Cricket

CRICKET. The origin of the word, as applied to the most important of British games, is still the subject of much dispute. The New English Dictionary (vol. v. 1893) somewhat hesitatingly identifies it with the French "criquet," first met with in a manu script dated 1478 which reads—"Le suppliant arriva en ung lieu ou on jouit a la boulle pros d'une atache on criquet:" this "criquet," Jusserand, in his Les Sports dans l'ancienne France, defines as "un baton plante en terre, qui servait de but dans une des formes du jeu." The conclusion of the New English Diction ary seems based on the argument that no reference to cricket so early as this was to be found in our own literature, and that in cricket one certainly did bowl at a mark. The Century Dictionary adopts the same view, and as long ago as 1671 Stephen Skinner, in his Etymologicae Lingua Anglicanae had explained cricket as "Ludos, a Franco Gallico `crosser,' hoc ludo exerceri, `crosse,' baculus ille obliquus quo pueri ludunt." Against this view it may be said (i.) that an argumentum e silentio is never convincing; (ii.) that in all the major and many varieties of club-ball, e.g., hockey, golf, bandy, even in the Frenchman's own La Crosse, the game takes its name from the striking implement and not the mark; (iii.) that the Latin peoples adopted and developed the racket as opposed to the club variety of ball games (the crosse is itself a modification of the racket) ; and finally (iv.), that even if in the 15th century the French were playing at cricket in our sense of the term, it is at least as possible that in the four cen turies' intimate contact between the two peoples, they should have learnt it from the English, as the English from them.

It seems better to follow Dr. Johnson, himself probably fol lowing Junius (1589-1678), in deriving cricket from "cryce, Sax. —a stick," though his definition of the game as "A sport at which the contenders drive a ball with sticks in opposition to one another" is less worthy of respect. Gouldman (1664), Strutt (1742-1802) and Skeat (1835-1912) also subscribe to this deriva tion. There was certainly in the parent Nordic tongue a syllable beginning with "cr," ending with a hard "c," having for its middle letter every variety of vowel, and meaning a staff or stick: cf. the Psalterium Davidis version of verse 4, Ps. xxiii., "Gird thin and cricc thin me frefredon"; the word still survives in Cornwall and Devon in the sense of hedge sticks. The termination "et" is itself a common enough diminutive suffix, cf. pocket, and tippet; the game would then, in harmony with golf, hockey, bil liards, bandy, take its name from its weapon of attack, a little staff, stick or bat (cf. the Parliament of Bats and Wycliffe's version "Then came they with swerdis and battis") : a "little" bat for a reason that will appear later.

Early References.

Cricket, like much else in English history, was not born, but slowly evolved itself as a specialized variety of the generic club-ball. Various authorities have tried to identify its infancy with the Scottish "Cat-and-Doug," with stool-ball, or with a I 5th century game "Handyn or Handoute" : but Cat-and Doug was a species of tip-cat, not specifically referred to as a game until 1688 when cricket had already a local habitation and a name : stool-ball was a cousin to cricket, but a younger one and of the weaker sex, an adaptation of the country-boys' game for the dairymaids' use. The claims of "Handyn or Handoute" be cricket's parent rest solely on the opinion of an i8th century lawyer: commenting in 1766 on the Statute 17 Edw. IV. c. 3 which banned with heavy penalties the said game as one of those detrimental to the practice of archery, he says : "This is perhaps the most severe law ever made against gaming, and some of these forbidden sports 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 retained in that game." Such a coincidence is surely far too slender to support his deduction: it would, incidentally, be far more appropriate to rackets, in which game both terms still survive intact.

For the practice of cricket in its elementary form of club-ball there is pictorial evidence as early as the middle of the 13th century (Chronique d'Angleterre, depuis Ethelbert jusqu'a Hen. III.), and again in a ms. dated 1344 No. 264 in the Bodleian library and as part of the illumination to a decretal of Pope Gregory IX., circa 123o (British Museum, Royal mss. io E iv.). This latter has been reproduced in postcard form and is on sale (No. i I of Set 58) at the British Museum. The first written reference to the game is possibly to be found in an extract from the wardrobe accounts of the 28th year of Edward I.'s reign which, written as was customary in Low Latin, speaks of certain sums disbursed by his chaplain on behalf of the young Prince Edward "ad ludendum ad creag' et alios ludos." It is, at least, arguable that the word "creag" was an attempt to reproduce phonetically a French version (Piers Gaveston was a Gascon) of the native cric- or crig- et, the termination being represented by the ' as was the scribe's practice.

Be this as it may, cricket was being played by boys of the free school of Guildford in or about 15 5o : for in 1598, John Derrick, then aetat. 59, giving evidence before a jury, testified in so many words to his having played there as a boy himself at "crickett and other plaies." (History of Guildford, 1801, p. 202.) In 1598 the London edition of Giovanni Florio's A World of Words defines "squillare" as "to make a noise as a cricket, to play cricket-a-wicket, and be merry" ; in 1611 Randle Cotgrave's A Dictionary of French and English translates "crosser" as "to play at cricket." Sir William Dugdale (born 1605) refers in some royalist propaganda to Oliver Cromwell as indulging in his youth in "cricket and football," and as acquiring "the name of royster." John Timbs (b. 18oi ), on the enthusiastic but rather dubious authority of the Rev. Lisle Bowles (b. 1762), refers in his School days of Eminent Men to Thomas Ken, in his first week as a scholar at Winchester (Jan. 165o) as "attempting to wield a cricket bat." To support this statement there is evidence for the game being played by Winchester scholars on "Hill's" as early as 1637 (vid. the Latin poem by Robert Mathew included in A. K. Cook's About Winchester College) .

In The Life and Death of Thomas Wilson (16 7 2) George Swin nock tells us how that Puritan divine (16o1–?16S3) went far to convert Maidstone to the proper observance of the Sabbath, though that was "formerly a very profane town insomuch as I have seen morrice dancing, cudgel playing, stool-ball, crickets and many other sports openly and publicly on the Lord's Day." In 1654 the churchwardens and overseers of Eltham fined seven of their parishioners for playing cricket on the Lord's Day. Four years later there is a ludicrously lugubrious reference to a cricket ball in The Mysteries of Love and Eloquence by John Milton's nephew, Edward Phillips. There appears to have been a cricket club at St. Albans as early as 1666, and ten years later comes the first reference to cricket overseas in the diary of Henry Teonge, chaplain to H.M.S. "Assistance," who records how in May of that year some of the ship's company rode up from Antioch to Aleppo and there "did in a fine valley pitch a princely tent and divert themselves with various sports including `Krickett'." Already, in 1668, the proprietor of the Ram Inn, Smithfield, had been rated for a cricket ground; in 1699 the author of A Worlde Bewitched is lamenting that cricket in summer "will be very much in fashion" ; by 1707, Chamberlayne's State of England has been forced to include cricket among the people's recreations and in 172o, the Rev. John Strype, editing Stow's Survey, has followed suit.

Organization and Development.

The first definite match of which there is record is to be found in The Post-Boy of March 1700, billed to take place on Clapham Common. In 1707 London plays as such, and in 1719 "the Londoners" meet "the Kentish men" in what is virtually the first county match, London being synonymous with Middlesex. There seems no doubt that for the first half of the i8th century, Kent enjoyed the cricket as cendancy, though Sussex had a great cricket nursery in Slindon, and a great champion in Richard Newland, captain of "England" in 1744, and cricket tutor to Richard Nyren, the head and right arm of the famous Hambledon club. Surrey, too, encouraged by the patronage of Frederick Louis, prince of Wales, often pressed Kent hard : Hants is first mentioned in 1728, but though Glouces ter appears to have played the game as a county in the same year, and half a dozen other counties had taken the field well before the end of the century, there is no doubt that the greatest enthusiasm and the most expert skill was concentrated in London and in the enclave of the Weald. This was the veritable home of cricket where it had first been developed from the haphazard play of boys with, in all probability, much variant and local custom, into the systematized and serious game of men. Here, on the short turf of the open downs and the meadows of the Inner Weald, it was discovered by Society, when Society, during the Commonwealth, found London uncomfortable and withdrew to its country seats, and from here it was transplanted at the Restoration, partly to the home grounds of its great patrons, the Vine, at Sevenoaks, belonging to the Sackvilles, Bishopsbourne Paddock, near Canterbury, Sir Horace Mann's ground, and per haps at Goodwood park, where the second and fourth dukes were very great patrons of the game. In London great matches were played on all the southern commons from Chelsea to Clapham, on the White Conduit fields, near King's Cross station, and Lamb's Conduit fields, near the Foundling hospital. But by far the most famous cricket centre was "The Artillery Ground," Finsbury, where the H.A.C. still play to-day. In the middle of the i 8th century it seems to have been leased, at least for cricket purposes, to a certain George Smith, host of the "Pyed Horse" inn who settled the gate, normally 2d. but occasionally raised to 6d., did good business over luncheons, dealt faithfully with a gate sometimes, it is said, amounting to 20,000, and numbered among his patrons many of the most distinguished gentlemen in the land. Here was played on June 18, 1744, the famous match Kent v. All England, the first game of which the full score is preserved, the first to be enshrined in Scores and Biographies and celebrated by the well-known heroic poem by James Love (alias Dance) (see Ashley-Cooper's edition published by Richards of Nottingham) .

The enthusiasm for the game shown by many of the most prominent men of the day, naturally provided a target for the criticism of political opponents and moralizing pedants : Pope and Soames Jenyns both echo this note, whilst in 1778 a bitter lampoon, "The Noble Cricketers," was levelled at the earl of Tankerville and the 3rd duke of Dorset. Much more deserving of censure were the heavy stake-money and side-bets that more often than not depended on big matches, but in a betting age cricket could not escape. The crowds were often disorderly and violently partisan, but could probably bear comparison with some at, e.g., Sydney, a century and a half later.

The next, and an important stage, in the game's development was marked by the rise of the famous Hambledon club. For long celebrated by cricket historians as the "cradle of cricket," this little Hampshire village, some seven miles S.W. of Petersfield, must now resign the title to the hamlets of the Eastern weald and of an earlier day. But glory enough remains : here on the smiling shoulder of Broad-Halfpenny Down (the historic site is now the property of Winchester college and, we may hope, secure from violation), and later on Windmill Down, much closer to the village, the Hambledon club which, it is only fair to say, cast its net as far afield as western Surrey, for 3o years challenged and held at bay all comers: indeed, in June 1777 they beat a repre sentative England XI. by an innings and 168 runs. This phe nomenal ascendancy owed something to the eager activities of its greatest patron, the Rev. Charles Powlett, and of its first captain, nay "general," Richard Nyren, but resulted in the main from the coincidence in the area of some dozen men of extra ordinary cricket genius, whose profound influence on the evolu tion of the game's technique will be studied in another place. Fortunate, too, was the club in its historian, John Nyren, Rich ard's son; his Cricketers of My Time, together with The Young Cricketer's Tutor, edited by Cowden Clarke and published in 1833, are the first prose classics in cricket's literature.

The Hambledon club played its last recorded match in appropriately enough at Lord's. This, the acknowledged Mecca of all cricketers, was first opened as a private ground for the benefit of certain members of the White Conduit club by Thomas Lord, a man of Yorkshire stock whose family had lost their con siderable property in the '45 and who had himself become ground bowler to that club. Lord had the backing of the earl of Win chelsea and Charles Lennox, subsequently fourth duke of Rich mond, two of cricket's greatest patrons; his first ground was rented from the Portman family in the then almost wholly rural district of Dorset Square : in 1809, on Portman proposing to raise the rent, Lord removed to a new ground, part of the St. John's Wood estate, belonging to the Eyre family, but f our years later, with the proposed Regent's canal threatening the site, he removed again to the present situation : in each case he relaid the original Dorset Square turf, enclosing his newest ground with a high fence and building on it a pavilion and a tavern. The Maryle bone club, which has always made its home at Lord's, was founded in 1788, and that its authority was from the start accepted as paramount is proved by its revision of the laws in the first year of its existence.

For half a century, at least, the M.C.C. was the great match making agency in cricket, inviting subscriptions from its members to meet match expenses, and advertising the games in advance at the chief London social clubs. County cricket for long owed its existence to the patronage of local enthusiasts: the days of the regular country cricket club were not yet. Most of the big matches were still played for money and were a field for heavy wagering by professional backers, even the famous Crockford and Gully being sometimes visible with less distinguished "legs" in front of the pavilion at Lord's. With a close match the first consideration, games were constantly arranged at odds, whether of numbers or of given men. Single wicket matches also excited great interest, and at intervals challenge games were played for a so-called single wicket championship : with the laws governing single wicket favouring the fast bowler and hard hitter, it is not surprising that Alfred Mynn in the '3os should have stood facile princeps.

In 1836 the first North v. South match was played, clear evidence of the spread of cricket : as a matter of fact, Nottingham was playing Sheffield in what was for long a local test match, as early as 1771; and the M.C.C. visited Nottingham 20 years later. Notts. first took the field as a county in 1835 and Yorkshire in 1833: Leicester, Norfolk, with Fuller Pilch as a native, and Cambridgeshire soon followed their lead. The missionary efforts of the M.C.C. began in 1846, to be seconded by the touring cricket of the All-England eleven, a team representing the flower of English cricket, mainly professional, but including one or two of the leading amateurs, the organization and maintenance of which over a period of years was due to the business enterprise of the great Notts. bowler, William Clarke. This eleven played all over the country and were the focus of attraction wherever they went, winning to knowledge and appreciation of the game whole dis tricts where hitherto it had been unappreciated or undeveloped : their matches were the great trials of budding talent, and many a young professional was discovered and launched on a successful career through the medium of the "A.E.E." The success of Clarke's venture, and possibly his close-fistedness, led in 1852 to the secession of some of the leading professionals and their formation, under the management of John Wisden and Dean of Sussex, of the United All-England XI. These two elevens virtually monopolized the best cricket talent in the country, and the annual match between the two at Lord's, on Whit Monday, first played in 1862, continued for nearly 20 years to be voted the great event of the season. Eventually they had both to give way before the rising tide of county cricket.

County Cricket.—The origin of county cricket may be found in the local antagonism of eastern and western Weald : with the adoption of the game by the "gentry" and its rapid systematiza tion, we can trace successive county supremacies enjoyed by Kent (circa 175o), Hampshire (178o-9o), Surrey (179o-181o), when William Beldham and William Lambert, the two greatest players of their day, made the county a yearly match for the Rest of England; Sussex (circa 1825), thanks to their round arras bowlers, Lillywhite and Broadbridge, and the great Kent XI. of the '3os and '4os when With five such mighty cricketers 'twas but natural to win, As Felix, Wenman, Hillyer, Fuller Pilch and Alfred Mynn.

With the approach of the '6os the balance of power began to move northwards: an explanation may in part be found in the numerical advantage of the industrial areas, now enlightened by the missionary work of the past two decades, partly to the fact that the system of home piecework, in the days before the big mechanical looms, allowed the operatives so to adjust their work ing week as to make time for both practice and matches. From this time such places as Sutton-in-Ashfield and Lascelles Hall begin to appear as apparently inexhaustible mines of cricket talent.

Surrey, first organized as a county club in 1845, had under F. P. Miller, and thanks to the prowess of Caffyn, Stephenson, Lockyer and George Griffith, enjoyed a renewed ascendancy in the late '5os and early '6os, but in between '67 and '7o Yorkshire, with a wholly professional eleven including a very great fast bowler in Freeman, had been thrice rated as champions. The county championship proper is generally reckoned to date from 1873, when the M.C.C. first laid down rules governing county qualification : in the next five years, Gloucestershire, owing almost everything to the Grace brothers, E. M., W. G. and G. F., were three times champions, but it was another ten years before the honour again came south. The '8os were a great decade for Notts., for whom Shaw and Attewell were marvels of bowling accuracy, Barnes and Flowers two fine all-rounders, and William Gunn and Arthur Shrewsbury the greatest- professional batsmen of the age. In 1887 the headship passed to Surrey, under the leadership of J. Shuter, and between that year and 1895, that county was eight times at the head of the table. The great Surrey bowlers were Lohmann, Lockwood and Richardson, the latter of whom actually took over i,000 wickets in four consecutive home seasons, 290 in 1895, a record till 1928 when Freeman of Kent took 304. The batsmen were the amateur W. W. Read, and the professionals M. Read, Abel, Brockwell, a dashing player and, at the end of the period, T. Hayward, who became the best professional batsman in England and played in the classic style.

Yorkshire, after a very lean period, now enjoyed a great revival in which they owed much to their captain, Lord Hawke ; unlike the great majority of their rivals, their eleven consisted almost entirely of native-born men and its success evoked proportionately greater enthusiasm in the county : at the top of the table in '96 and '98, they were again champions for the first three years of this century, and once more in 1905. Always strong in bowling, Yorkshire had a remarkable sequence of slow left-handers in Peate, Peel and Rhodes : the last mentioned, who first appeared for his county in 1898 and who is still playing, has taken more wickets in first-class cricket than any other man in the game's history : George Hirst, a fast left-hand bowler and vigorous right handed batsman, particularly strong in the hook and pull, was a man of great personality and unbounded energy : the only crick eter who has ever taken 200 wickets and made 2,000 runs in a season (208 wickets and 2,385 runs in 1906), he was the greatest force in the eleven and has strong claims to be considered the best all-round professional cricketer who has yet appeared. Other good Yorkshire bowlers were E. Wainwright and Schofield Haigh, the latter a bowler of deadly "break-backs." There was a great opening pair of batsmen in Brown and Tunnicliffe, whose partner ship of 554 against Derbyshire in 1898 is still a record for the first wicket, and a brilliant, adventurous stroke-player in Denton. Of the amateurs by far the most distinguished was F. S. Jackson (governor of Bengal, 1927-32) : captain of England in 1905, Jackson was always, when he could find time to play, a batsman of extraordinary gifts and unbounded confidence : the bigger the occasion the better he played ; he was also a very good medium paced bowler. Another fine all-round amateur was E. Smith. It is arguable that the Yorks. XI. c. 5900, were the strongest county side that has yet been seen.

In the last 12 years before the war the championship was won by six different counties, a variety of fortune that was excellent for the game's welfare, and in which no victory was more popular than that of Warwickshire in 1911. The first county outside the Big Six (Yorks., Lancs., Notts., Kent, Surrey and Middlesex) to win the honour for 34 years, Warwick owed her success in great part to the brilliant all-round play of her young captain, F. R. Foster. The most consistent success in this period, however, fell to Kent, who were champions in 1906, '09, '10 and '13. Blest in her beautiful grounds and a fine county cricketing tradition, and owing much to her quondam captain, Lord Harris, Kent at this time played most attractive cricket : J. R. Mason, a very popular captain, gave place about 1906 as the all-round force of the eleven, to an even greater in Woolley, then a good slow bowler and still a most graceful and effective batsman who enjoys the unique distinction of having played in 52 consecutive test matches. Among many fine amateur batsmen, K. L. Hutchings was con spicuous, but the main match-winning forces were Fielder, a fine fast bowler, and Colin Blythe, a wonderful artist with his left hand slows: in August they were reinforced by D. W. Carr, at this time the one reliable "googly" bowler in England.

Surrey, with Hayward and Hobbs in wonderful batting form, and a hard-working and fast bowler in Hitch, carried off the honours in the curtailed 1914 season. When county cricket was resumed in 1919, it was amid such misgivings that the ill-advised experiment was made of confining championship matches to two days, but all doubts as to public interest were soon set at rest, attendances and enthusiasm for the game being greater than ever. Naturally enough, after so long an interregnum, the standard, especially in bowling, had seriously fallen away, and though the war had not depleted the ranks of the professionals as much as might have been anticipated, a great part of a generation of amateurs was lost to the game. After Yorkshire had won the first post-war championship, Middlesex scored two most popular successes in the next two years. She owed much to the captaincy of P. F. Warner, an admirable batsman and one of the shrewdest and most enthusiastic cricketers, to the batting of Hendren and to the all-round cricket of J. W. Hearne, a younger relative of J. T. Hearne who, 20 years before, had been the best medium-paced bowler in England. In 1922 Yorkshire regained the leadership and retained it for the following three years, actually winning in the period 81 championship games as against six losses. With Rhodes enjoying as a bowler an Indian summer of extraordinary success, two other good left-handers in Kilner and Waddington, a good spin bowler in Macaulay and a "swinger" in Robinson, the Yorkshire attack was in a different class from any other county's. The body of her batting was not perhaps as strong as in the great years 1900-02, but in Sutcliffe and Holmes she had an opening pair whose partnerships for the first wicket have now passed all records. So inevitable was Yorkshire's supremacy beginning to appear that the game was all the better for its interruption by the advance of Lancashire who, with a well-balanced side almost ex clusively professional, ended at the head of the table in 1926, '27, '28, '3o and '34. Notts. won the championship in 1929, and Yorkshire re-established herself at the head of the table in 1931, '32, '33 and '35.

County cricket to-day commands as much interest as ever, but the competition is becoming increasingly prof essionalized ; the number of amateurs who are able and willing to play regularly is decreasing, and a more or less settled personnel is important to a team's success. The expenses of county clubs are heavy and though Yorkshire, with a membership of over 6,000, has no financial anxiety, a wet season such as 1927 can land the majority in difficulties; their share distributed by the M.C.C., in the profits arising out of tours in Australia and test matches at home, is an important item in their budgets. In Nov. 1928, the Advisory County Cricket Committee decided that each county must play 28 matches. It also abolished the system of percentages in favour of point scoring. With 17 counties now competing, it is impossible for them all to play each other, and no really satisfactory system of point counting has yet been evolved ; the first-class season is overfull and the best English bowlers certainly suffer from over work. Some are quite naturally tempted away into the League cricket which spreads an enthusiastic and highly-organized net work over much of the industrial area from Stoke to Durham; the cricket here is fiercely competitive, and the bowling, for the most part in the hands of professionals, one of whom may play for each club, is of a high class. Conversely, the leagues often furnish recruits to the northern counties.

There is a subsidiary division of 23 second-class counties, and in this competition the majority of players are amateurs, except in the case of the second elevens of some first-class counties who use it as a training ground for their young professionals. Since its official recognition in 1901, Staffordshire, with six championships, leads the field, a success due almost entirely to the phenomenal bowling of Barnes, the England bowler of 1911-12.