom outraged nature has taken vengeance, by emblazoning what was his face (nimium ne crede colori), encasing each limb in fat, and condemning him to be his own porter to the end of his days. “Then I am your man—and I—and I,” cry a crowd of self-satisfied youths: “sound are we in wind and limb, and none have quicker hand or eye.” Gently, my friends, so far well; good hands and eyes are instruments indispensable, but only instruments. There is a wide difference between a good workman and a bag of tools, however sharp. We must have heads as well as hands. You may be big enough and strong enough, but the question is whether, as Virgil says,
“Spiritus intus alit, totamque infusa per artus
Mens agitat molem, et magno se corpore miscet,”
And; in these lines, Virgil truly describes the right sort of man for a cricketer: plenty of life in him: not barely soul enough, as Robert South said, to keep his body from putrefaction; but, however large his stature, though he weigh twenty stone, like (we will not say Mr. Mynn), but an olden wicket-keeper, named Burt, or a certain infant genius in the same line, of good Cambridge town,—he must, like these worthies aforesaid, have vous in perfection, and be instinct with sense all over. Then, says Virgil, igneus est ollis vigor: “they must always have the steam up,” otherwise the bard would have agreed with us, they are no good in an Eleven, because—
“Noxia corpora tardant,
Terrenique hebetant artus, moribundaque membra;”
that is, you must suspend the laws of gravitation before they can stir,—dull clods of the valley, and so many stone of carrion; and then Virgil proceeds to describe what discipline will render those, who suffer the penalties of idleness or intemperance, fit to join the chosen few in the cricket-field:
“Exinde per amplum
Mittimur Elysium et pauci læta arva tenemus.”
Of course Elysium means “Lords,” and læta arva, “the shooting fields.” We make no apology for classical quotations. At the Universities, cricket and scholarship very generally go together. When, in 1836, we played victoriously on the side of Oxford against Cambridge, seven out of our eleven were classmen; and, it is doubtless only to avoid an invidious distinction that “Heads v. Heels,” as was once suggested, has failed to be an annual University match; though the seri studiorum—those put to school late—would not have a chance. We extract the following:—
“In a late Convocation holden at Oxford, May 30, 1851, it was agreed to aflix the University seal to a power of attorney authorising the sale of 2000l. three per cent. consols, for the purpose of paying for and enclosing certain allotments of land in Cowley Common, used as cricket grounds by members of the University, in order to their being preserved for that purpose, and let to the several University cricket clubs in such manner as may hereafter appear expedient.”
From all this we argue that, on the authority of ancient and the experience of modern times, cricket wants mind as well as matter, and, in every sense of the word, a good understanding. How is it that Clarke’s slow bowling is so successful? ask Bayley or Caldecourt; or say Bayley’s own bowling, or that of Lillywhite, or others not much indebted to pace. “You see, sir, they bowl with their heads.” Then only is the game worthy the notice of full-grown men. “A rubber of whist,” says the author of the “Diary of a late Physician,” in his “Law Studies,” “calls into requisition all those powers of mind that a barrister most needs; “and nearly as much may be said of a scientific game of cricket. Mark that first-rate bowler: the batsman is hankering for his favourite cut—no—leg stump is attacked again—extra man on leg side—right—that’s the spot—leg stump, and not too near him. He is screwed up, and cannot cut away; Point has it—persevere—try again—his patience soon will fail. Ah! look at that ball;—the bat was more out of the perpendicular—now the bowler alters his pace—good. A dropping ball—over-reached and all but a mistake;—now a slower pace still, with extra twist—hit furiously to leg, too soon. Leg-stump is grazed, and bail off. “You see, sir,” says the veteran, turning round, “an old player, who knows what is, and what is not, on the ball, alone can resist all the temptations that leg-balls involve. Young players are going their round of experiments, and are too fond of admiration and brilliant hits; whereas it is your upright straight players that worry a bowler—twenty-two inches of wood, by four and a quarter—every inch of them before the stumps, hitting or blocking, is rather disheartening; but the moment a man makes ready for a leg hit, only about five inches by four of wood can cover the wicket; so leg-hitting is the bowler’s chance: cutting also for a similar reason. If there were no such thing as leg-hitting, we should see a full bat every time, the man steady on his legs, and only one thing to think of; and what a task a bowler would have. That was Mr. Ward’s play—good for something to the last. First-rate straight play and free leg-hitting seldom last long together: when once exulting in the luxurious excitement of a leg volley, the muscles are always on the quiver to swipe round, and the bowler sees the bat raised more and more across wicket. So, also, it is with men who are yearning for a cut: forming for the cut, like forming for leg-hit—aye, and almost the idea of those hits coming across the mind—set the muscles off straight play, and give the bowler a chance. There is a deal of head-work in bowling: once make your batsman set his mind on one hit, and give him a ball requiring the contrary, and he is off his guard in a moment.”
Certainly, there is something highly intellectual in our noble and national pastime. But the cricketer must possess other qualifications; not only physical and intellectual, but moral qualifications also. Of what avail is the head to plan and hand to execute, if a sulky temper paralyses exertion, and throws a damp upon the field; or if impatience dethrones judgment, and the man hits across at good balls, because loose balls are long in coming; or, again, if a contentious and imperious disposition leaves the cricketer all ‘alone in his glory,’ voted the best of every eleven?”
The pest of the hunting-field is the man always thinking of his own horse and own riding, galloping against men and not after hounds. The pest of the cricket-field is the man who bores you about his average—his wickets—his catches; and looks blue even at the success of his own party. If unsuccessful in batting or fielding, he gives up all—”the wretch concentred all in self.” No! Give me the man who forgets himself in the game, and, missing a ball, does not stop to exculpate himself by dumb show, but rattles away after it—who does not blame his partner when he is run out—who plays like play and not like a painful operation. Such a chilly, bleak, northwest aspect some men do put on—it is absurd to say they are enjoying themselves. We all know it is trying to be out first ball. Oh! that first look back at rattling stumps—”why, I could’nt have had right guard!”—that conviction that the ball turned, or but for some unaccountable suspension of the laws of motion (the earth perhaps coming to a hitch upon its ungreased axis) it had not happened! Then there’s the spoiling of your average, (though some begin again and reckon anew!) and a sad consciousness that every critic in the three tiers of the Pavilion, as he coolly speculates “quis cuique dolor vict0, quæ gloria palmæ,” knows your mortification. Oh! that sad walk back, a “returned convict;” we must all pace it, “calcanda semel via leti.” A man is sure never to take his eyes off the ground, and if there’s a bit of stick in the way he kicks it instinctively with the side of his shoe. Add, that cruel post mortem examination into your “case,” and having to answer the old question, How was it? or perhaps forced to argue with some vexatious fellow who imputes it to the very fault on which you are so sore and sensitive. All this is trying; but since it is always happening, an “inseparable accident” of the game, it is time that an unruffled temper should be held the “differentia” of the true cricketer and bad temper voted bad play. Eleven good-tempered men, other points equal, would beat eleven sulky or eleven irritable gentlemen out of the field. The hurling of bats and angry ebullitions show inexperience in the game and its chances; as if any man in England could always catch, or stop, or score. This very uncertainty gives the game its interest. If Pilch or Parr were sure of runs, who would care to play? But as they make sometimes five and sometimes fifty, we still contend with flesh and blood. Even Achilles was vulnerable at the heel; or, mythologically, he could not stop a shooter to the leg stump. So never let the Satan icagency of the gaming-table brood on those “happy fields” where, strenua nos exercet inertia, there is an energy in our idle hours, not killing time but enjoying it. Look at good honest James Dean; his “patient merit” never “goes Out sighing” nor In, either—never in a mumbling, though a “melting mood.” Perspiration may roll off him, like bubbles from a duck’s back, but it’s all down to the day’s work. He looks, as every cricketer should look, like a man out for a holiday, shut up in “measureless content.” It is delightful to see such a man make a score.
Add to all this, perseverance and self-denial, and a soul above vain-glory and the applause of the vulgar. Aye, perseverance in well-doing—perseverance in a straightforward, upright, and consistent course of action.—See that player practising apart from the rest. What an unpretending style of play—a hundred pounds appear to depend on every ball—not a hit for these five minutes—see, he has a shilling on his stumps, and Hillyer is doing his best to knock it off. A question asked after every ball, the bowler being constantly invited to remind him of the least inaccuracy in hitting or danger in defence. The other players are hitting all over the field, making every one (but a good judge) marvel. Our friend’s reward is that in the first good match, when some supposed brilliant Mr. Dashwood has been stumped from leg ball—(he cannot make his fine hits in his ground)—bowled by a shooter or caught by that sharpest of all Points Ἄναξ ἄνδρων, then our persevering friend—ball after ball dropping harmless from his bat, till ever and anon a single or a double are safely played away—has two figures appended to his name; and he is greeted in the Pavilion as having turned the chances of the game in favour of his side.
Conceit in a cricketer, as in other things, is a bar to all improvement—the vain-glorious is always thinking of the lookers-on, instead of the game, and generally is condemned to live on the reputation of one skying leg-hit, or some twenty runs off three or four overs (his merriest life is a short one) for half a season.
In one word, there is no game in which amiability and an unruffled temper is so essential to success, or in which virtue is rewarded, half as much as in the game of cricket. Dishonest or shuffling ways cannot prosper; the umpires will foil every such attempt—those truly constitutional judges, bound by a code of written laws—and the public opinion of a cricket club, militates against his preferment. For cricket is a social game. Could a cricketer play a solo, or with a dummy (other than the catapult), he might play in humour or out of humour; but an Eleven is of the nature of those commonwealths of which Cicero said that, without some regard to the cardinal virtues, they could not possibly hold together.
Such a national game as cricket will both humanise and harmonise the people. It teaches a love of order, discipline, and fair play for the pure honour and glory of victory. The cricketer is a member of a wide fraternity: if he is the best man in his club, and that club is the best club in the county, he has the satisfaction of knowing his high position, and may aspire to represent some large and powerful constituency at Lord’s. How spirit-stirring are the gatherings of rival counties! And I envy not the heart that glows not with delight at eliciting the sympathies of exulting thousands, when all the country is thronging to its battle-field studded with flags and tents. Its very look makes the heart beat for the fortune of the play; and for miles around the old coachman waves his whip above his head with an air of infinite importance if he can only be the herald of the joyous tidings, “We’ve won the day.”
Games of some kind men must have, and it is no small praise of cricket that it occupies the place of less innocent sports. Drinking, gambling, and cudgel-playing, insensibly disappear as you encourage a manly recreation which draws the labourer from the dark haunts of vice and misery to the open common, where
“The squire or parson o’ the parish,
Or the attorney,”
may raise him, without lowering themselves, by taking an interest, if not a part, in his sports. “Nature abhors a vacuum,” especially of mirth and merriment, resenting the folly of those who would disdain her bounties by that indifference and apathy which mark a very dull boy indeed. Nature designed us to sport and play at cricket as truly as to eat and drink. Without sport you have no healthful exercise; to refresh the body you must relax the mind. Observe the pale dyspeptic student ruminating on his logic, algebra, or political economy while describing his periodical revolutions around his college garden or on Constitution Hill: then turn aside and gladden your eyes and ears with the buoyant spirits and exulting energies of Bullingdon or Lord’s. See how nature rebels against “an airing,” or a milestone-measured walk! While following up a covey, or the windings of a trout-stream, we cross field after field unconscious of fatigue, and retain so pleasing a recollection of the toil, that years after, amidst the din and hum of men, we brighten at the thought, and yearn as did the poet near two thousand years ago, in the words,—
“O rus, quando te aspiciam, quandoque licebit,
Ducere sollicitæ jucunda oblivia vitæ.”
That an intelligent and responsible being should live only for amusement, is an error indeed, and one which brings its own punishment in that sinking of the heart when the cup is drained to the dregs, and pleasures cease to please.
“Nec lusisse pudet sed non incidere ludum.”
Still field-sports, in their proper season, are Nature’s kind provision to smooth the frown from the brow, to allay “life’s fitful fever,” to—
"Raze out the written troubles of the brain.
And by some sweet oblivious antidote
Cleanse the stuffed bosom from that perilous stuff,
Which weighs upon the heart."
And words are these, not a whit too strong for those who live laborious days, in this high-pressure generation. And, who does not feel his daily burthen lightened, while enjoying, pratorum viva voluptas, the joyous spirits and good fellowship of the cricket-field, those sunny hours when “the valleys laugh and sing,” and, between the greensward beneath and the blue sky above, you hear a hum of happy myriads enjoying their brief span too!
Who can describe that tumult of the breast, described by Æschylus,
———νεαρὸς μυελὸς στέρνων
ἐντὸς ἀνάσσων——
those yearning energies which find in this sport their genial exercise!
How generous and social is our enjoyment! Every happy moment,—the ball springing from the bat, the sharp catch sounding in the palm, long reach or sudden spring and quick return, the exulting throw, or bails and wicket flying,—these all are joys enhanced by sympathy, purely reflected from each other’s eyes. In the cricket-field, as by the cover’s side, the sport is in the free and open air and light of heaven. No incongruity of tastes nor rude collision interferes. None minds that another, how “unmannerly” soever, should “pass betwixt the wind and his nobility.” One common interest makes common feeling, fusing heart with heart, thawing the frostwork of etiquette, and strengthening those silken ties which bind man to man.
Society has its ranks and classes. These distinctions we believe to be not artificial, but natural, even as the very courses and strata of the earth itself. Lines there are, nicely graduated, ordained to separate, what Burns calls, the tropics of nobility and affluence, from the temperate zones of a comfortable independence, and the Arctic circles of poverty: but these lines are nowhere less marked, because nowhere less wanted, than in the cricket-field. There we can waive for awhile the precedence of birth,—
“Contented with the rank that merit gives.”
And many an humble spirit, from this temporary preferment, learning the pleasure of superiority and well-earned applause, carries the same honest emulation into his daily duties. The cricket-field suggests a new version of the words
“Æqua tellus
Pauperi recluditur
Regumque pueris.”
“A fair stage and no favour.” Kerseymere disdains not corduroys, nor fine clothes fustian. The cottager stumps out his landlord; scholars dare to beat their masters; and sons catch out those fathers who so often catch out them. William Beldham was many hours in the day “as good a man” as even Lord Frederick Beauclerk; and the gallant Duke of Richmond would descend from his high estate to contest the palm of manly prowess with his humblest tenantry, so far acknowledging with Robert Burns,—
“The rank is but the guinea stamp.
The man’s the gowd for a’ that.”
Cricket forms no debasing habits: unlike the bull-fights of Spain, and the earlier sports of England, it is suited to the softer feelings of a refined age. No living creature suffers for our sport: no frogs or minnows impaled, or worms writhing upon fish-hooks,—no hare screaming before the hounds,—no wounded partridge cowering in its agony, haunts the imagination to qualify our pleasure.
Cricket lies within the reach of average powers. A good head will compensate for hand and heels. It is no monopoly for a gifted few, nor are we soon superannuated. It affords scope for a great diversity of talent. Bowling, fielding, wicket-keeping, free hitting, safe and judicious play, and good generalship—in one of these points many a man has earned a name, though inferior in the rest. There are good batsmen and the best of fields among near-sighted men, and hard hitters among weak and crippled men; in weight, nine stone has proved not too little for a first-rate, nor eighteen stone too much; and, as to age, Mr. Ward at sixty, Mr. E. H. Budd at sixty-five, and old John Small at seventy years of age, were useful men in good elevens.
Cricket is a game available to poor as well as rich; it has no privileged class. Unlike shooting, hunting, or yachting, there is no leave to ask, licence to buy, nor costly establishment to support: the game is free and common as the light and air in which it is played,—the poor man’s portion: with the poorer classes it originated, played “after hours” on village greens, and thence transplanted to patrician lawns.
We extract the following:—
“The judge of the Brentford County Court has decided that cricket is a legal game, so as to render the stakeholder liable in an action for the recovery of the stakes, in a case where one of the parties had refused to play.”
Cricket is not solely a game of skill—chance has sway enough to leave the vanquished an if and a but. A long innings bespeaks good play; but “out the first ball” is no disgrace. A game, to be really a game, really playful, should admit of chance as well as skill. It is the bane of chess that its character is too severe—to lose its games is to lose your character; and most painful of all, to be outwitted in a fair and undeniable contest of long-headedness, tact, manœuvring, and common sense—qualities in which no man likes to come off second best. Hence the restless nights and unforgiving state of mind that often follows a checkmate. Hence that “agony of rage and disappointment from which,” said Sydney Smith, “the Bishop of —— broke my head with a chess-board fifty years ago at college.”
But did we say that ladies, famed as some have been in the hunting field, know anything of cricket too? Not often; though I could have mentioned two,—the wife and daughter of the late William Ward, all three now no more, who could tell you—the daughter especially—the forte and the failing of every player at Lord’s. I accompanied them home one evening, to see some records of the game, to their humble abode in Connaught Terrace, where many an ornament reminded me of the former magnificence of the Member for the City, the Bank Director, and the great Russia merchant; and I thought of his mansion in the once not unfashionable Bloomsbury Square, the banqueting room of which many a Wykehamist has cause to remember; for when famed, as the Wykehamists were, for the quickest and beat of fielding, they had won their annual match at Lord’s (and twenty years since they rarely lost), Mr. Ward would bear away triumphantly the winners to end the day with him. But, talking of the ladies, to say nothing of Miss Willes, who revived over-hand bowling, their natural powers of criticism, if honestly consulted, would, we think, tell some home truths to a certain class of players who seem to forget that, to be a Cricketer one must still be a man; and that a manly, graceful style of play is worth something independently of its effect on the score. Take the case of the Skating Club. Will they elect a man because, in spite of arms and legs centrifugally flying, he can do some tricks of a posture-master, however wonderful? No! elegance in simple movements is the first thing: without elegance nothing counts. And so should it be with cricket. I have seen men, accounted players, quite as bad as some of the cricketers in Mr. Pips’s diary. “Pray, Lovell,” I once heard, “have I the right guard?” “Guard indeed! Yes! keep on looking as ugly and as awkward as you are now, and no man in England can bowl for fright!” Apropos, one of the first hints in archery is, “don’t make faces when you pull your bow.” Now we do seriously entreat those young ladies, into whose hands this book may fall, to profess, on our authority, that they are judges of the game as far as appearance goes; and also that they will quiz, banter, tease, lecture, never-leave-alone, and otherwise plague and worry all such brothers or husbands as they shall see enacting those anatomical contortions, which too often disgrace the game of cricket.
Cricket, we said, is a game chiefly of skill, but partly of chance. Skill avails enough for interest, and not too much for friendly feeling. No game is played in better humour—never lost till won—the game’s alive till the last ball. For the most part, there is so little to ruffle the temper, or to cause unpleasant collision, that there is no place so free from temptation—no such happy plains or lands of innocence—as our cricket-fields. We give bail for our good behaviour from the moment that we enter them. Still, a cricket-field is a sphere of wholesome discipline in obedience and good order; not to mention that manly spirit which faces danger without shrinking, and bears disappointment with good nature. Disappointment! and say where is there more poignant disappointment, while it lasts, than, after all your practice for a match, and anxious thought and resolution to avoid every chance, and score off every possible ball, to be balked and run out, caught at the slip, or stumped even off a shooter. “The course of true love (even for cricket) never did run smooth.” Old Robinson, one of the finest batsmen of his day, had six unlucky innings in succession: once caught by Hammond, from a draw; then bowled with shooters, or picked up at short slip: the poor fellow said he had lost all his play, thinking “the fault is in ourselves, and not our stars;” and was with difficulty persuaded to play one match more, in which—whose heart does not rejoice to hear?—he made one hundred and thirty runs!
“But, as to stirring excitement,” writes a friend, “what can surpass a hardly-contested match, when you have been manfully playing an up-hill game, and gradually the figures on the telegraph keep telling a better and a better tale, till at last the scorers stand up and proclaim a tie, and you win the game by a single and rather a nervous wicket, or by five or ten runs! If in the field with a match of this sort, and trying hard to prevent these few runs being knocked off by the last wickets, I know of no excitement so intense for the time, or which lasts so long afterwards. The recollection of these critical moments will make the heart jump for years and years to come; and it is extraordinary to see the delight with which men call up these grand moments to memory; and to be sure how they will talk and chatter, their eyes glistening and pulses getting quicker, as if they were again finishing ‘that rattling good match.’ People talk of the excitement of a good run with the Quorn or Belvoir hunt. I have now and then tumbled in for these good things; and, as far as my own feelings go, I can safely say that a fine run is not to be compared to a good match; and the excitement of the keenest sportsman is nothing either in intensity or duration to that caused by a ‘near thing’ at cricket. The next good run takes the place of the other; whereas hard matches, like the snow-ball, gather as they go. This is my decided opinion; and that after watching and weighing the subject for some years. I have seen men tremble and turn pale at a near match,
'Quum spes arrectæ juvenum extultantiaque haurit
Corda pavor pulsans'—
while, through the field, the deepest and most awful silence reigns, unbroken but by some nervous fieldsman humming a tune or snapping his fingers to hide his agitation.”
“What a glorious sensation it is,” writes Miss Mitford, in ‘Our Village,’ “to be winning, winning, winning! Who would think that a little bit of leather and two pieces of wood had such a delightful and delighting power?”
Chapter III – The Hambledon Club and the Old Players
What have become of the old scores and the earliest records of the game of cricket? Bentley’s Book of Matches gives the principal games from the year 1786; but where are the earlier records of matches made by Dehaney, Paulet, and Sir Horace Mann? All burnt!
What the destruction of Rome and its records by the Gauls was to Niebuhr,—what the fire of London was to the antiquary in his walk from Pudding Lane to Pie Corner, such was the burning of the Pavilion at Lord’s, and all the old score books—it is a mercy that the old painting of the M. C. C. was saved—to the annalist of cricket. “When we were built out by Dorset Square,” says Mr. E. H. Budd, “we played for three years where the Regent’s Canal has since been cut, and still called our ground ‘Lord’s,’ and our dining-room ‘the Pavilion.’ Here many a time have I looked over the old papers of Dehaney and Sir H. Mann; but the room was burnt, and the old scores perished in the flames.
The following are curious as the two oldest scores preserved,—one of the North, the other of the South:—
Cricket was introduced into Eton early in the last century. Horace Walpole was sent to Eton in the year 1726. Playing cricket, as well as thrashing bargemen, was common at that time. For in Walpole’s Letters, vol. i. p. 4., he says,—
“I can’t say I am sorry I was never quite a school-boy; an expedition against bargemen, or a match at cricket, may be very pretty things to recollect; but, thank my stars, I can remember things that are very near as pretty.”
The fourth Earl of Carlisle learnt cricket at Eton at the same time. The Earl writes to George Selwyn, even from Manheim, that he was up, playing at cricket, before Selwyn was out of his bed.
And now, the oldest chronicler is Old Nyren, who wrote an account of the cricketers of his time. The said Old Nyren borrowed the pen of our kind friend Charles Cowden Clarke, to whom John Keats dedicated an epistle, and who rejoiced in the friendship of Charles Lamb; and none but a spirit akin to Elia could have written like “Old Nyren.” Nyren was a fine old English yeomen, whose chivalry was cricket; and Mr. Clarke has faithfully recorded his vivid descriptions and animated recollections. And, with this charming little volume in hand, and inkhorn at my button, in 1837 I made a tour among the cottages of William Beldham, and the few surviving worthies of the same generation; and, having also the advantage of a MS. by the Rev. John Mitford, taken from many a winter’s evening with Old Fennex, I am happy to attempt the best account that the lapse of time admits, of cricket in the olden time.
From a MS. my friend received from the late Mr. William Ward, it appears that the wickets were placed twenty-two yards apart as long since as the year 1700; that stumps were then only one foot high, but two feet wide. The width some persons have doubted; but it is rendered credible by the auxiliary evidence that there was, in those days, width enough between the two stumps for cutting the wide blockhole already mentioned, and also because—whereas now we hear of stumps and bails—we read formerly of “two stumps with one stump laid across.”
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—1779-1780—to the dimensions of twenty-two inches by six, with a third stump added.
Before this alteration the art of defence was almost unknown: balls often passed over the wicket, and often passed through. At the time of the alteration Old Nyren truly predicted that the innings would not be shortened but better played. The long pod and curved form of the bat, as seen in the old paintings, was made only for hitting, and for ground balls too. Length balls were then by no means common; neither would low stumps encourage them: and even upright play was then practised by very few. Old Nyren relates that one Harry Hall, a gingerbread baker of Farnham, gave peripatetic lectures to young players, and always insisted on keeping the left elbow well up; in other words, on straight play. “Now-a-days,” said Beldbam, “all the world knows that; but when I began there was very little length bowling, very little straight play, and little defence either.” Fennex, said he, was the first who played out at balls; before his day, batting was too much about the crease. Beldham said that his own supposed tempting of Providence consisted in running in to hit. “You do frighten me there jumping out of your ground, said our Squire Paulet:” and Fennex used also to relate how, when he played forward to the pitch of the ball, his father “had never seen the like in all his days;” the said days extending a long way back towards the beginning of the century. While speaking of going in to hit, Beldham said, “My opinion has always been that too little is attempted in that direction. Judge your ball, and, when the least overpitched, go in and hit her away.” In this opinion Mr. C. Taylor’s practice would have borne Beldham out: and a fine dashing game this makes; only, it is a game for none but practised players. When you are perfect in playing in your ground, then, and then only, try how you can play out of it, as the best means to scatter the enemy and open the field.
“As to bowling,” continued Beldham, “when I was a boy (about 1780), nearly all bowling was fast, and all along the ground. In those days the Hambledon Club could beat all England; but our three parishes around Farnham at last beat Hambledon.”
It is quite evident that Farnham was the cradle of cricketers. “Surrey,” in the old scores, means nothing more than the Farnham parishes. This corner of Surrey, in every match against All England, was reckoned as part of Hampshire; and, Beldham truly said “you find us regularly on the Hampshire side in Bentley’s Book.”
“I told you, sir,” said Beldham, “that in my early days all bowling was what we called fast, or at least a moderate pace. The first lobbing slow bowler I ever saw was Tom Walker. When, in 1792, England played Kent, I did feel so ashamed of such baby bowling; but, after all, he did more than even David Harris himself. Two years after, in 1794, at Dartford Brent, Tom Walker, with his slow bowlings headed a side against David Harris, and beat him easily.”
“Kent, in early times, was not equal to our counties. Their great man was Crawte, and he was taken away from our parish of Alresford by Mr. Amherst, the gentleman who made the Kent matches. In those days, except around our parts, Farnham and the Surrey side of Hampshire, a little play went a long way. Why, no man used to be more talked of than Yalden; and, when he came among us, we soon made up our minds what the rest of them must be. If you want to know, sir, the time the Hambledon Club was formed, I can tell you by this;—when we beat them in 1780, I heard Mr. Paulet say, “Here have I been thirty years raising our club, and are we to be beaten by a mere parish?’ so, there must have been a cricket club, that played every week regularly, as long ago as 1750. We used to go as eagerly to a match as if it were two armies fighting; we stood at nothing if we were allowed the time. From our parish to Hambledon is twenty-seven miles, and we used to ride both ways the same day, early and late. At last, I and John Wells were about building a cart: you have heard of tax carts, sir; well, the tax was put on then, and that stopped us. The members of the Hambledon Club had a caravan to take their eleven about; they used once to play always in velvet caps. Lord Winchelsea’s eleven used to play in silver laced hats; and always the dress was knee-breeches and stockings. We never thought of knocks; and, remember, I played against Browne of Brighton too. Certainly, you would see a bump heave under the stocking, and even the blood come through; but I never knew a man killed, now you ask the question, and I never saw any accident of much consequence, though many an all but, in my long experience. Fancy the old fashion before cricket shoes, when I saw John Wells tear a finger nail off against his shoe-buckle in picking up a ball!”
“Your book, sir, says much about old Nyren. This Nyren was fifty years old when I began to play; he was our general in the Hambledon matches; but not half a player, as we reckon now. He had a small farm and inn near Hambledon, and took care of the ground.”
“I remember when many things first came into the game which are common now. The law for Leg-before-wicket was not passed, nor much wanted, till King, one of our best hitters, was shabby enough to get his leg in the way, and take advantage of the bowlers; and, when Tom Taylor, another of our best hitters, did the same, the bowlers found themselves beaten, and the law was passed to make leg-before-wicket Out. The law against jerking was owing to the frightful pace Tom Walker put on, and I believe that he afterwards tried something more like the modern throwing-bowling, and so caused the words against throwing also. Willes was not the inventor of that kind of round bowling; he only revived what was forgotten or new to the young folk.”
“The umpires did not formerly pitch the wickets. David Harris used to think a great deal of pitching himself a good-wicket, and took much pains in suiting himself every match day.”
“Lord Stowell was fond of cricket. He employed me to make a ground for him at Holt Pound.”
In the last century, when the waggon and the packhorse supplied the place of the penny train, there was little opportunity for those frequent meetings of men from distant counties that now puzzle us to remember who is North and who is South, who is Surrey or who is Kent. The matches then were truly county matches, and had more of the spirit of hostile tribes and rival clans. “There was no mistaking the Kent boys,” said Beldham, “when they came staring in to the Green Man. A few of us had grown used to London, but Kent and Hampshire men had but to speak, or even show themselves, and you need not ask them which side they were on.” So the match seemed like Sir Horace Mann and Lord Winchelsea and their respective tenantry—for when will the feudal system be quite extinct? and there was no little pride and honour in the parishes that sent them up, and many a flagon of ale depending in the farms or the hop grounds they severally represented, as to whether they should, as the spirit-stirring saying was, “prove themselves the better men.” “I remember in one match,” said Beldham, “in Kent, Ring was playing against David Harris. The game was much against him. Sir Horace Mann was cutting about with his stick among the daisies, and cheering every run,—you would have thought his whole fortune (and he would often bet some hundreds) was staked upon the game; and, as a new man was going in, he went across to Ring, and said, “Ring, carry your bat through and make up all the runs, and I’ll give you 10l. a-year for life.’ Well, Ring was out for sixty runs, and only three to tie, and four to beat, and the last man made them. It was Sir Horace who took Aylward away with him out of Hampshire, but the best bat made but a poor bailiff, we heard.
“Cricket was played in Sussex very early, before my day at least; but, that there was no good play I know by this, that Richard Newland, of Slinden in Sussex, as you say, sir, taught old Richard Nyren, and that no Sussex man could be found to play him. Now, a second-rate player of our parish beat Newland easily; so you may judge what the rest of Sussex then were. But before 1780 there were some good players about Hambledon and the Surrey side of Hampshire. Crawte, the best of the Kent men, was stolen away from us; so you will not be wrong, sir, in writing down that Farnham, and thirty miles round, reared all the best players up to my day, about 1780.”
“There were some who were then called ‘the old players,'”—and here Fennex’s account quite agreed with Beldham’s,—”including Frame and old Small. And as to old Small, it is worthy of observation, that Bennett declared it was part of the creed of the last century, that Small was the man who ‘found out cricket,’ or brought play to any degree of perfection. Of the same school was Sueter, the wicket-keeper, who in those days had very little stumping to do, and Minshull and Colshom, all mentioned in Nyren.” “These men played puddling about their crease and had no freedom. I like to see a player upright and well forward, to face the ball like a man. The Duke of Dorset made a match at Dartford Brent between ‘the Old Players and the New.’—You laugh, sir,” said this tottering silver-haired old man, “but we all were New once;—well, I played with the Walkers, John Wells, and the rest of our men, and beat the Old ones very easily.”
Old John Small died, the last, if not the first of the Hambledonians, in 1826. Isaac Walton, the father of Anglers, lived to the age of ninety-three. This father of Cricketers was in his ninetieth year. John Small played in all the great matches till he was turned of seventy. A fine skater and a good musician. But, how the Duke of Dorset took great interest in John Small, and how his Grace gave him a fiddle, and how John, like a modern Orpheus, beguiled a wild bull of its fury in the middle of a paddock, is it not written in the book of the chronicles of the playmates of Old Nyren?—In a match of Hambledon against All England, Small kept up his wicket for three days, and was not out after all. A pity his score is unknown. We should like to compare it with Mr. Ward’s.
“Tom Walker was the most tedious fellow to bowl to, and the slowest runner between wickets I ever saw. Harry was the hitter,—Harry’s half-hour was as good as Tom’s afternoon. I have seen Noah Mann, who was as fast as Tom was slow, in running a four, overtake him, pat him on the back, and say, ‘Good name for you is Walker, for you never was a runner.’ It used to be said that David Harris had once bowled him 170 balls for one run! David was a potter by trade, and in a kind of skittle alley made between hurdles, he used to practise bowling four different balls from one end, and then picking them up he would bowl them back again. His bowling cost him a great deal of practice; but it proved well worth his while, for no man ever bowled like him, and he was always first chosen of all the men in England.”—Nil sine labore, remember, young cricketers all.—”‘Lambert’ (not the great player of that name), said Nyren, ‘had a most deceitful and teasing way of delivering the ball; he tumbled out the Kent and Surrey men, one after another, as if picked off by a rifle corps. His perfection is accounted for by the circumstance that when he was tending his father’s sheep, he would set up a hurdle or two, and bowl away for hours together.’
“There was some good hitting in those days, though too little defence. Tom Taylor would cut away in fine style, almost after the manner of Mr. Budd. Old Small was among the first members of the Hambledon Club. He began to play about 1750, and Lumpy Stevens at the same time. I can give you some notion, sir, of what cricket was in those days, for Lumpy, a very bad bat, as he was well aware, once said to me, ‘Beldham, what do you think cricket must have been in those days when I was thought a good batsman?’ But fielding was very good as far back as I can remember.”—Now, what Beldham called good fielding must have been good enough. He was himself one of the safest hands at a catch. Mr. Budd, when past forty, was still one of the quickest men I ever played with, taking always middle wicket, and often, by swift running, doing part of long field’s work. Sparks, Fennex, Bennett, and young Small, and Mr. Parry, were first rate, not to mention Beagley, whose style of long stopping in the North and South Match of 1836, made Lord Frederick and Mr. Ward justly proud of so good a representative of the game in their younger days. Albeit, an old player of seventy, describing the merits of all these men, said, “put Mr. King at point, Mr. C. Ridding long-stop, and Mr. W. Pickering cover, and I never saw the man that could beat either of them.”
“John Wells was a most dangerous man in a single wicket match, being so dead a shot at a wicket. In one celebrated match. Lord Frederick warned the Honourable H. Tufton to beware of John; but John Wells found an opportunity of maintaining his character by shying down, from the side, little more than the single stump. Tom Sheridan joined some of our matches, but he was no good but to make people laugh. In our days there were no padded gloves. I have seen Tom Walker rub his bleeding fingers in the dust! David used to say he liked to rind him.”
“The matches against twenty-two were not uncommon in the last century. In 1788 the Hambledon Club played two-and-twenty at Cold Ash Hill. ‘Drawing’ between leg and wicket is not a new invention. Old Small, (b. 1737, d. 1826,) was famous for the draw, and, to increase his facility he changed the crooked bat of his day for a straight bat. There was some fine cutting before Saunders’ day. Harry Walker was the first, I believe, who brought cutting to perfection. The next genuine cutter—for they were very scarce (I never called mine cutting, not like that of Saunders at least)—was Robinson. Walker and Robinson would wait for the ball till all but past the wicket, and then cut with great force. Others made good Off-hits, but did not hit late enough for a good Cut. I would never cut with slow bowling. I believe that Walker, Fennex, and myself, first opened the old players’ eyes to what could be done with the bat; Walker by cutting, and Fennex and I by forward play: but all improvement was owing to David Harris’s bowling. His bowling rose almost perpendicular: it was once pronounced a jerk; it was altogether most extraordinary.—For thirteen years I averaged forty-three a match, though frequently I had only one innings; but I never could half play unless runs were really wanted.”
Chapter IV – Cricket Generally Established as a National Game by the End of the Last Century
Little is recorded of the Hambledon Clab after the year 1786. It broke up when Old Nyren left it, in 1791; though, in this last year, the true old Hambledon Eleven all but beat twenty-two of Middlesex at Lord’s. Their cricket-ground on Broadhalfpenny Down, in Hampshire, was so far removed from the many noblemen and gentlemen who had seen and admired the severe bowling of David Harris, the brilliant hitting of Beldham, and the interminable defence of the Walkers, that these worthies soon found a more genial sphere for their energies on the grounds of Kent, Surrey, and Middlesex. Still, though the land was deserted, the men survived; and imparted a knowledge of their craft to gentles and simples far and near.
Most gladly would we chronicle that these good men and true were actuated by a great and a patriotic spirit, to diffuse an aid to civilisation—for such our game claims to be—among their wonder-stricken fellow-countrymen; but, in truth, we confess that “reaping golden opinions” and coins, “from all kinds of men,” as well as that indescribable tumult and those joyous emotions which attend the ball, vigorously propelled or heroically stopped, while hundreds of voices shout applause,—that such stirring motives, more powerful far with vain-glorious man than any “dissolving views” of abstract virtue, tended to the migration of the pride of Hambledon. Still, doubtful though the motive, certain is the fact, that the old Hambledon players did carry their bats and stumps out of Hampshire into the adjoining counties, and gradually, like all great commanders, taught their adversaries to conquer too. In some instances, as with Lord Winchelsea, Mr. Amherst, and others, noblemen combined the utile dulci, pleasure and business, and retained a great player as a keeper or a bailiff, as Martingell once was engaged by Earl Ducie. In other instances, the play of the summer led to employment through the winter; or else these busy bees lived on the sweets of their sunshine toil, enjoying otium cum dignitate—that is, living like gentlemen, with nothing to do.
This accounts for our finding these Hampshire men playing Kent matches; being, like a learned Lord in Punch’s picture, “naturalised everywhere,” or “citizens of the world.”
Let as trace these Hambledonlans in all their contests, from the date mentioned (1786 to 1800), the eventful period of the French Revolution and Nelson’s victories; and let us see how the Bank stopping payment, the mutiny of the fleet, and the threatened invasion, put together, did not prevent balls from flying over the tented field, in a far more innocent and rational way on this, than on the other side, of the water.
Now, what were the matches in the last century—”eleven gentlemen against the twelve Cæsars?” No! these, though ancient names, are of modern times. Kent and England was as good an annual match in the last, as in the present century. The White Conduit Fields and the Artillery Ground supplied the place of Lord’s, though in 1787 the name of Lord’s is found in Bentley’s matches, implying, of course, the old Marylebone Ground, 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.
Next in importance to the Kent matches were those of Hampshire and of Surrey, with each of which counties indifferently the Hambledon men used to play. For it must not be supposed that the whole county of Surrey put forth a crop of stumps and wickets all at once: we have already said that malt and hops and cricket have ever gone together. Two parishes in Surrey, adjoining Hants, won the original laurels for their county; parishes in the immediate vicinity of the Famham hop country. The Holt, near Famham, and Moulsey Hurst, were the Surrey grounds. The match might truly have been called “Farnham’s hop-gatherers v. those of Kent.” The former, aided occasionally by men who drank the ale of Alton, just as Burton-on-Trent, life-sustainer to our Indian empire, sends forth its giants, refreshed with bitter ale, to defend the honour of the neighbouring towns and counties. The men of Hampshire, after Broadhalfpenny was abandoned to docks and thistles, pitched their tents generally either upon Windmill Downs or upon Stoke Downs; and once they played a match against T. Assheton Smith, whose mantle has descended on a worthy representative, whether on the level turf or by the cover side. Albeit, when that gentleman has a “meet” (as occasionally advertised) at Hambledon, he must unconsciously avoid the spot where “titch and turn”—the Hampshire cry—did once exhilarate the famous James Aylward, among others, as he astonished the Farnham waggoner, by continuing one and the same innings as the man drove up on the Tuesday afternoon and down on the Wednesday morning! This match was played at Andover, and the surnames of most of the Eleven may be read on the tombstones (with the best of characters) in Andover Churchyard. Bourne Paddock, Earl Darnley’s estate, and Burley Park, in Rutlandshire, constituted often the debateable ground in their respective counties. Earl Darnley, as well as Sir Horace Mann and Earl Winchelsea, Mr. Paulet and Mr. East, lent their names and patronage to Elevens; sometimes in the places mentioned, sometimes at Lord’s, and sometimes at Pernam Downs, near Luggershal, in Wiltshire.
Middlesex also, exclusively of the Marylebone Club, had its Eleven in these days; or, we should say, its twenty-two, for that was the number then required to stand the disciplined forces of Hampshire, Kent, or England. And this reminds us of an “Uxbridge ground,” where Middlesex played and lost; also, of “Hornhurch, Essex,” where Essex, in 1791, was sufficiently advanced to win against Marylebone, an occasion memorable, because Lord Frederick Beauclerk there played nearly his first recorded match, making scarce any runs, but bowling four wickets. Lord Frederick’s first match was at Lord’s, 2nd June, 1791. “There was also,” writes the Hon. R. Grimston, “‘the Bowling-green’ at Harrow-on-the-Hill, where the school played: Richardson, who subsequently became Mr. Justice Richardson, was the captain of the School Eleven in 1782.”
Already, in 1790, the game was spreading northwards, or, rather, proofs exist that it had long before struck far and wide its roots and branches in northern latitudes; and also that it was a game as popular with the men of labour as the men of leisure, and therefore incontestably of home growth: no mere exotic, or importation of the favoured few, can cricket be, if, like its namesake, it is found “a household word” with those whom Burns aptly calls “the many-aproned sons of mechanical life.”
In 1791 Eton, that is, the old Etonians, played Marylebone, four players given on either side; and all true Etonians will thank us for informing them, not only that the seven Etonians were more than a match for their adversaries, but also that this match proves that Eton had, at that early date, the honour of sending forth the most distinguished amateurs of the day; for Lord Winchelsea, Hon. H. Fitzroy, Earl Darnley, Hon. E. Bligh, C. Anguish, Assheton Smith—good men and true—were Etonians all. This match was played in Burley Park, Rutlandshire. On the following day, June 25th, 1791, the Marylebone played eleven yeomen and artisans of Leicester; and though the Leicestrians cut a sorry figure, still the fact that the Midland Counties practised cricket sixty years ago is worth recording. Peter Heward, of Leicester, a famous wicket-keeper, of twenty years since, told me of a trial match in which he saw his father, quite an old man, with another veteran of his own standing, quickly put out with the old-fashioned slow bowling a really good Eleven for some twenty runs—good, that is, against the modern style of bowling; and cricket was not a new game in this old man’s early days (say 1780) about Leicester and Nottingham, as the score in page 41. alone would prove; for such a game as cricket, evidently of gradual development, must have been played in some primitive form many a long year before the date of 1775, in which it had excited sufficient interest, and was itself sufficiently matured in form, to show the two Elevens of Sheffield and of Nottingham. Add to this, what we have already mentioned, a rude form of cricket as far north as Angus and Lothian in 1700, and we can hardly doubt that cricket was known as early in the Midland as in the Southern Counties. The men of Nottingham—land of Clarke, Barker, and Redgate—next month, in the same year (1791) threw down the gauntlet, and shared the same fate; and next day the Marylebone, “adding,” in a cricketing sense, “insult unto injury,” played twenty-two of them, and won by thirteen runs.
In 1790, the shopocracy of Brighton had also an Eleven; and Sussex and Surrey, in 1792, sent an eleven against England to Lord’s, who scored in one innings 453 runs, the largest score on record, save that of Epsom in 1815—476 in one innings! “M. C. C. v. twenty-two of Nottingham,” we now find an annual match; and also “M. C. C. v. Brighton,” which becomes at once worthy of the fame that Sussex long has borne. In 1793, the old Westminster men all but beat the old Etonians: and Essex and Herts, too near not to emulate the fame of Kent and Surrey, were content, like second-rate performers, to have, though playing twenty-two, one Benefit between them, in the shape of defeat in one innings from England. And here we are reminded by two old players, a Kent and an Essex man, that, being schoolboys in 1785, they can respectively testify that, both in Kent and in Essex, cricket appeared to them more of a village game than they have ever seen it of late years. “There was a cricket-bat behind the door, or else up in the bacon rack, in every cottage. We heard little of clubs, except around London; still the game was played by many or by few, in every school and village green in Essex and in Kent, and the field placed much as when with the Sidmouth I played the Teignbridge Club in 1826. Mr. Whitehead was the great hitter of Kent; and Frame and Small were names as often mentioned as Pilch and Parr by our boys now.” And now (1793) the game had penetrated further West; for eleven yeomen at Oldfield Bray, in Berkshire, had learned long enough to be able to defeat a good eleven of the Marylebone Club.
In 1795, the Hon. Colonel Lennox, memorable for a duel with the Duke of York, fought—where the gallant Colonel had fought so many a less hostile battle—on the cricket ground at Dartford Brent, headed Elevens against the Earl of Winchelsea; and now, first the Marylebone eleven beat sixteen Oxonians on Bullingdon Green.
In 1797, the Montpelier Club and ground attract our notice. The name of this club is one of the most ancient, and their ground a short distance only from the ground of Hall of Camberwell.
Swaffham, in Norfolk, is now mentioned for the first time. But Norfolk lies out of the usual road, and is a county which, as Mr. Dickens said of Golden Square, before it was the residence of Cardinal Wiseman, “is nobody’s way to or from any place.” So, in those slow coach and pack-horse days, the patrons of Kent, Surrey, Hants, and Marylebone, who alone gave to what else were “airy nothing, a local habitation and a name,” could not so easily extend their circuit to the land of turkeys, lithotomy, and dumplings. But it happened once that Lord Frederick Beauclerk was heard to say, his eleven should beat any three elevens in the county of Norfolk; whence arose a challenge from the Norfolk men, whom, sure enough, his Lordship did beat, and that in one innings; and a print, though not on pocket-handkerchiefs, was struck off to perpetuate this honourable achievement.
Lord F. Beauclerk was now one of the best players of his day; as also were the Hon. H. and I. Tufton. They frequently headed a division of the Marylebone, or some county club, against Middlesex, and sometimes Hampstead and Highgate.
In this year (1798) these gentlemen aforesaid made the first attempt at a match between the Gentlemen and the Players; and on this first occasion the players won; though when we mention that the Gentlemen had three players given, and also that T. Walker, Beldham, and Hammond were the three, certainly it was like playing England, “the part of England being left out by particular desire.”
Kent attacked England in 1798, but, being beaten in about half an innings, we find the Kentish men in 1800, though still hankering after the same cosmopolitan distinction, modestly accept the odds of nineteen, and afterwards twenty-three, men to twelve.
The chief patronage, and consequently the chief practice, in cricket, was beyond all comparison in London. There, the play was nearly all professional: even the gentlemen made a profession of it; and therefore, though cricket was far more extensively spread throughout the villages of Kent than of Middlesex, the clubs of the metropolis figure in the score books as defying all competition. Professional players, we may observe, have always a decided advantage in respect of judicious choice and mustering their best men. The best eleven on the side of the Players is almost always known, and can be mustered on a given day. Favour, friendship, and etiquette interfere but little with their election; but the eleven gentlemen of England are less easy to muster,—
“Linquenda Parish et domus et placens
Uxor,”?—
and they are never anything more than the best eleven known to the party who make the match. Besides, by the time an amateur is at his best, he has duties which bid him retire.
Having now traced the rise and progress of the game from the time of its general establishment to the time that Beldham had shown us the full powers of the bat, and Lord Frederick had (as Fennex always declared) formed his style upon Beldham’s; and since now we approach the era of a new school, and the forward play of Fennex,—which his father termed an innovation and presumption “contrary to all experience,”—till the same forward play was proved effectual by Lambert, and Hammond had shown that, in spite of wicket keepers, bowling, if uniformly slow, might be met and hit away at the pitch;—now, we will wait to characterise, in the words of eye-witnesses, the heroes of the contests already mentioned.
On “the Old Players” I may be brief; because, the few old gentlemen (with one of whom I am in daily communication) who have heard even the names of the Walkers, Frame, Small, and David Harris, ore passing away, full of years, and almost all the written history of the Old Players consists in undiscriminating scores.
In point of style the Old Players did not play the steady game, with maiden overs, as at present. The defensive was comparatively unknown; both the bat and the wicket, and the style of bowling too, were all adapted to a short life and a merry one. The wooden substitute for a ball, as in Cat and Dog, before described, evidently implied a hitting, and not a stopping game.
The Wicket, as we collect from a MS. furnished by an old friend to the late William Ward, Esq., was, in the early days of the Hambledon Club, one foot high and two feet wide, consisting of two stumps only, with one stump laid across. Thus, straight balls passed between, and, what we now call, well pitched balls would of course rise over. Where, then, was the encouragement to block, when fortune would so often usurp the place of science? And, as to the bat, look at the picture of cricket as played in the old Artillery Ground; the bat is curved at the end like a hockey stick, or the handle of a spoon, and—as common implements usually are adapted to the work to be performed—you will readily believe that in olden time the freest hitter was the best batsman. The bowling was all along the ground, hand and eye being everything, and judgment nothing; because, the art originally was to bowl under the bat. The wicket was too low for rising balls; and the reason we hear sometimes of the Block-hole was, not that the block-hole originally denoted guard, but because between these two-feet-asunder stumps there was cut a hole big enough to contain the ball, and (as now with the school boy’s game of rounders) the hitter was made out in running a notch by the ball being popped into this hole (whence popping crease) before the point of the bat could reach it.
Did we say Running a Notch? under Notch? What wonder ere the days of useful knowledge, and Sir William Curtis’s three R’s,—or, reading, writing, and arithmetic,—that natural science should be evolved in a truly natural way; what wonder that notches on a stick, like the notches in the milk-woman’s tally in Hogarth’s picture, should supply the place of those complicated papers of vertical columns, which subject the bowling, the batting, and the fielding to a process severely and scrupulously just, of analytical observation, or differential calculus! Where now there sit on kitchen chairs, with ink bottle tied to a stump the worse for wear, Messrs. Caldecourt and Bayley (’tis pity two such men should ever not be umpires), with an uncomfortable length of paper on their knees, and large tin telegraphic letters above their heads; and where now is Lillywhite’s printing press, to hand down every hit as soon as made on twopenny cards to future generations; there, or in a similar position, old Frame, or young Small (young once: he died in 1834, aged eighty) might have placed a trusty yeoman to cut notches with his bread-and-bacon knife on an ashen stick. Oh! ’tis enough to make the Hambledon heroes sit upright in their graves with astonishment to think, that in the Gentlemen and Flayers’ Match, in 1850, the cricketers of old Sparkes’ Ground, at Edinburgh, could actually know the score of the first innings in London, before the second had commenced!
But when we say that the old players had little or nothing of the defensive, we speak of the play before 1780, when David Harris flourished: for William Beldham distinctly assured us that the art of bowling over the bat by “length balls” originated with the famous David; an assertion, we will venture to say, which requires a little, and only a little, qualification. Length bowling, or three-quarter balls, to use a popular, though exploded, expression, was introduced in David’s time, and by him first brought to perfection. And what rather confirms this statement is, that the early bowlers were very swift bowlers,—such was not only David, but the famous Brett, of earlier date, and Frame of great renown: a more moderate pace resulted from the new discovery of a well pitched bail ball.
The old players well understood the art of twisting, or bias bowling. Lambert, “the little farmer,” says Nyren, “improved on the art, and puzzled the Kent men in a great match, by twisting the reverse of the usual way,—that is, from the off to leg stump.” Tom Walker tried what Nyren calls the throwing-bowling, and defied all the players of the day to withstand this novelty; but, by a council of the Hambledon Club, this was forbidden, and Willes, a Kent man, had all the praise of inventing it some twenty years later. In a match of the Hambledon Club in 1775, it was observed, at a critical point of the game, that the ball passed three times between 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 one foot high, the wicket was altered to the dimensions of 22 inches by 6, at which measure it remained till about 1814, when it was increased to 26 inches by 8, and again to its present
dimensions of 27 inches by 8 in 1817; when, as one inch was added to the stumps, two inches were added to the width between the creases. The changes in the wicket are represented in the foregoing woodcut. In the year 1700, the runner was made out, not by striking off the transverse stump—we can hardly call it a bail—but by popping the ball in the hole therein represented.
David Harris’ bowling, Fennex used to say, introduced, or at least established and fixed, a steady and defensive style of batting. “I have seen,” said Sparkes, “seventy or eighty runs in an innings, though not more than eight or nine made at Harris’s end. “Harris,” said an excellent judge, who well remembers him, “had nearly all the quickness of rise and the height of delivery, which characterises over-hand bowling, with far greater straightness and precision. The ball appeared to be forced out from under his arm with some unaccountable jerk, so that it was delivered breast high. His precision exceeded anything I have ever seen, in so much that Tom Walker declared that, on one occasion, where turf was thin, and the colour of the soil readily appeared, one spot was positively uncovered by the repeated pitching of David’s balls in the same place.” “This bowling,” said Sparkes, “compelled you to make the best of your reach forward; for if a man let the ball pitch too near and crowd upon him, he very rarely could prevent a mistake, from the height and rapidity with which the ball cut up from the ground.”—This account agrees with the well-known description of Nyren. “Harris’s mode of delivering the ball was very singular. He would bring it from under his arm by a twist, and nearly as high as his arm-pit, and with this action push it, as it were, from him. How it was that the balls acquired the velocity they did by this mode of delivery, I never could comprehend. His balls were very little beholden to the ground; it was but a touch and up again; and woe be to the man who did not get in to block them, for they had such a peculiar curl they would grind his fingers against the bat.”
And Nyren agrees with my informants in ascribing great improvement in batting, and he specifies, “particularly in stopping” (for the act of defence, we said, was not essential to the batsman in the ideas of one of the old players), to the bowling of David Harris, and bears testimony to an assertion, that forward play, that is meeting at the pitch balls considerably short of a half volley, was little known to the oldest players, and was called into requisition chiefly by the bowling of David Harris. Obviously, with the primitive fashion of ground bowling, called sneakers, forward play could have no place, and even well-pitched balls, like those of Peter Stevens, alias Lumpy, of moderate pace might be played with some effect, even behind the crease; but David Harris, with pace, pitch, and rapid rise combined, imperatively demanded a new invention, and such was forward play about 1800. Old Fennex, who died, alas! in a Middlesex workhouse, aged eighty, in 1839 (had his conduct been as straightforward and upright as his bat, he would have known a better end), always declared that he was the first, and remained long without followers; and no small praise is due to the boldness and originality that set at nought the received maxims of his forefathers before he was born or thought of; daring to try things that, had they been ordinarily reasonable, would not, of course, have been ignored by Frame, by Purchase, nor by Small. The world wants such men as Fennex; men, who will shake off the prejudices of birth, parentage, and education, and boldly declare that age has taught them wisdom, and that the policy of their predecessors, however expensively stereotyped, must be revised and corrected and adapted to the demands of a more inquiring generation. “My father,” said Fennex, “asked me how I came by that new play, reaching out as no one ever saw before.” The same style he lived to see practised, not elegantly, but with wonderful power and effect by Lambert, “a most severe and resolute hitter;” and Fennex also boasted that he had a most proficient disciple in Fuller Pilch: though I suspect that, as “poeta nascitur non fit”—that is, that all great performers appear to have brought the secret of their excellence into the world along with them, and are not the mere puppets of which others pull the strings—Fuller Pilch may think he rather coincided with, than learnt from, William Fennex.
Now the David Harris aforesaid, who wrought quite a revolution in the game, changing cricket from a backward and a slashing to a forward and defensive game, and claiming higher stumps to do justice to his skill—this David, whose bowling was many years in advance of his generation, having all the excellence of Lillywhite’s high delivery, though free from all imputation of unfairness—this David rose early, and late took rest, and ate the bread of carefulness, before he attained such distinction as—in these days of railroads, Thames tunnels, and tubular gloves and bridges—to deserve the notice of our pen. “For,” said John Bennett, “you might have seen David practising at dinner time and after hours, all the winter through;” and “many a Hampshire barn,” said Beagley, “has been heard to resound with bats and balls as well as threshing.”
“Nil sine magno
Vita labore dedit mortalibus”
And now we must mention the men, who, at the end of the last century, represented the Pilch, the Parr, the Wenman, and the Wisden of the present day.
Lord Beauclerk was formed on the style of Beldham, whom, in brilliancy of hitting, he nearly resembled. The Hon. H. Bligh and Hon. H. Tufton were of the same school. Sir Peter Burrell was also a good hitter. And these were the most distinguished, gentlemen players of the day. Earl Winchelsea was in every principal match, but rather for his patronage than his play: and the Hon. Col. Lennox for the same reason. Mr. R. Whitehead was a Kent player of great celebrity. But Lord F. Beauclerk was the only gentleman who had any claim in the last century to play in an All England eleven. He was also one of the fastest runners. Hammond was the great wicket-keeper; but then the bowling was slow: Sparkes said he saw him catch out Robinson by a draw between leg and wicket. Freemantle was the first long stop; but Ray the finest field in England; and in those days, when the scores were long, fielding was of even more consideration than at present. Of the professional players, Beldham, Hammond, Tom and Harry Walker, Freemantle, Robinson, Fennex, J. Wells, and J. Small were the first chosen after Harris had passed away; for, Nyren says that even Lord Beauclerk could hardly have seen David Harris in his prime. At this time there was a sufficient number of players to maintain the credit of the left hands. On the 10th of May, 1790, the Left-handed beat the Right by thirty-nine runs. This match reveals that Harris and Aylward, and the three best Kent players. Brazier, Crawe, and Clifford,—Sueter, the first distinguished wicket-keeper,—H. Walker, and Freemantle were all left-handed: so also was Noah Mann.
The above-mentioned players are quite sufficient to give some idea of the play of the last century. Sparkes is well known to the author of these pages as his quondam instructor. In batting he differed not widely from the usual style of good players, save that he never played forward to any very great extent. Playing under leg, according to the old fashion (we call it old-fashioned though Pilch adopts it), served instead of the far more elegant and efficient “draw.” Sparkes was also a fair bias bowler, but of no great pace, and not very difficult. I remember his saying that the old school of slow bowling was beaten by Hammond’s setting the example of running in. “Hammond,” he said, “on one occasion hit back a slow ball to Lord F. Beauclerk with such frightful force that it just skimmed his Lordship’s unguarded head, and he had scarcely nerve to bowl after. Of Fennex we can also speak from our friend the Rev. John Mitford. Fennex was a fair straightforward hitter, and once as good a single-wicket player as any in England. His attitude was easy, and he played elegantly, and hit well from the wrist. If his bowling was any specimen of that of his contemporaries, they were by no means to be despised. His bowling was very swift and of high delivery, the ball cut and ground up with great quickness and precision. Fennex used to say that the men of the present day had little idea of what the old underhand bowling really could effect; and, from the specimen which Fennex himself gave at sixty-five years of age, there appeared to be much reason in his assertion. Of all the players Fennex had ever seen (for some partiality for bygone days we must of course allow) none elicited his notes of admiration like Beldham. We cannot compare a man who played underhand, with those who are formed on overhand, bowling. Still, there is reason to believe what Mr. Ward and others have told us, that Beldham had that genius for cricket, that wonderful eye (although it failed him very early), and that quickness of hand, which would have made him a great player in any age.
Beldham related to us in 1838, and that with no little nimbleness of hand and vivacity of eye, while he suited the action to the word with a bat of his own manufacture, how he had drawn forth the plaudits of Lords’ as he hit round and helped on the bowling of Browne of Brighton, even faster than before, though the good men of Brighton thought that no one could stand against him, and Browne had thought to bowl Beldham off his legs. This match of Hants against England in 1819 Fennex was fond of describing, and certainly it gives some idea of what Beldham could do. “Osbaldeston,” said Mr, Ward, “with his tremendously fast bowling, was defying every one at single wicket, and he and Lambert challenged Mr. E. H. Budd with three others. Just then I had seen Browne’s swift bowling, and a hint from me settled the match. Browne was engaged, and Osbaldeston was beaten with his own weapons.” A match was now made to give Browne a fair trial, and “we were having a social glass,” said Fennex, “and talking over with Beldham the match of the morrow at the ‘Green Man,’ when Browne came in, and told Beldham, with as much sincerity as good-humour, that he should soon send his stumps a-flying.” “Hold there,” said Beldham, fingering his bat, “you will be good enough to allow me this bit of wood, won’t you?” “Certainly,” said Browne. “Quite satisfied,” answered Beldham, “so to-morrow you shall see.” “Seventy-two runs,” said Fennex,—and the score-book attests his accuracy,—”was Beldham’s first and only innings;” and, Beagley also joined with Fennex, and assured us, that he never saw a more complete triumph of a batsman over a bowler. Nearly every ball was cut or slipped away till Browne hardly dared to bowl within Beldham’s reach.
We desire not to qualify the praises of Beldham, but when we hear that he was unrivalled in elegant and brilliant hitting, and in that wonderful versatility which cut indifferently, quick as lightning, all round him, we cannot help remarking, that such bowling as that of Bedgate or of Wisden renders imperatively necessary a severe style of defence, and an attitude of cautious watchfulness, which must render the batsman not quite such a picture for the artist as might be seen in the days of Beldham and Lord F. Beauclerk.
So far we have traced the diffusion of the game, and the degrees of proficiency attained, to the beginning of the present century. To sum up the evidence, by the year 1800, cricket had become the common pastime of the common people in Hampshire, Surrey, Sussex, and Kent, and had been introduced into the adjoining counties; and though we cannot trace its continuity beyond Rutlandshire and Burley Park, certainly it had been long familiar to the men of Leicester and Nottingham as well as Sheffield;—that, in point of Fielding generally, this was already as good, and quite as much valued in a match, as it has been since; while Wicket-keeping in particular had been ably executed by Sueter, for he could stump off Brett, whose pace Nyren, acquainted as he was with all the bowlers to the days of Lillywhite, called quite of the steam-engine power, albeit no wicket-keeper could shine like Wenman or Box, except with the regularity of overhand bowling; and already Bowlers had attained by bias and quick delivery all the excellence which underhand bowling admits. Still, as regards Batting, the very fact that the stumps remained six inches wide, by twenty-two inches in height, undeniably proves that the secret of success was limited to comparatively a small number of players.
Chapter V – The First Twenty Years of the Present Century
Before this century was one year old, David Harris, Harry Walker, Purchase, Aylward, and Lumpy had left the stage, and John Small, instead of hitting bad balls whose stitches would not last a match, had learnt to make commodities so good that Clout’s and Duke’s were mere toy-shop in comparison. Noah Mann was the Caldecourt, or umpire, of the day, and Harry Bentley also, when he did not play. Five years more saw nearly the last of Earl Winchelsea, Sir Horace Mann, Earl Darnley, and Lord Yarmouth; still Surrey had a generous friend in Mr. Laurell, Hants in Mr. T. Smith, and Kent in the Honourables H. and J. Tufton. The Pavilion at Lord’s, then and since 1787 on the site of Dorset Square, was attended by Lord Frederick Beauclerk, then a young man of four-and-twenty, the Honourables Colonel Bligh, Colonel Lennox, H. and J. Tufton, and A. Upton. Also, there were usually Messrs. R. Whitehead, G. Leycester, S. Vigne, and F. Ladbroke. These were the great promoters of the matches, and the first of the amateurs. Cricket was one of Lord Byron’s favourite sports, and that in spite of his lame foot: witness the lines,—
“Together join’d in cricket’s manly toil,
Or shared the produce of the river’s spoil.”
Byron mentions in his letters that he played in the eleven of Harrow against Eton in 1805. The score is given in Lillywhite’s Public-School Matches.
The excellent William Wilberforce was fond of cricket, and was laid up by a severe blow on the leg at Rothley while playing with his sons: he says the doctor told him a little more would have broken the bone.
Cricket, we have shown, was originally classed among the games of the lower orders; so we find the yeomen infinitely superior to the gentlemen even before cricket had become by any means so much of a profession as it is now. Tom Walker, Beldham, John Wells, Fennex, Hammond, Robinson, Lambert, Sparkes, H. Bentley, Bennett, Freemantle, were the best professionals of the day. For it was seven or eight years later that Mr. E. H. Budd, and his unequal rival, Mr. Brand, and his sporting friend, Osbaldeston, as also that fine player, E. Parry, Esq., severally appeared; and later still, that Mr. Ward, Howard, Beagley, Thumwood, Caldecourt, Slater, Flavel, Ashby, Searle, and Saunders, successively showed every resource of bias bowling to shorten the scores, and of fine hitting to lengthen them. By the end of these twenty years, all these distinguished players had taught a game in which the batting beat the bowling. “Cricket,” said Mr. Ward, “unlike hunting, shooting, fishing, or even yachting, was a sport that lasted three days;” the wicket had been twice enlarged, once about 1814, and again in 1817; old Lord had tried his third, the present, ground; the Legs had taught the wisdom of playing rather for love than money; slow coaches had given way to fast, long whist to short; and ultimately Lambert, John Wells, Howard, and Powell, handed over the ball to Broadbridge and Lillywhite.
Such is the scene, the characters, and the performance. “Matches in those days were more numerously attended than now,” said Mr. Ward: the old game was more attractive to spectators, because more busy, than the new. Tom Lord’s flag was the well known telegraph that brought him in from three to four thousand sixpences at a match. John Goldham, the octogenarian inspector of Billingsgate, has seen the Duke of York and his adversary, the Honourable Colonel Lennox, in the same game, and had the honour of playing with both, and the Prince Regent, too, in the White Conduit Fields, on which spot Mr. Goldham built his present house. For the Prince was a great lover of the game, and caused the “Prince’s Cricket Ground” to be formed at Brighton. The late Lord Barrymore, killed by the accidental discharge of a blunderbuss in his phaeton, was an enthusiastic cricketer. The Duke of Richmond, when Colonel Lennox, a nobleman whose life and spirits and genial generous nature made him beloved by all, exulted in this as in all athletic sports: the bite of a fox killed him. Then, as you drive through Russell Square, behold the statue of another patron, the noble-born and noble-minded Duke of Bedford; and in Dorset Square, the site of old Lord’s Ground, you may muse and fancy you see, where now is some “modest mansion,” the identical mark called the “Duke’s strike,” which long recorded a hit, 132 yards in the air, from the once famous bat of Alexander, late Duke of Hamilton. Great matches in those days, as in these, cost money. Six guineas if they won and four if they lost, was the player’s fee; or, five and three if they lived in town. So, as every match cost some seventy pounds, over the fire-place at Lord’s you would see a Subscription List for Surrey against England, or for England against Kent, as the case might be, and find notices of each interesting match at Brookes’s and other clubs.
This custom of advertising cricket matches is of very ancient date. For, in the “British Champion” of Sep. 8. 1743, a writer complains that though “noblemen, gentlemen, and clergymen may divert themselves as they think fit,” and though he “cannot dispute their privilege to make butchers, cobblers, or tinkers their companions,” he very much doubts “whether they have any right to invite thousands of people to be spectators of their agility.” For, “it draws numbers of people from their employment to the ruin of their families. It is a most notorious breach of the laws—the advertisements most impudently reciting that great sums are laid.” And, in the year following (1744), as we read in the “London Magazine,” Kent beat all England in the Artillery Ground, in the presence of “their Royal Highnesses the Prince of Wales, the Duke of Cumberland, the Duke of Richmond, Admiral Vernon, and many other persons of distinction.” How pleasing to reflect that those sunny holidays we enjoy at Lord’s have been enjoyed by the people for more than a century past!
But what were the famous cricket Counties in these twenty years? The glory of Kent had for a while departed. Time was when Kent could challenge England man for man; but now, only with such odds as twenty-three to twelve! As to the wide extension of cricket, it advanced but slowly then compared with recent times. A small circle round London would still comprise all the finest players. It was not till 1820 that Norfolk, forgetting its three Elevens beaten by Lord Frederick, again played Marylebone; and, though three gentlemen were given and Fuller Pilch played—then a lad of seventeen years—Norfolk lost by 417 runs, including Mr. Ward’s longest score on record,—278. “But he was missed,” said Mr. Budd, “the easiest possible catch before he had scored thirty.” Still it was a great achievement; and Mr. Morse preserves, as a relic, the identical ball, and the bat which hit that ball about, a trusty friend that served its owner fifty years! Kennington Oval, perhaps, was then all docks and thistles. Surrey still stood first of cricket counties, and Mr. Laurell—Robinson was his keeper; an awful man for poachers, 6 feet 1 inch, and 16 stone, and strong in proportion—most generous of supporters, was not slow to give orders on old Thomas Lord for golden guineas, when a Surrey man, by catch or innings, had elicited applause. Of the same high order were Sir J. Cope of Bramshill Park, and Mr. Barnett, the banker, promoter of the B. matches; the Hon. D. Kinnaird, and, last not least, Mr. W. Ward, who by purchase of a lease saved Lord’s from building ground; an act of generosity in which he imitated the good old Duke of Dorset, who, said Mr. Budd, “gave the ground called the Vine, at Sevenoaks, by a deed of trust, for the use of cricketers for ever.”
The good men of Surrey, in 1800, monopolised nearly all the play of England. Lord Frederick Beauclerk and Hammond were the only All England players who were not Surrey men.
Kent had then some civil contests—petty wars of single clans—but no county match; and their great friend R. Whitehead, Esq., depended on the M.C.C. for his finest games. The game had become a profession: a science to the gentlemen, and an art or handicraft to the players; and Farnham found in London the best market for its cricket, as for its hops. The best Kent play was displayed at Rochester, and yet more at Woolwich; but chiefly among our officers, whose bats were bought in London, not at Sevenoaks. These games reflected none such honour to the county as when the Earls of Thanet and of Darnley brought their own tenantry to Lord’s or Dartford Brent, armed with the native willow wood of Kent. So, the Honourables H. and A. Tufton were obliged to yield to the altered times, and play two-and-twenty men where their noble father, the Earl of Thanet, had won with his eleven. “Thirteen to twenty-three was the number we enjoyed,” said Sparkes, “for with thirteen good men well placed, and the bowling good, we did not want their twenty-three. A third man On, and a forward point, or kind of middle wicket, with slow bowling, or an extra slip with fast, made a very strong field: the Kent men were sometimes regularly pounded by our fielding.”
In 1805 we find a curious match: the “twelve best against twenty-three next best.” Lord Frederick was the only amateur among the “best”; but Barton, one of the “next best” among the latter, scored 87; not out. Mr. Budd first appeared at Lord’s in 1802 as a boy: he reappeared in 1808, and was at once among the longest scorers.
The Homerton Club also furnished an annual match: still all within the sound of Bow bells. “To forget Homerton,” said Mr. Ward, “were to ignore Mr. Vigne, our wicket-keeper, but one of very moderate powers. Hammond was the best we ever had. Hammond played till his sixtieth year; but Browne and Osbaldeston put all wicket-keeping to the rout. Hammond’s great success was in the days of slow bowling. John Wells and Howard were our two best fast bowlers, though Powell was very true. Osbaldeston beat his side with byes and slips—thirty-two byes in the B. match.” Few men could hit him before wicket; whence the many single-wicket matches he played; but Mr. Ward put an end to his reign by finding out Browne of Brighton. Beagley said of Browne, as the players now say of Mr. Fellows, they had no objection to him when the ground was smooth.
The Homerton Club also boasted of Mr. Ladbroke, one of the great promoters of matches, as well as the late Mr. Aislabie, always fond of the game, but all his life “too big to play,”—the remark by Lord Frederick of Mr. Ward, which, being repeated, did no little to develop the latent powers of that most efficient player.
The Montpelier Club, also, with men given, annually played Marylebone.
Lord Frederick, in 1803, gave a little variety to the matches by leading against Marylebone ten men of Leicester and Nottingham, including the two Warsops. “T. Warsop,” said Clarke, “was one of the best bowlers I ever knew.” Clarke has also a high opinion of Lambert, from whom, he says, he learnt more of the game than from any other man.
Lambert’s bowling was like Mr. Budd’s, against which I have often played: a high underhand delivery, slow, but rising very high, very accurately pitched, and turning in from leg stump. “About the year 1818, Lambert and I,” said Mr. Budd, “attained to a kind of round-armed delivery (described as Clarke’s), by which we rose decidedly superior to all the batsmen of the day. Mr. Ward could not play it, but he headed a party against us, and our new bowling was ignored.” Tom Walker and Lord Frederick were of the tediously slow school; Lambert and Budd were several degrees faster. Howard and John Wells were the fast underhand bowlers.
Lord Frederick was a very successful bowler, and inspired great confidence as a general: his bowling was at last beaten by men running into him. Sparkes mentioned another player who brought very slow bowling to perfection, and was beaten in the same way. Beldham thought Mr. Budd’s bowling better than Lord Frederick’s; Beagley said the same.
His Lordship is generally supposed to have been the best amateur of his day; so said Caldecourt; also Beagley, who observed his Lordship had the best head and was most valuable as a general. Otherwise, this is an assertion hard to reconcile with acknowledged facts; for, first, Mr. Budd made the best average, though usually placed against Lambert’s bowling, and playing almost exclusively in the great matches. Mr. Budd was a much more powerful hitter. Lord Frederick said, “Budd always wanted to win the game off a single ball:” Beldham observed, “if Mr. Budd would not hit so eagerly, he would be the finest player in all England.” When I knew him his hitting was quite safe play. Still Lord Frederick’s was the prettier style of batting, and he had the character of being the most scientific player. But since Mr. Budd had the largest average in spite of his hitting, Beldham becomes a witness in his favour. Mr. Budd measured five feet ten inches, and weighed twelve stone, very clean made and powerful, with an eye singularly keen, and great natural quickness, being one of the fastest runners of his day. Secondly, Mr. Budd was the better fieldsman. He stood usually at middle wicket. I never saw safer hands at a catch; and I have seen him very quick at stumping out. But, Lord Frederick could not take every part of the field; but was always short slip, and not one of the very best. And, thirdly, Mr. Budd was the better bowler. Mr. Budd hit well from the wrist. At Woolwich he hit a volley to long field for nine, though Mr. Parry threw it in. He also hit out of Lord’s old ground. “Lord had said he would forfeit twenty guineas if any one thus proved his ground too small: so we all crowded around Mr. Budd,” said Beldham, “and told him what he might claim. ‘Well then,’ he said, ‘I claim it, and give it among the players.’ But Lord was shabby and would not pay.” Mr. Budd is now (1854) in his sixty-ninth year: it is only lately that any country Eleven could well spare him.
Lambert was also good at every point. In batting, he was a bold forward player. He stood with left foot a yard in advance, swaying his bat and body as if to attain momentum, and reaching forward almost to where the ball must pitch.
Lambert’s chief point was to take the ball at the pitch and drive it powerfully away, and, said Mr. Budd, “to a slow bowler his return was so quick and forcible, that his whole manner was really intimidating to a bowler.” Every one remarked how completely Lambert seemed master of the ball. Usually the bowler appears to attack and the batsman to defend; but Lambert seemed always on the attack, and the bowler at his mercy, and “hit,” said Beldham, “what no one else could meddle with.”
Lord Frederick was formed on Beldham’s style. Mr. Budd’s position at the wicket was much the same: the right foot placed as usual, but the left rather behind and nearly a yard apart, so that instead of the upright bat and figure of Pilch the bat was drawn across, and the figure hung away from the wicket. This was a mistake. Before the ball could be played Mr. Budd was too good a player not to be up, like Pilch, and play well over his off stump. Still Mr. Budd explained to me that this position of the left foot was just where one naturally shifts it to have room for a cut: so this strange attitude was supposed to favour their fine off hits. I say Off hit because the Cut did not properly belong to either of these players: Robinson and Saunders were the men to cut,—cutting balls clean away from the bails, though Robinson had a maimed hand, burnt when a child: the handle of his bat was grooved to fit his stunted fingers. Talking of his bat, the players once discovered by measurement it was beyond the statute width, and would not pass through the standard. So, unceremoniously, a knife was produced, and the bat reduced to its just, rather than its fair, proportions. “Well,” said Robinson, “I’ll pay you off for spoiling my bat:” and sure enough he did, hitting tremendously, and making one of his largest innings, which were often near a hundred runs.
In the first twenty years of this century, Hampshire, like Kent, had lost its renown, but only because Hambledon was now no more; nor did Surrey and Hampshire any longer count as one. To confirm our assertion that Farnham produced the players,—for in 1808, Surrey had played and beaten England three times in one season, and from 1820 to 1825 Godalming is mentioned as the most powerful antagonist; but whether called Godalming or Surrey, we must not forget that the locality is the same—we observe, that in 1821, M.C.C. plays “The Three Parishes,” namely, Godalming, Farnham, and Hartley Row; which parishes, after rearing the finest contemporaries of Beldham, could then boast a later race of players in Flavel, Searle, Howard, Thumwood, Mathews.
“About this time (July 23. 1821),” said Beldham, “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.”
But the day for Hampshire, as for Kent, was doomed to shine again. Fennex, Small, the Walkers, J. Wells, and Hammond, in time drop off from Surrey,—and about the same time (1815), Caldecourt, Holloway, Beagley, Thumwood, Shearman, Howard, Mr. Ward, and Mr. Knight, restore the balance of power for Hants, as afterwards, Broadbridge and Lillywhite for Sussex.
“In 1817, we went,” said Mr. Budd, “with Osbaldeston to play twenty-two of Nottingham. In that match Clarke played. 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. The concourse of people was very great: these were the days of the Luddites (rioters), and the magistrates warned us, that unless we would stop our game at seven o’clock, they could not answer for keeping the peace. At seven o’clock we stopped; and, simultaneously, the thousands who lined the ground began to close in upon us. Lord Frederick lost nerve and was very much alarmed; but I said they didn’t want to hurt us. No; they simply came to have a look at the eleven men who ventured to play two for one.”—His Lordship broke his finger, and, batting with one hand, scored only eleven runs. Nine men, the largest number perhaps on record, Bentley marks as “caught by Budd.”
Just before the establishment of Mr. Will’s roundhand bowling, and as if to prepare the way, Ashby came forth with an unusual bias, but no great pace. Sparkes bowled in the same style; as also, Matthews and Mr. Jenner somewhat later. Still the batsmen were full as powerful as ever, reckoning Saunders, Searle, Beagley, Messrs. Ward, Kingscote, Knight. Suffolk became very strong with Pilch, the Messrs. Blake, and others, of the famous Bury Club; while Slater, Lillywhite, King, and the Broadbridges, raised the name of Midhurst and of Sussex.
Against such batsmen every variety of underhand delivery failed to maintain the balance of the game, till J. Broadbridge and Lillywhite, after many protests and discussions, succeeded in establishing what long was called “the Sussex bowling.”
“About 1820,” said Mr. Budd, “at our anniversary dinner (three-guinea tickets) at the Clarendon, Mr. Ward asked me if I had not said I would play any man in England at single wicket, without fieldsmen. An affirmative produced a match p.p. for fifty guineas. On the day appointed Mr. Brand proved my opponent. He was a fast bowler. I went in first, and scoring seventy runs with some severe blows on the legs,—nankeen knees and silk stockings, and no pads in those days,—I consulted a friend and knocked down my own wicket, lest the match should last to the morrow, and I be unable to play. Mr. Brand was out without a run! I went in again, and making the 70 up to 100, I once more knocked down my own wicket, and once more my opponent failed to score!!”
The flag was flying—the signal of a great match—and a large concourse were assembled; and, considering Mr. Ward, a good judge, made the match, this is probably the most hollow victory on record.
But Osbaldeston’s victory was far more satisfactory. Lord Frederick with Beldham made a p.p. match with Osbaldeston and Lambert. “On the day named,” said Budd, “I went to Lord Frederick, representing my friend was too ill to stand, and asked him to put off the match. “No; play or pay,” said his Lordship, quite inexorable. “Never mind,” said Osbaldeston, “I won’t forfeit: Lambert may beat them both; and, if he does, the fifty guineas shall be his.”—I asked Lambert how he felt. “Why,” said he, “they are anything but safe.”—His Lordship wouldn’t hear of it. “Nonsense,” he said, “you can’t mean it.” “Yes; play or pay, my Lord, we are in earnest, and shall claim the stakes!” and in fact Lambert did beat them both.” For, to play such a man as Lambert, when on his mettle, was rather discouraging; and “he did make desperate exertion,” said Beldham: “once he rushed up after his ball, and Lord Frederick was caught so near the bat that he lost his temper, and said it was not fair play. Of course, all hearts were with Lambert.”
“Osbaldeston’s mother sat by in her carriage, and enjoyed the match; and then,” said Beldham, “Lambert was called to the carriage and bore away a paper parcel: some said it was a gold watch,—some, bank notes. Trust Lambert to keep his own secrets. We were all curious, but no one ever knew:”—nor ever will know. In March, 1851, I addressed a letter to him at Reigate. Soon, a brief paragraph announced the death of “the once celebrated cricket player William Lambert.”
Chapter VI – A Dark Chapter in the History of Cricket
The lovers of cricket may congratulate themselves that matches, at the present day, are made at cricket, as at chess, rather for love and the honour of victory than for money.
It is now many years since Lord’s was frequented by men with book and pencil, betting as openly and professionally as in the ring at Epsom, and ready to deal in the odds with any and every person of speculative propensities. Far less satisfactory was the state of things with which Lord F. Beauclerk and Mr. Ward had to contend, to say nothing of the earlier days of the Earl of Winchelsea and Sir Horace Mann. As to the latter period, “Old Nyren” bewails its evil doings. He speaks of one who had “the trouble of proving himself a rogue,” and also of “the legs of Marylebone,” who tried, for once in vain, to corrupt some primitive specimens of Hambledon innocence. He says, also, that the grand matches of his day were always made for £500. a side. Add to this the fact that bets were in proportion; and that Jim and Joe Bland, of turf notoriety, with Dick Whitlom of Covent Garden, Simpson, a gaming-house keeper, and Toll of Esher, as regularly attended at a match as Crockford and Gully at Epsom and Ascot; and the idea that all the Surrey and Hampshire rustics should either want or resist strong temptations to sell, is not to be entertained for a moment. The constant habit of betting will take the honesty out of any man. A half-crown sweepstakes, or betting such odds as lady’s long kids to gentleman’s short ditto, is all very fair sport; but, if a man, after years of high betting, can still preserve the fine edge and tone of honest feeling he is indeed a wonder. To bet on a certainty all admit is swindling. If so, to bet where you feel it is a certainty, must be very bad moral practice.
“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.” Still, they had all sorts of tricks to make their betting safe. “One artifice,” said Mr. Ward, “was to keep a player out of the way by a false report that his wife was dead.” Then these men would come down to the Green Man and Still, and drink with us, and always said, that those who backed us, or “the nobs,” as they called them, sold the matches; and so, sir, as you are going the round beating up the quarters of the old players, you will find some to persuade you this is true. But don’t believe it. That any gentleman in my day ever put himself into the power of these blacklegs, by selling matches, I can’t credit. Still, one day, I thought I would try how far these tales were true. So, going down into Kent, with “one of high degree,” he said to me, “Will, if this match is won, I lose a hundred pounds!” “Well,” said I, “my Lord, you and I could order that.” He smiled as if nothing were meant, and talked of something else; and, as luck would have it, he and I were in together, and brought up the score between us, though every run seemed to me like “a guinea out of his Lordship’s pocket.”
In those days, foot races were very common. Lord Frederick and Mr. Budd were first-rate runners, and bets were freely laid. So, one day, old Fennex laid a trap for the gentlemen: he brought up, to act the part of some silly conceited youngster with his pockets full of money, a first-rate runner out of Hertfordshire. This soft young gentleman ran a match or two with some known third-rate men, and seemed to win by a neck, and no pace to spare. Then he calls out, “I’ll run any man on the ground for £25., money down.” A match was quickly made, and money laid on pretty thick on Fennex’s account. Some said, “Too bad to win of such a green young fellow!” others said, “He’s old enough—serve him right.” So the laugh was finely against those who were taken in; “the green one” ran away like a hare!
“You see, sir,” said one fine old man, with brilliant eye and quickness of movement, that showed his right hand had not yet forgot its cunning, “matches were bought, and matches were sold, and gentlemen who meant honestly lost large sums of money, till the rogues beat themselves at last. They overdid it; they spoilt their own trade; and, as I said to one of them, ‘a knave and a fool makes a bad partnership; so, you and yourself will never prosper.’ Well, surely there was robbery enough: and, not a few of the great players earned money to their own disgrace; but, if you’ll believe me, there was not half the selling there was said to be. Yes, I can guess, sir, much as you have been talking to all the old players over this good stuff (pointing to the brandy and water I had provided), no doubt you have heard that B—— sold as bad as the rest. I’ll tell the truth: one match up the country I did sell,—a match made by Mr. Osbaldeston at Nottingham. I had been sold out of a match just before, and lost 10l., and happening to hear it I joined two others of our eleven to sell, and get back my money. I won 10l. 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. In those days, when so much money was on the matches, every man who lost his money would blame some one. Then, if A missed a catch, or B made no runs,—and where’s the player whose hand is always in?—that man was called a rogue directly. So, when a man was doomed to lose his character and to bear all the smart, there was the more temptation to do like others, and after ‘the kicks’ to come in for ‘the halfpence.’ But I am an old man now, and heartily sorry I have been ever since: because, but for that Nottingham match, I could have said with a clear conscience to a gentleman like you, that all that was said was false, and I never sold a match in my life; but now I can’t. But, if I had fifty sons, 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 really was very great,—too great by far for any poor man to be exposed to,—no richer than ten shillings a week, let alone harvest time.—I never told you, sir, the way I first was brought to London. I was a lad of eighteen at this Hampshire village, and Lord Winchelsea had seen us play among ourselves, and watched the match with the Hambledon Club on Broadhalfpenny, when I scored forty-three against David Harris, and ever so many of the runs against David’s bowling, and no one ever could manage David before. So, next year, in the month of March, I was down in the meadows, when a gentleman came across the field with Farmer Hilton: and, thought I, all in a minute, now this is something about cricket. Well, at last it was settled I was to play Hampshire against England, at London, in White-Conduit-Fields ground, in the month of June. For three months I did nothing but think about that match. Tom Walker was to travel up from this country, and I agreed to go with him, and found myself at last with a 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 cricketer’s 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. To go to London by the waggon, earn five guineas three or four times told, and come back with half the money in your pocket to the plough again, was all very well talking. You know what young folk are, sir, when they get together: mischief brews stronger in large quantities: so, many spent all their earnings, and were soon glad to make more money some other way. Hundreds of pounds were bet upon all the great matches, and other wagers laid on the scores of the finest players, and that too by men who had a book for every race and every match in the sporting world; men who lived by gambling; and, as to honesty, gambling and honesty don’t often go together. What was easier, then, than for such sharp gentlemen to mix with the players, take advantage of their difficulties, and say, ‘your backers, my Lord this, and the Duke of that, sell matches and overrule all your good play, so why shouldn’t you have a share of the plunder?’—That was their constant argument. ‘Serve them as they serve you.’—You have heard of Jim Bland, the turfsman, and his brother Joe—two nice boys. When Jemmy Dawson was hanged for poisoning the horse, the Blands never felt safe till the rope was round Dawson’s neck: to keep him quiet, they persuaded him to the last hour that no one dared hang him; and a certain nobleman had a reprieve in his pocket. Well, one day in April, Joe Bland traced me out in this parish, and tried his game on with me. ‘You may make a fortune,’ he said, ‘if you will listen to me: so much for the match with Surrey, and so much more for the Kent match—’ ‘Stop,’ said I: ‘Mr. Bland, you talk too fast; I am rather too old for this trick; you never buy the same man but once: if their lordships ever sold at all, you would peach upon them if ever after they dared to win. You’ll try me once, and then you’ll have me in a line like him of the mill last year.’ No, sir, a man was a slave when once he sold to these folk: ‘fool and knave aye go together.’ Still, they found fools enough for their purpose; but rogues can never trust each other. One day, a sad quarrel arose between two of them, which opened the gentlemen’s eyes too wide to close again to those practices. Two very big rogues at Lord’s fell a quarrelling, and blows were given; a crowd drew round, and the gentlemen ordered them both into the pavilion. When the one began, ‘You had 20l. to lose the Kent match, bowling leg long hops and missing catches.’ ‘And you were paid to lose at Swaffham.’—‘Why did that game with Surrey turn about—three runs to get, and you didn’t make them?’ Angry words come out fast; and, when they are circumstantial and square with previous suspicions, they are proofs as strong as holy writ. In one single-wicket match,” he continued,—“and those were always great matches for the sporting men, because usually you had first-rate men on each side, and their merits known,—dishonesty was as plain as this: just as a player was coming in, (John B. will confess this if you talk of the match,) he said to me, ‘You’ll let me score five or six, for appearances, won’t you, for I am not going to make many if I can?’ ‘Yes,’ I said, ‘you rogue, you shall if I can not help it.’—But, when a game was all but won, and the odds heavy, and all one way, it was cruel to see how the fortune of the day then would change about. In that Kent match,—you can turn to it in your book (Bentley’s scores), played 28th July, 1807, on Penenden Heath,—I and Lord Frederick had scored sixty-one, and thirty remained to win, and six of the best men in England went out for eleven runs. Well, sir, I lost some money by that match, and as seven of us were walking homewards to meet a coach, a gentleman who had backed the match drove by and said, ‘Jump up, my boys, we have all lost together. I need not mind if I hire a pair of horses extra next town, for I have lost money enough to pay for twenty pair or more.’ Well, thought I, as I rode along, you have rogues enough in your carriage now, sir, if the truth were told, I’ll answer for it; and, one of them let out the secret, some ten years after. But, sir, I can’t help laughing when I tell you: once, there was a single-wicket match played at Lord’s, and a man on each side was paid to lose. One was bowler, and the other batsman, when the game came to a near point. I knew their politics, the rascals, and saw in a minute how things stood; and how I did laugh to be sure. For seven balls together, one would not bowl straight, and the other would not hit; but at last a straight ball must come, and down went the wicket.”
From other information received, I could tell this veteran that, even in his much-repented Nottingham match, his was not the only side that had men resolved to lose. The match was sold for Nottingham too, and that with less success, for Nottingham won: an event the less difficult to accomplish, as Lord Frederick Beauclerk broke a finger in an attempt to stop an angry and furious throw from Shearman, whom he had scolded for slack play. His Lordship batted with one hand. Afterwards lock-jaw threatened; and Lord Frederick was, well nigh, a victim to Cricket!
It is true, Clarke, who played in the match, thought all was fair: still, he admits, he heard one Nottingham man accused, on the field, by his own side of foul play. This confirms the evidence of the Rev. C. W., no slight authority in Nottingham matches, who said he was cautioned before the match that all would not be fair.
“This practice of selling matches,” said Beldham, “produced strange things sometimes. Once, I remember, England was playing Surrey, and, in my judgment, Surrey had the best side; still I found the Legs were betting seven to four against Surrey! This time, they were done; for they betted on the belief that some Surrey men had sold the match: but, Surrey then played to win.”
“Crockford used to be seen about Lord’s, and Mr. Gully also occasionally; but, only for the society of sporting men: they did not understand the game, and I never saw them bet. Mr. Gully was often talking to me about the game for one season; but,” said the old man, as he smoothed down his smockfrock, with all the confidence in the world, “I could never put any sense into him! He knew plenty about fighting, and afterwards of horse-racing; but a man cannot learn the odds of cricket unless he is something of a player.”
Chapters, seven and eight omitted. See – here for pdf version
Chapter IX – An Hour with “Old Clarke”
In cricket wisdom Clarke is truly “Old:” what he has learnt from anybody, he learnt from Lambert. But he is a man who thinks for himself, and knows men and manners, and has many wily devices, “splendidè mendax.” “I beg your pardon, sir,” he one day said to a gentleman taking guard, “but ain’t you Harrow?”—”Then we shan’t want a man down there,” he said, addressing a fieldsman;” stand for the ‘Harrow drive,’ between point and middle wicket.”
The time to see Clarke is on the morning of a match. While others are practising, he walks round with his hands under the flaps of his coat, reconnoitring his adversaries’ wicket.
“Before you bowl to a man, it is worth something to know what is running in his head. That gentleman,” he will say, “is too fast on his feet, so, as good as ready money to me: if he doesn’t hit he can’t score; if he does I shall have him directly.”
Going a little further, he sees a man lobbing to another, who is practising stepping in. “There, sir, is ‘practising to play Clarke,’ that is very plain; and a nice mess, you will see, he will make of it. Ah! my friend, if you do go in at all, you must go in further than that, or my twist will beat you; and, going in to swipe round, eh! Learn to run me down with a straight bat, and I will say something to you. But that wouldn’t score quite fast enough for your notions. Going in to hit round is a tempting of Providence.”
“There, that man is purely stupid: alter the pace and height with a dropping ball, and I shall have no trouble with him. They think, sir, it is nothing but ‘Clarke’s vexatious pace:’ they know nothing about the curves. With fast bowling, you cannot have half my variety; and when you have found out the weak point, where’s the fast bowler that can give the exact ball to hit it? There is often no more head-work in fast bowling than there is in the catapult: without head-work I should be hit out of the field.”
“A man is never more taken aback than when he prepares for one ball, and I bowl him the contrary one: there was Mr. Nameless, the first time he came to Nottingham, full of fancies about playing me. The first ball, he walked some yards out to meet me, and I pitched over his head, so near his wicket, that, thought I, that bird won’t fight again. Next ball, he was a little cunning, and made a feint of coming out, meaning, as I guessed, to stand back for a long hop; so I pitched right up to him; and he was so bent upon cutting me away, that he hit his own wicket down!”
Look at diagrams page [above]. Clarke is there represented as bowling two balls of different lengths; but the increased height of the shorter pitched ball, by a natural ocular delusion, makes it appear as far pitched as the other. If the batsman is deceived in playing at both balls by the same forward play, he endangers his wicket. “See, there,” continues Clarke, “that gentleman’s is a dodge certainly, but not a new one either. He does step in, it is true; but while hitting at the ball, he is so anxious about getting back again, that his position has all the danger of stepping in, and none of its advantages.”
“Then there is Mr. ——,” naming a great man struggling with adversity. “He gives a jump up off his feet, and thinks he is stepping in, but comes flump down just where he was before.”
“Pilch plays me better than any one. But he knows better than to step in to every ball, or to stand fast every ball He plays steadily, and discriminates, waiting till I give him a chance, and then makes the most of it”
Bowling consists of two parts: there is the mechanical part, and the intellectual part. First, you want the hand to pitch where you please, and then the head to know where to pitch, according to the player.
To learn the Art of Bowling.—
1. First, consult with some Lillywhite or Wisden, and fix on one, and one only, plan of holding the ball, manageable pace, and general style of delivery. Consult and experiment till you have chosen the style that suits the play of your muscles and your strength. If you choose a violent and laborious style, you will certainly become tired of it: but a style within your strength will be so delightful that you will be always practising. Secondly, having definitely chosen one form and style of bowling, the next thing is to fix it and form it into a habit: for, on the law of Habit a bowler’s accuracy entirely depends.
To form a steady habit of bowling, the nerves and muscles being a very delicate machinery, you must be careful to use them in one way, and one way only; for then they will come to serve you truly and mechanically: but, even a few hours spent in loose play—in bowling with few steps or many, or with a new mode of delivery—will often establish conflicting habits, or call into action a new set of muscles, to interfere with the muscles on which you mainly depend. Many good players (including the most destructive of the Gentleman’s Eleven!) have lost their bowling by these experiments: many more have been thrown back when near perfection. Therefore,
2. Never bowl a single ball but in your chosen and adopted form and style—with the same steps, and with the ball held in the same way, “If these seem small things, habit is not a small thing.” Also, never go on when you are too tired to command your muscles; else, you will be twisting yourself out of form, and calling new and conflicting muscles into action.
As to Pace, if your strength and stature is little, your pace cannot be fast. Be contented with being rather a slow bowler. By commencing slowly, if any pace is in you, it will not be lost; but by commencing fast, you will spoil all.
3. Let your carriage be upright though easy; and start composedly from a state of perfect rest. Let your steps, especially the last, be short; and, for firm foothold, and to avoid shaking yourself or cutting up the ground, learn to descend not on the heel but more on the toe and flat of the foot, and so as to have both feet in the line of the opposite wicket. For,
4. A golden rule for straight bowling is to present, at delivery, a full face to the opposite wicket; the shoulders being in the same line, or parallel with, the crease. That is the moment to quit the ball—a moment sooner and you will bowl wide to the leg, a moment later and you will bowl wide to the Off. Observe Wisden and Hillyer. They deliver just as their front is square with the opposite wicket. They look well at their mark, and bowl before they have swung too far round for the line of sight to be out of the line of the wicket. Observe, also, bad bowlers, and you will see a uniformity in their deviation: some bowl regularly too much to the On; others as regularly to the Off. Then, watch their shoulders; and you will recognise a corresponding error in their delivery. The wonder is that such men should ever bowl straight.
Also, adopt a run of from five to seven yards. Let your run be quite straight; not from side to side, still less crossing your legs as you run.
5. “Practise,” says Lillywhite, “both sides of the wicket. To be able to change sides, is highly useful when the ground is worn, and it often proves puzzling to the batsman.”
6. Hold the ball in the fingers, not in the palm, and always the same way. If the tips of the fingers touch the seam of the ball, it will assist in the spin. The little finger “guides” the ball in the delivery.
7. The essence of a good delivery is to send the ball forth rotating, or turning on its own axis. The more spin you give the ball, the better the delivery; because then the ball will twist, rise quickly, or cut variously, the instant it touches the ground.
8. This spin must not proceed from any conscious action of the fingers, but from some mechanical action of the arm and wrist. Clarke is not conscious of any attempt to make his ball spin or twist: a certain action has become habitual to him. He may endeavour to increase this tendency sometimes; but no bowling could be uniform that depended so much on the nerves, or on such nice feeling as this attention to the fingers would involve. A bowler must acquire a certain mechanical swing, with measured steps and uniform action and carriage of the body, till at length, as with a gun, hand and eye naturally go together. In rowing, if you look at your oar, you cut crabs. In skating, if you look at the ice and think of your steps, you lose the freedom and the flow of your circles. So, with bowling, having decided on your steps and one mode of delivery, you must practise this alone, and think more of the wicket than of your feet or your hand.
To assist the spin of the ball, a good bowler will not stop short, but will rather follow the ball, or, give way to it, after delivery, for one or two steps. Some bowlers even continue the twisting action of the hand after the ball has left it.
9. Commence with a very low delivery. Cobbett, and others of the best bowlers, began underhand. The lower the hand, the more the spin, and the quicker the rise. Unfair or throwing bowlers never have a first-rate delivery. See how easy to play is a throw, or a ball from a catapult; and simply because the ball has then no spin. Redgate showed how bowling may be most fair and most effective. No man ever took Pilch’s wicket so often. His delivery was easy and natural; he had a thorough command of his arm, and gave great spin to the ball. In Kent against England, at Town Malling, he bowled the finest Over on record. The first ball just grazed Pilch’s wicket; the second took his bails; the third ball levelled Mynn, and the fourth Stearman; three of the best bats of the day.
10. Practise a little and often. If you over-fatigue the muscles, you spoil their tone for a time. Bowling, as we said of batting, must become a matter of habit; and habits are formed by frequent repetition. Let the bowlers of Eton, Harrow, and Winchester resolve to bowl, if it be but a dozen balls, every day, wet or fine. Intermission is very prejudicial.
11. The difficulty is to pitch far enough. Commence, according to your strength, eighteen or nineteen yards, and increase to twenty-two by degrees. Most amateurs bowl long hops.
12. Seek accuracy more than speed: a man of fourteen stone is not to be imitated by a youth of eight stone. Many batsmen like swift bowling, and why? Because the length is easier to judge; the lines are straighter for a cut; the ball wants little accuracy of hitting; fast bowlers very rarely pitch quite as far even as they might, for this requires much extra power; fast balls twist less in a given space than slow balls, and rarely increase their speed at the rise in the same proportion as slow balls; fast bowling gives fewer chances that the fieldsman can take advantage of, and admits generally of less variety; fewer fast balls are pitched straight, and fewer even of those would hit the wicket. You may find a Redgate, a Wisden, or a Mynn, who can bring fast bowling under command for one or two seasons; but these are exceptions too solitary to afford a precedent. Even these men were naturally of a fast pace: swiftness was not their chief object. So, study accurate bowling, and let speed come of itself.
So much for attaining the power of a bowler; next to apply it. Not only practise, but study bowling: to pelt away mechanically, with the same lengths and same pace, is excusable in a catapult, but not in a man.—Can your adversary guard leg-stump or off-stump? Can he judge a length? Can he allow for a curve? Can he play well over an off-ball to prevent a catch? Can you deceive him with time or pace? Is he a young gentleman, or an old gentleman?—
“Ætatis cujusque notandi sunt tibi mores.”
1. Pitch as near the bat as you can without being hit away. The bowler’s chance is to compel back play with the shortest possible sight of the rise.
2. If three good balls have been stopped, the fourth is often destructive, because the batsman’s patience is exhausted: so take pains with the fourth ball of the Over.
3. The straighter the ball, the more puzzling to the eye, and the more cramping to the hand of the batsman.
4. Short-pitched balls are not only easier to hit, but have more scope for missing the wicket, though pitched straight.
5. A free leg-hitter may often be put out by placing an extra man On side, and bowling repeatedly at leg-stump—only do not pitch very far up to him. Short-pitched leg-balls are the most difficult to hit, and produce most catches. By four or five attempts at leg-hitting, a man gains a tendency to swing round, and is off his straight play.
6. Besides trying every variety of length, vary your pace to deceive the batsman in timing his play; and practise the same action so as not to betray the change of pace. Also, try once or twice a high dropping ball.
7. Learn to bowl tosses and tices. With a stiff player, before his eye is in, a toss often succeeds; but especially practise high lobs—a most useful variety of ball. In most Elevens there are one or two men with whom good round-hand bowling is almost thrown away. A first-rate player in Warwickshire was found at fault with lobs: and till he learnt the secret, all his fine play was at an end.
8. Find out the farthest point to which your man can play forward safely, and pitch just short of that point with every variety of pace and dropping balls. Lillywhite’s delight is by pitching alternately just within and just out of the batsman’s reach, “to catch him in two minds,” Here we have positive metaphysics! Just such a wary antagonist as Lillywhite is described by Virgil,—
“Ille, velut celsam oppugnat qui molibus urbem.
Nunc hos, nunc illos aditus, omnemque pererrat
Arte locum; et variis adsultibus irritus urget.”
Of course aditus means an unguarded stump, and locum where to pitch the ball.
9. A good under-hand ball of two high curves—that is, a dropping ball rising high—with a twist in to leg-stump, and a third man to On side, is very effective, producing both catch and stumping. This is well worth trying, with four men on the On side, even if some great player is brought to win a country match.
10. Most men have a length they cannot play. The fault of young bowlers is, they do not pitch far enough: they thus afford too long a sight of the ball. In the School matches and the University matches at Lord’s, this is very observable, especially with fast bowlers.
11. The old-fashioned under-hand lobbing, if governed by a good head—dropping short when a man is coming out, and sometimes tossed higher and sometimes lower,—is a valuable change in most Elevens; but it must be high and accurately pitched, and must have head-work in it. Put long-stop upon the On side, and bring long-slip nearer in; and be sure that your long-fields stand far away.
12. Lastly, the last diagram explains that curvilinear bowling (the effect of a moderate pace with a spin) gives the batsman a shorter sight of the rise than is possible with the straighter lines of swift bowling. A man has nearly as much time to make up his mind and prepare for Wisden as for Clarke; because, he can judge Wisden’s ball much sooner, and, though the rise is faster, the ball has farther to come in.
Theory of Bowling.—What characterises a good delivery? If two men bowl with equal force and precision, why does the ball come in from the pitch so differently in respect of cuttings twisting, or abrupt rise?
“Because one man gives the ball so much more rotatory motion on its own axis, or, so much more spin than the other.”
A throw, or the catapult which strikes the ball from its rest, gives no spin; hence, the ball is regular in its rise, and easy to calculate.
Cobbett gave a ball as much spin as possible: his fingers appeared wrapped round the ball: his wrist became horizontal: his hand thrown back at the delivery, and his fingers seemingly unglued joint by joint, till the ball quitted the tips of them last, just as you would spin a top. Cobbett’s delivery designed a spin, and the ball at the pitch had new life in it. No bowling so fair, and with so little rough play or violence, ever proved more effective than Cobbett’s. Hillyer is entitled to the same kind of praise.
A spin is given by the fingers: also, by turning the hand over in delivering the ball.
A good ball has two motions; one, straight, from hand to pitch; the other, on its own axis.
The effect of a spin on its own axis is best exemplified by bowling a child’s hoop. Throw it from you without any spin, and away it rolls; but spin or revolve it against the line of its flight with great power, and the hoop no sooner touches the ground than it comes back to you. So great a degree of spin as this cannot possibly be given to a cricket ball; but you see the same effect in the “draw-back stroke” at billiards. Revolve the hoop with less power, and it will rise abruptly from the ground and then continue its course—similar to that awkward and abrupt rise often seen in the bowling of Clarke among others.
Thirdly, revolve the hoop as you bowl it, not against but in the line of its flight, and you will have its tendency to bound expended in an increased quickness forward. This exemplifies a low swimming ball, quickly cutting in and sometimes making a shooter. This is similar to the “following stroke” at billiards, made by striking the ball high and rotating it in the line of the stroke.
Such are the effects of a ball spinning or rotating vertically.
Now try the effect of a spin from right to left, or left to right: try a side stroke at billiards; the apparent angle of reflection is not equal to the angle of incidence. So a cricket ball, with lateral spin, will work from Leg to Off, or Off to Leg, according to the spin.
But why does not the same delivery, as it gives the same kind of spin, always produce the same vertical or lateral effect on a ball? In other words, how do you account for the fact that (apart from roughness of ground) the same delivery produces sometimes a contrary twist? “Because the ball may turn in the air, and the vertical spin become lateral. The side which on delivery was under, may, at the pitch, be the upper side, or the upper side may become under, or any modification of either may be produced in conjunction with inequality in the ground.”
With throwing bowling, the ball comes from the ends of the fingers; why, then, does it not spin? Because, unlike Cobbett’s delivery, as explained, wherein the ball left the fingers by degrees, and was sent spinning forth, the ball, in a throw, is held between fingers and thumb, which leave their hold at the same instant, without any tendency to rotate the ball. The fairer and more horizontal the delivery the more the fingers act, the more spin, and the more variety, after the pitch. A high and unfair delivery, it is true, is difficult from the height of the rise; otherwise it is too regular and too easy to calculate, to make first-rate bowling.
A little learning is a dangerous thing—and not least at cricket. The only piece of science I ever hear on a cricket field is this: “Sir, how can that be? The angle of reflection must always be equal to the angle of incidence.”
That a cricketer should have only one bit of science, and that, as he applies it, a blunder, is indeed a pity.
I have already shown that, in bowling, the apparent angle of reflection is rendered unequal to the angle of incidence by the rotatory motion or spin of the ball, and also by the roughness of the ground.
I have now to explain that this law is equally disturbed in batting also; and by attention to the following observations, many a forward player may learn so to adapt his force to the inclination of his bat as not to be caught out, even although (as often happens to a man’s great surprise) he plays over the ball!
The effect of a moving body meeting another body moving, and that same body quiescent, is very different. To prove this,
Fix a bat immoveably perpendicular in the ground, and suppose a ball rises to it from the ground in an angle of 45° as the angle of incidence; then supposing the ball to have no rotatory motion, it will be reflected at an equal angle, and fall nearly under the bat.
But supposing the bat is not fixed, but brought forcibly forward to meet that ball, then, according to the weight and force of the bat, the natural direction of the ball will be annihilated, and the ball will be returned, perhaps nearly point blank, not in the line of reflection, but in some other line more nearly resembling the line in which the bat is moved.
If the bat were at rest, or only played very gently forward, the angles of reflection would not be materially disturbed, but the ball would return to the ground in proportion nearly as it rose from it; but by playing very hard forward, the batsman annihilates the natural downward tendency of the ball, and drives it forward, perhaps, into the bowler’s hands; and then, fancying the laws of gravitation have been suspended to spite him, he walks back disgusted to the pavilion, and says, “No man in England could help being out then. I was as clean over the ball as I could be, and yet it went away as a catch!”
Lastly, as to “being out by luck,” always consider whether, with the same adversaries, Pilch or Parr would have been so put out. Our opinion is, that could you combine the experience and science of Pilch with the hand and eye of Parr, luck would be reduced to an infinitesimal quantity.
Fortuna fortes adjuvat, men of the best nerve have the best luck; and nullum numen habes si sit prudentitia, when a man knows as much of the game as we would teach him, he will find there is very little luck after all. Young players should not think about being out by chance: there is a certain intuitive adaptation of play to circumstances, which, however seemingly impossible, will result from observation and experience, unless the idea of chance closes the ears to all good instruction.
Chapters ten and eleven omitted. See – here for pdf version