CURRENT LITERATURE

Hokitika Guardian, 17 August 1926, Page 4

CURRENT LITERATURE

A HISTORY OF CRICKET

It is quite appropriate that at a time when the fight for the “ashes” is exciting such interest “ A History of Cricket.” by Mr 11. S. Althani, should appear. The author himself was a player of standing. He is an Oxford blue, and was formerly a member of the Hampshire eleven. liis knowledge of everything connected with the game is encyclopaedic, and while much of the book covers familiar ground, the opening chapters throw a great deal of fresh light upon the origins of cricket. Mr Altham’s researches prove that they go back much further than is generally supposed. . Ball games have always exercised an irresistible attraction over mankind. Xausica and her maidens, Homer tells us. were practising catching when Odysseus discovered himself to them. But though the pastime was universal, specialisation seems to have set in at a very early date. The ancient Egyptians invented nine-pins, and, a.s is clear from the famous relief, the Athenians hockey. From the Homan “ fives ” (“ pila- palmaris ”) developed all the varieties of racquet games with royal tennis at their head. The Eastern peoples, expert riders, took to hitting the hall with a inallet from horseback. and it was from the East, after the Crusades, that polo reached Europe. The North American Indians threw it from one to another with a forked stick and gave the world lacrosse. The English, if it was large, kicked it; if it was small, they'struck it with tue club which they habitually carried. Thus “club ball” was undoubtedly the forbear of most of- our English hall games. From it sprang on the one hand the* golf group, in which, as in croquet, the ball is driven towards a mark, and, on the other, a group in which it is driven away from the mark when in motion. In the latter - there are several varieties, such as tip-cat, stool ball, cat and dog, and so forth. In some Hoval household accounts in the reign of Edward I. there is a reference to 100 shillings paid out “ for the King’s son playing c-reag and other sports.” Is that the ancestor of cricket? Out of one or other of these games cricket must -have sprung. "We cannot say definitely when it ceased to be club ball and became cricket. The process was gradual; cricket was not born, it “ just growed.” But we know that it was a popular pursuit by 1550. An Elizabethan worthy, alluding to a certain common that had been enclosed mentions that, as a lad, lie and several of his fellows “ did run and play there nt' cricket and other plays.” Also- a Royalist polemic directed against Oliver Cromwell asserts that the future Protector. when -a boy. followed “ a dissolute and dangerous course,” became “famous at football, cricket, cudgelling and wrestling.” and earned for himself “ the name of royster.” And the first record of oversea cricket occurs m 3 076. In that- year Henry Teouge, a naval chaplain, relates that he, with a party from three English warships stationed in the Levant, rode up to Aleppo, pitched a pavilion, and diverted themselves with various sports, including cricket. Toonge seenis to have boon the first of the long line of clergymnn cricketers.

Bnt eri: ket actually “arrived” in the first half of the eighteenth century in Kent, and Sussex. These counties wore the nurseries of English cricket, and their devotion to it sometimes outran discretion. Already in 16-10, t'O are informed that Maidstone is a vci\ profane town, inasmuch as cricket is onenly played there on Sundays; and in 1651 seven citizens of Eltham were each fined the then substantial 'sum of two shillings for the same offence. The .first “county” match was . played in 1719 between London and Kent for £lO a head. Other counties were converted, and such fixtures become common. Big gates, we learn, are hv no means a modern phenomenon. Twenty thousand people witnessed a game between Hampshire and Kent in 1772. Large sums of money were in issue. In 1761 the Old Etonians'played All England for the stake of £I6OO, and it was said that in side bets there was “near £20,000 depending.” As a natural consequence of the introduction of the monetary element into the game, feel-

ing *;flon ran high, and disorderly 'scenes wore not infrequent. The crowd not content with “barracking,” occasionally mobbed the teams. In a Kent and Surrey match in 1762. a dispute arose about a. catch, the players’ came t:> blows, several had their heads broken. and a duel was fought. Mr Altham considers the halcyon age of amateur cricket was between

1860 ami 1880, when "W.G.y; bestrode the game like a Colossus. AVe are apt non" to think of him, primarily as a batsman. But he was one of the most successful howlers of his day, who, .season after season, bagged his hundred or more wickets at a low cost. Between 1870 and 1880 he took 1200 in all at an average of less than 11 runs apiece. In hatting the amateurs continued to dominate the game until the beginning

of tliis century, hut since then there h n s been a marked falling away. In the averages for the season of 1900 eighteen of the first twenty places were filled by amateurs. Tn 192.1 only seven of tire first twenty-five were amateurs. Twenty years or so ago in an English Eleven there were invariably five or six amateurs; in 1926 there are only two. The author regrets the decline in the strength of amateur cricket. He 1 "lieves that it is one of the causes of the slow hatting which is now the rule. The professional whose livelihood depends upon his ability to make runs will not take the same risks. However, the partial disappearance of the amateur is inevitable. In the

changed conditions few are in a position to devote themselves to the game, tor the whole of the summer. And although since the war English cricket has hoen under n cloud. Mr Althnm is not discouraged. Never, ho says, has

f ricket meant more 'to Englishmen than • i moans to-day; ir t morelv the cricket that draws jw*jc throngs to Lord’s or tOral, hut “the o-jokot tlint is much nearer to tlm heart- n f things, the cricket of the village green, of the school fields, of the smoke-palled grounds of the workadav north, the cricket even that Hohbs himself played as a little hov, in the street of a town, with a lamp-post for a wicket.” While that spirit prevails? there is no need to fear for the future of the game in England.