i am willing to leave to other and more skilful hands the pleasure of narrating the joys and trials of county cricket, club cricket, and the splendid cricket of country houses and village greens. not that my task is the more modest, for, having a just regard for relative values, i think that it is of cricket i write, such cricket as small boys play in dreams (ah, me, those sixes that small boys hit in dreams!); such cricket as the ghosts enjoy at nights at lord’s. it is well for the eye to take pleasure in shining flannels and ivory-white boots; there is a thrill in the science of the game, the swerve of the new red ball, the quick play of the batsmen’s feet; but i think that when good cricketers die it is not to such elaborate sport as this that they betake themselves in the happy playing-fields. to mow the astonished p. 113daisies in quick retort to the hardly gentlemanly sneak; to pull like mr. jessop because one knows no better; to be bowled by every straight yorker; to slog at full pitches with close-shut eyes; thus and thus only is the cricket of arcadia.
in its simplest form we played it in the garden after dinner, but even here environment and our imaginations combined to make it complicated. the lawn was small, and there were flower-beds and windows to be considered. the former did not trouble us very much; indeed, we lopped the french lilies with a certain glee, but a broken window was a more serious business, and lofty drives to the off were therefore discouraged. yet once, i recollect, the ball was sent through the same window three times in an afternoon. of course, the unfortunate batsman who allowed his enthusiasm thus to outdrive his discretion was out, as also was he who hit the ball into the next garden. but this latter rule was rather conventional than imposed by necessity, for we were fortunate in the possession of a charming neighbour; and sometimes youth, p. 114adventuring in search of cricket-balls, would be regaled with seed-cake and still lemonade, and return rampant to his comrades. but the great zest of our games lay in our impersonation of real famous cricketers. we would take two county sides, and divide the r?les of their members amongst us, so that each of us would represent two or three members of each team. the score-sheets of these matches would convey a strange impression to the erudition of the new zealander. for the greatest cricketers failed to score frequently, and, indeed, inevitably if they happened to be left-handed bats. so far our passion for accuracy carried us, but, like tom sawyer, we had to “lay on” that we bowled left-handed when it was in the part, while realistic impersonations of lightning bowlers were too dangerous to the batsman to be permitted.
these great contests did not pass without minor disagreements. the rights of age were by no means waived, and in those days i was firmly convinced that the l.b.w. rule had been invented by the m.c.c. to assist elder brothers in getting their rights. moreover, p. 115there was always high argument over the allocation of the parts of the more popular cricketers. my sister, i remember, would retire wrathfully from the game if she were not allowed to be k. j. key, and so, when surrey was playing, we had to permit her to be titular captain. girls are very keen at cricket, but they are not good at it. or perhaps in the course of the game “w. g.” would find it necessary to chase lockwood all over the field for bowling impudently well. yet while we mimicked our elders we secretly thought olympian cricket a poor, unimaginative game without any quarrels. it was thrilling to bat for the honour of mr. fry, or to make a fine catch in the long field for mr. mason’s sake, but our personal idiosyncrasies also had their value.
when we went away for our holidays it was ours to adventure with bat and ball on unaccustomed grounds: meadow cricket was tiresome, for the ball would hide itself in the long grass; and seaside cricket, though exhilarating, was too public a business to be taken really seriously. but cricket in the pinewoods was delightful—almost, i p. 116think, the best cricket of all. the soft needles made an admirable pitch, and we had all the trees for fielders. if you hit the ball against a tree full-pitch, you were out, and it was strange how those patient, silent fieldsmen, who never dropped catches, seemed to arrange themselves, as the game progressed, in the conventional places in the field. point would be there, and mid-off, and some safe men in the slips. overhead the birds would call in the trees, and there were queer echoes when you hit the ball hard, as though pan were watching from some dim pavilion and crying his applause. really i wonder how we dared, or perhaps it were fitter to wonder why we dare no longer.
the oddest cricket i ever played was with a gardener, a reticent, impassive man, who came and played with me when sudden mumps had exiled me from my holiday-making comrades. he would bowl to me silently for hours, only parting his lips now and again to murmur the name of the stump which he proposed to hit with his next ball, and no efforts of mine could prevent his grim prophecies from being fulfilled. when i gave p. 117him his innings he would pat my widest and most wily balls back to me politely until he thought i was tired, and then he would let me bowl him. this unequal contest was not cricket as i knew it, but it fascinated me nevertheless. at night in my bed i would hit his bowling all over the world and upset his stumps with monotonous ease. by day i could only serve his humour. the devil was in the man.
the bats with which we played were normal save in size, but the balls varied. in times of prosperity we had real leather cricket-balls, but the balls known as “compos” were more common. when new they had a noble appearance, but use made them rough and like dry earth in the hand, and then they were apt to sting the fingers of the unwary cricketer. the most perilous kind of ball of all was the size of a cricket-ball, but made of solid rubber, and deadly alike to batsman and fieldsman. for some reason or other the proper place in which to carry a cricket-ball was the trousers, or rather knickerbockers, pocket. the curious discomfort of this practice lingers in the p. 118mind. soft balls are of no use in real cricket; but if you bore a hole in them and fill them with water they make very good bombs for practical anarchists.
later came school cricket, but it is significant that the impression that lingers is of the long drives home in the dusk from out-matches rather than of the cricket itself. we would walk up the hills to rest the horses, playing “touch” and imprisoning unfortunate glow-worms in wooden matchboxes. and later still came visits to lord’s and the oval, when it was my fortune to see some of our old heroes in the flesh. certainly they made more runs than they had been wont to do in the past, but— it is not wise to examine our heroes too closely, though i am not alone in thinking that first-class cricketers are lacking a little in the old spirit. indeed, how can they hope to keep it, they who are grown so wise?
