Out-door Games: Cricket and Golf/Chapter 3
EDWARD GOWER WENMAN.
CHAPTER III
County Cricket
In another chapter I have traced in some degree the development of the game as regards play. I will now try and show how the game has developed from what I may call the social side. Cricket is now a very serious affair; the struggle for supremacy among counties has reached a pitch of gravity that seems remarkable, considering that many counties are made up of players gathered in from all parts of England. Why an Oval crowd should be so desperately keen to see Surrey win a county match when Nottingham, Yorkshire, Kent, Cambridgeshire, Suffolk and Middlesex, have at different times been drawn upon to make up the Surrey eleven seems incomprehensible, but it is a fact. Human nature, as Squeers said, is "a rum un'," and I can't explain it. It is the same in football. I have seen 20,000 people in Birmingham in a frenzy of excitement when Aston Villa played Everton or West Bromwich Albion, but the Aston Villa Club is and has been recruited from clubs in Lancashire, Yorkshire, Scotland, and the Midlands, and I really believe that only one or two genuine Birmingham men have in some years played for their best eleven. So long as Surrey and Aston Villa are called by their respective names, that is enough. The real inhabitants, the crowd, will be quite satisfied.
It is this intense keenness of crowds that has far-reaching effects—the public want to see their side win, and they pay their money gladly in the hope of having their wish gratified. This same public, however, will not continue their payments if their side instead of winning matches lose them, and nobody knows this better than the gentlemen who form the Committee of the County Club. The Committees are made up of men who are genuine residents of the county which gives its name to the miscellaneous eleven who represent it. They are probably, though not by any means certainly, fond of cricket; some of them have been players of more or less note in their time, others are wealthy men who may possibly never have touched a bat in their lives, but who, nevertheless—and this is one of the most curious features of the game—are in the habit, in the case of struggling counties, of making large pecuniary sacrifices to help their county.
The Committee have then to adopt every means in their power to win matches. If they are rich, like Lancashire or Surrey, they very likely employ agents to scour the country in search of bowlers—bowlers being usually the commodity counties are in want of. Every young bowler of about twenty years of age, who knows that he is possessed of skill in this department, is on the look-out to represent a first-class county. If he lives in such a county he will be selected at the beginning of a season to play for the colts against the county eleven; and if he is sufficiently skilful, he may of course be retained by his own county and in due time represent them. But after all, only a limited number of Yorkshiremen, for instance, can be kept or retained by their Committee, and so it comes to pass that there are sundry young bowlers of less skill on the look-out for a job; this then is the opportunity of other counties, especially those in the South of England and Lancashire. The young professional may be seen by agents or offer his services to a particular Committee; he is probably brought up at the county's expense to be tried, and if found sufficiently good a sort of bogus qualification is given him, which qualification I may say is not bought for him at the player's own expense, but at the county's.
This is the system which is now in vogue among cricketing counties. I don't pretend to say that I think it is the best system, or one without very serious drawbacks. It is very far from possessing the interests or the esprit de corps which the old Hambledon farmers must have felt when Hambledon village played All England; but it is a growth of the nineteenth century, and I suppose, like many other things, express trains, &c., have something to do with its having sprung into existence. Whatever the reason may be, I believe at present only Nottingham and Yorkshire are the two real genuine county elevens, though very possibly Derbyshire might also be included. Sussex is represented by Staffordshire, Lincolnshire, India, Australia, and Nottingham; Surrey, by Yorkshire, Cambridgeshire, and Nottingham; Middlesex, by Yorkshire and Australia. Truly a remarkable state of things! I have said before, however, that this strange fact in no way damps the enthusiasm of a county's supporters; crowds throng to see the matches, and the zeal of the spectators to see their side win is only equalled by the industry displayed by the Committee in scouring the country for promising professionals.
Now what about the amateur? A first-rate county plays about sixteen matches in the course of the season: no counties, if the amateur is of sufficient skill, like the amateur to be absent from any one match; they want their best eleven, and they must have it at any price! In other words, an amateur, if he wishes to back up his Committee, must give up the whole of the four months to the game as completely as a professional; it follows from this that he must be so keen himself that he is glad to play every day of the season, and either be of sufficient means to be able to stand the expense, or else, not being of sufficient means, he must have his expenses paid. Thirty years ago, there would hardly have been found an amateur who would have gone through the hard work and grind of such a season, and in those days expenses were not paid to any calling themselves amateurs. Here is another stage of development which I for one cannot pretend to say I either like or consider wholesome. I will deal with this subject in another chapter, but in writing of county cricket it is necessary to mention it.
It follows from what I have said that the most successful counties are, and must be, those in which large gate-money is the rule; the sinews of war for a county are not native cricketers, but money, money, money! Surrey, Yorkshire, Lancashire, Middlesex—these are the four counties which prosper, in the same way as in football it is Aston Villa, Everton, Liverpool, and Manchester.
The bright side of this picture is that the cricket is of first-rate quality. There is a chance for every really good cricketer to find some county to provide him with an opportunity of distinguishing himself, and every year more and more close and fine matches are being played. The struggle for supremacy has never been greater than it is now, or more keenly fought out. Every run, every over, every wicket is noted, tabulated, and scored in decimal figures. The public all follow these figures if they understand them; they applaud hugely when the thousandth run is scored by some batsman, or the hundredth wicket secured by some bowler; telegrams are being sent all over the country almost every hour, and the result of each day's cricket and the performance of this or that individual is discussed in cottage, palace, bar parlour, and kitchen, eagerly, and in some cases acrimoniously.
There are signs that some abuses may be remedied in the near future, and the question of qualification is one. Formerly, all that was necessary to qualify for a county was for a room to be taken in the name of the player, in respect of which rates were assessed and levied. The player himself need never see the room, and he never paid the rates; he might even all the time be playing for another county. Lancashire, I believe, always did give a more genuine qualification. There are in that county many large towns and many cricket clubs: these clubs want professional cricketers to bowl to their members and to play League matches on Saturday afternoons; accordingly a professional cricketer is engaged by all these clubs, who thus acquires a more or less bonâ-fide qualification on the ground of residence. It is true that he probably goes to his own home in the winter, but for the four or five months of the spring and summer he resides in the town where his club ground is situated, and though this is not complete, it is some sort of residential qualification.
There are other sorts of counties where another state of things exists; in such counties as Glamorganshire and Norfolk, Devon and Dorset, amateurs are to be found, who are glad and willing to play perhaps five, six, or seven matches in the year, generally of two days only, against another county of the same calibre. Such matches in old days used to be played between Worcestershire and Herefordshire, and now Bucks plays Herts and Devon plays Dorset.
These matches are very pleasant; the wickets perhaps are not quite so good as Brighton or the Oval, but this is entirely an advantage, as it enables matches frequently to be finished in two days. There is good-fellowship and friendship between the amateur members of the teams; each side is keen to win, but there is not the stress and strain of a first-class county match; there are no telegrams sent; the scoring is not reckoned in averages, and the cricket is altogether of a more light-hearted description. They are more of the nature of club matches, such as formerly were played between Town Mailing and Benenden, or Montpelier and Clapton. I should be sorry to see these matches discontinued; they are to those who see them excellent reminders of what cricket used to be before modern excrescences had been allowed to grow. There is one drawback, and that is, that if a real native professional of high merit and skill be found in these counties, instead of devoting the remainder of his life to his native county, he is tempted away by the magic gold of Surrey, Lancashire, or some other first-class county. He has got to earn his living, and it is not in human nature that he should refuse an opportunity of earning five pounds a match twice in the week, to say nothing of a prospective benefit at the end of his cricket career.
But such players do not often make their appearance, and even if they do leave their native county, it does not prevent the amateurs still enjoying themselves, and with the little or no expense that they are willing enough to pay, a county club such as this can easily find enough money to keep a ground, pavilion, and groundman, which is practically all that is wanted.
Some of these counties are not reckoned first or second class; they have no League system of registration of points; and second class counties such as Herts are in somewhat an unsatisfactory position, for they are too often nothing but feeding-ground for the rapacity of the rich first-class counties to gorge their appetites on. The real danger of county cricket is that genuine amateurs will become fewer and fewer, for they will not bother themselves to give up so much time as first-class counties require.