CRICKET’S APPEAL TO WRITERS

Sun (Auckland), Volume III, Issue 873, 17 January 1930, Page 14

CRICKET’S APPEAL TO WRITERS

The Game In Literature iWritlcn /or Th« Sun.] ry>HE presence ol an M.C.C. team [ in New Zealand is an incentive /or our young men to see visions, and our old men to dream dreams. There is a subtle magic in the three initials, for they spell for most of us the birthplace of cricket. The M.C.C. is the repository of all cricket lore since the days when cricketers wore tall hats, and the best English side would be satisfied with a grand total of 70. . . 1 must write as a proselyte at the gate, for though I have been past Lord’s by omnibus or on toot a hundred times i have never penetrated that sanctuary itself. I imagine, however, that somewhere within those ample pavilions is housed a library wherein you may find the game treated scientifically, imaginatively, and sentimentally. To attempt a comprehensive survey of cricket literature is totally beyond the scope of this present sketch, everyone knows that two such widely differing novelists as Pickens and Meredith have treated cricket imaginatively. Mr K. V. Lucas has probably written of the game from every angle. Mr J. L. Garvin, with whom he was associated on the "Outlook,” once said of him that he possessed a paste and scissors mind of the first order. To such a mind cricket offers an irresistible lure.

The cricket statistician stands apart from all other statisticians. The ordinary atatisticians, if one is to believe Mr A. A. Milne, takes his figures sadly. Witness the gentleman in the bowler bat in his comedy “Belinda.” Mr Milne has himself written of cricket both in prose and verse. The poets of the game may roughly be divided into three classes, the lyrists, the parodists, and the perfervid rhymaters. To the former class belong Sir Henry Newbolt and Francis Thompson, to the latter William Pemtier Reeves. When Mr Reeves's muse goes a-holidaying the result is a steep descent from the sublimities of "The Passing of the Forest.” The books upon cricket by cricketers are legion. Perhaps the two most famous are those of W. G. Grace and K. S. Ranjitsinghi. The latter was written, when Ranji was still an undergraduate at Cambridge. His prospective publisher sent someone in whose literary ability he trusted to form Ranji’s style. This emissary discovered, however, that Ranji had nothing to learn from him. He was as graceful with the pen as he was with the bat. The school story, of course, hulks most largely in the fiction of < ricket. Instances spring to the mind hv the score. Of course, the most obvious are the passages in "Tom Brown’s School Days," and in H. A. Vachell's Harrow romance “The Hill.” ■ir Alec Waugh, a passionate devote* of the game, who represents the authors in their annual match at Lords against the actors, has a passage in “The Loom of Youth,” which is as instinct. with poetry as anything that lias been written of the game. He writes of cricket elsewhere in his later novels. He is happier when writing of the game than when writing of ladies’ dinner menus.

One must not forget "Punch” in a consideration of the literature of cricket. "Punch.” of course, is a repository of social history, and most of us are familiar with the little books iihat have been issued from the fam-

ous office in Bouverie Street from time to time. We have had Mr Punch on the golf links, Mr Punch in the hunting field. Therein have been reproduced the best jokes and the best pictures from Leech to Du Maurier from Du Maurier to Baumer. and so ,n. I think I can recall Mr Punch on the cricket field. He is wearing a coloured cap. and his cricket shirt tactfully accommodates the inevitable bump. One cricket joke from “Punch” will suffice. The farmer had lent his field to the village club, and as a quid pro quo had been sent in to bat. He was bowled. “You're nut” he was informed. "Oil, am IT” he replied. • Then out you go from my field.” This brief consideration may lead others m recall the best passages on the game to be found among books. There Is one book, however, that is always pregnant with the romance of cricket, and that is an empty scoring book. One turns over the virginal pages, surveys the neat little squares each of which will same day epitomise the history of an over. From such a microcosm the play spreads outwards. Someone has compared the empty s* age of a theatre to a meerschaum pipe. It is coloured with the enthusiasms of yesterday, and of yester year. But an empty scoring book speaks of Beulah, the land of promise. He who turns its pages looks forward, not backward. One cannot tell whether Mr Gilligan contemplates a volume such as his predecessor Pelham Warner wrote. Of the making of books there is no end, but there is room *0 spare for another one on cricket. C R ALLEN.