HOW many hours during the year, I wonder, must we spend over our Wisden? A great many surely, so many, indeed, that we cannot help thinking how small is the literature of cricket. Only two shelves out of thirty. There are one or two novels, Willow the King, A. A. Milne’s The Day’s Play, a few of Mr Lucas’s Essays, the complete works of P. F. Warner, W. J. Ford’s Middlesex Cricket, Lord Harris’s Lord’s and the M.C.C., a few volumes of reminiscence, one or two textbooks, P. G. Wodehouse’s delightful Mike, The Hambleden Men, and Neville Cardus.

Poor stuff, too, for the most part. The literature of cricket can be divided into two categories. There are the books by men who understand cricket but do not know how to write, and the books by the men who know how to write but do not understand cricket. In the course of a year many books and stories dealing with the game are published, but only rarely in a generation comes combined the sportsman and the man of letters. Whom have we to-day: P. G. Wodehouse; but he prefers to write of golf. A. A. Milne; but he is dabbling in grease paint. E. V. Lucas; but so rarely nowadays. Neville Cardus; yes, the only one, the only genuine one, perhaps. The first man to make literature out of cricket. His essay on Tom Richardson; his description of Maclaren leaving the field for the last time at Eastbourne; his “Greatest Test Match.” They were written for the columns of a daily paper, but there is literature in them, real prose, real melody, real emotion. He is alone, though, Neville Cardus.

Hardly any poetry has been written about the game. There is Thompson’s “Oh, my Hornby and my Barlow Long Ago,” and there is a quantity of verse, pleasant jingly stuff of the drinking-song variety, the best of it valedictory, such as Andrew Lang’s “Beneath the Daisies Now They Lie.” But the few attempts that have been made at serious poetry have not been fortunate. Edward Cracroft Lefroy, for example, to whom cricket appealed chiefly as an Æsthetic spectacle, included in his catalogue of the physical attributes of a bowler the

which is not only poor verse but proves on the part of the author an inadequate knowledge of the no-ball rule.

But perhaps verse is not a happy medium through which to express an enjoyment of cricket. Phrases like “unwary shin” will intrude themselves, and, although Pindar used to celebrate with equally appropriate ardour the feats of generals and of athletes, the very idea of commemorating in heroic couplets Woolley’s two great test-match innings at Lord’s seems ridiculous. We have grown so accustomed to reading accounts of cricket matches in the prose style of the sporting press that any other treatment is impossible. Perhaps Mr Masefield will one day attempt an epic of the fifth test match at the Oval, but I doubt if it would be a success. It would be a quaint performance, as though one were to walk down the Strand in court dress of Jacobean cut. The jargon of a cricket report is unsuited to heroic verse, but it is indispensable. If, for instance, we were informed that Hendren,

we should not be very much the wiser. We should prefer to learn of such a tragedy in straightforward narrative: “Hendren hooked Mailey to the on-boundary twice in succession; but, in an attempt to repeat the stroke to a ball that was pitched farther up to him and that went away with the arm, he was clean bowled.”

Indeed, A. E. Housman’s “On an Athlete Dying Young” is the best serious poem that can be said to interpret any side of cricket, and that poem is written to a runner. But it is universal, for it contains the tragedy of all professional sport:

Contemporary reference to any cricketer no longer playing is made in the past tense, “Tarrant was ...”; and how many of the enthusiastic Ovalites who recall so eagerly the great days of “Locky and Brocky” pause to consider that their hero is still alive?

The lack of prose literature dealing with cricket is, however, as surprising as it is deplorable. For a hundred years ago the game must have been able to supply an intriguing background for a novel. Lord’s was like Paddington recreation-ground, and, when there was no match, the public were allowed to hire a pitch there for a shilling, a sum that included the use of stumps, bat, and ball; there were no mowing machines then, and the grass was kept down by a flock of sheep, which was penned up on match days. On Saturdays, four or five hundred sheep were driven on to the ground on their way to the Smithfield Market. And then half a dozen small boys would run out and pick out any long grass or thick tufts that were still left. It is not surprising that there were shooters then. And never since the days of the gladiators can there have been such wholesale bribery and corruption as there was in the days of Lord Frederic Beauclerk.

Enormous bets were made. Matches were played for stakes of one thousand guineas a side—in those days no small sum, and professionals found it hard to live on their pay; indeed, they made little effort to; and in big matches where a lot of money was at stake it was not uncommon to find one side trying to get themselves out while their opponents were trying to give them easy balls to make runs off. Indeed Lord Harris tells a story of how two professionals had a dispute at one of the annual general meetings at Lord’s, and in the presence of the noble lords of the M.C.C. such questions as “Who sold the match at Nottingham?” and “Who would bowl at anything but the wicket for Kent?” were bandied about to the consternation, Lord Harris says, “of some of those present who had lost their money contrary to all calculation on the matches referred to”! There were few newspaper reporters then, and things could be done at Old Trafford news of which would come tardily to Lord’s.

The only persons who appear to have remained incorruptible during these early days are, strangely enough, the umpires. Perhaps they put too high a premium on their honesty, and the bookmakers found it cheaper to have dealings with the players, or perhaps there was a general conspiracy of silence, no one being sufficiently without blame to cast a stone. At any rate, the interpreters of the law seem to have given satisfaction, and they can have had no easy time. For it was during these years that the code of rules under which we play to-day was compiled. And it was compiled in a most haphazard fashion. No committee sat over a table and weighed every possible contingency and interpretation of the laws. The authorities were worthy fellows, but lazy and unimaginative. They drew up a rough code and waited for things to happen. If any particular practice began to cause a nuisance they were prepared to put a stop to it. In the meantime let the wheel turn.

It did turn, and often with uncomfortable complications. At one time, for instance, in the days when there were only two stumps, a hole was cut between and beneath the wickets, and when a batsman completed a run he had to pop his bat into this hole. If the bowler succeeded in popping the ball there before the bat the batsman was run out. It was found, however, that bat and ball would often arrive in the hole simultaneously, with sad results to the bowler’s fingers; and often enough, when a fieldsman had anticipated the bat, the defeated player would take what revenge he could by driving his bat upon the knuckles of his conqueror. After a certain number of fingers had been broken the authorities thought fit to substitute for the hole the present popping crease.

Much the same thing happened in the case of leg-before-wicket. As pads were not then invented, and as the ball was delivered with much rapidity, it had never seemed likely that any batsman would, with deliberate intention, place his unprotected legs in the path of a hard ball. But one day the cricket world was thrown into consternation by the tactics of one Ring, who placed his body in front of the wicket in such a way that it was impossible for him to be bowled out. His shins became very sore, but his score became very large. This gallant act of self-sacrifice for the good of his side did not win the admiration it deserved; it was described by a contemporary writer as “a shabby way of taking advantage of a bowler,” so that when Tom Taylor adopted the same tactics the bowlers “declared themselves beaten”: a leg-before-wicket rule was drawn up, and another opportunity for Spartan courage was lost to an effeminate age.

The rules were altered to suit each fresh development. And when we remember the manifold and barbarous practices of that day, we cannot but shudder when we try to imagine what fearsome and horrible atrocities must have taken place before the rule about “obstruction of the field” was invented. Cannot we picture some burly butcher skying the ball to point and then, in order to save his wicket, rushing at the fieldsman and prostrating him with his bat? Cannot we see the batsman at the other end effecting a half-nelson upon the bowler who was about to catch his partner? The laws of Rome were not built up without bloodshed, nor were the laws of cricket. What opportunities for humorous narrative have been lost!

If only there had been some naturalistic writer who would have collected laboriously all these stories and made a novel of them. If Zola had been an Englishman we could have forgiven him his endless descriptions of gold-beaters and agricultural labourers, if one of the Macquarts had been a professional cricketer and one of those interminable novels had reconstructed the cricket world of his day. If only the caprice of things had allowed George Moore to spend his early years near a cricket field instead of a racing stable.

But even those few novelists who have included cricket in their panorama of the period appear woefully ignorant of the management of the game. What a sad mess Dickens made of it, and how well he might have done it! How entertaining Mr Winkle might have been behind the wicket: what sublime decisions he would have given as an umpire! But, no: Muggleton play Dingley Dell, and the great Podder “blocked the doubtful balls, missed the bad ones, took the good ones and sent them flying to all parts of the field,” which is surely the most quaint procedure that any batsman has ever followed; and as a climax Dingley Dell give in and allow the superior prowess of all Muggleton, apparently before they have had their own innings—an action without precedent in the annals of the game.

And so it has happened that our one complete picture of the Homeric days has come to us not from the novelists, the official recorders of the hour, but from John Nyren, who wrote without any thought of posterity a guide-book for the young cricketer. There are some books that, like wine, acquire qualities with the passage of time, and for us to-day the Cricketer’s Tutor possesses a value that it did not have for those in whose service it was written. To the young blood of 1840 it was merely a manual, a sort of field service regulations; to-day it is a piece of literature; it interprets a period; it reveals a personality.

As we read John Nyren’s advice we can see how the game was played in 1820 on rough pitches, without pads, in top hats, and with a courage the extent of which may be gauged from the instructions that he gives to long-stop:

In those days we learn that spectators were patient folk who sat on backless seats, drank porter, smoked long pipes, and made bets about the match. There was leisure then, and John Nyren believed that the batsman should wait to make his runs till bowler and fieldsmen were exhausted:

The random batsman: it is an adjective we find often in the Cricketer’s Tutor. For Nyren had an intense hatred of unskilled success. Cricket was to him an art the technique of which could only be mastered after an elaborate apprenticeship. He distrusted the short cut, and we find him the most bitter opponent of the young idea. He is the eternal Tory of yesterday, of to-day and of to-morrow. And he is very human to us as he stands on the brink of change uttering his solemn warning. For it was towards the end of his career that round-arm bowling was introduced, and it is hard to realise the revolution this caused in the world of sport. It made as much stir and roused as many bad feelings in its own province as its contemporary the Reform Bill. This bowling was described as the “new march of intellect—style,” and in 1827 three matches were played between Sussex and England to test the merits of the two methods. The county won the first two matches, and the nine professionals on the England side were so incensed that they signed a formal petition “that we, the undersigned, do agree that we will not play the third match between all England and Sussex unless the Sussex bowlers bowl fair—that is, abstain from throwing.” And the great Mr Ward, when asked his opinion, said, “I can only say cricketers are a peaceable class of men. With this bowling I never see a match that might not end in a wrangle.”

John Nyren was its most fierce opponent, and it is rather pathetic to read his violent and ineffectual protest. This invention would ruin cricket. He saw a new game that would lack the grace and skill of the game as he and his friends had played it. The ball would come so fast that the batsman would not have time to prepare for it.

And he goes on to state his belief that if the present system be persisted in a few years longer “the elegant and scientific game of cricket will develop into a mere exhibition of rough, coarse horse-play.”

What would he say if he could return to the pavilion at the Oval, and see Hitch bowling at how many miles is it an hour, and Hendren hooking him to the square-leg boundary? And the last paragraph of his protest is that of every man since the beginning of time who has seen his day pass, his heroes overthrown, and a rash, irreverent generation in their place.

A forlorn figure, trusting so simply in the permanence of a static world.

It is sad to think how quickly that world has passed, and how effectively the machinery of our industrial system has already taken cricket to itself. Nyren’s game is no longer the entertainment of a few. It has become part of the national life, and probably, if the Bolshevists get their way here, it will be nationalised with the cinema and the theatre and association football. It is hard to find much in common between the old men who smoked long pipes and drank strong porter and watched Mr Haygarth bat three hours for sixteen runs, and the twenty thousand who flock to the Middlesex and Surrey match because the newspapers have told them to, and who barrack any batsman who plays through a maiden over. Indeed, on those big days, I do not think that you find there the survival of the old enthusiast. You will find him rather on a cold morning shivering at the back of the mound, on the third day of a match that is certain to be a draw, when there are only a couple of hundred spectators. No one knows why he goes there. He will be very cold. He will not see particularly good cricket. Professional batsmen will play for a draw in the most professional manner. The fielding towards four o’clock will grow slack, and half an hour before the end the captains will decide that it is no good going on, and that they might just as well draw stumps. Your old man in the mound knows that this must happen. But he goes there all the same, and at three o’clock he buys an evening paper to read an account of the match and he sees that the reporter says: “Hardstaff was beaten and bowled by a yorker.” And the old man will chuckle, knowing that it was a half-volley and that Hardstaff hit over it. And in January, when he reads through his Wisden, he will put a tick against that match, with the others that he has seen, and he will add them up and find that he has spent five more days at Lord’s this year than he did the year before. He will remember how his grandfather used to talk to him of Fuller Pilch; and he will smile, knowing the superiority of Hendren. And he will continue to watch cricket as his grandfather watched it on cold days as well as warm, when a draw is certain and when there is a chance of a great finish. One day he believes the professional batsmen will fail, there will be a collapse and a sensational victory, and only two hundred people will have seen it. He knows that many matches are played in the year and that very few of them yield great finishes, and he knows that the only way to make sure of the big occasion is to go there whenever stumps are pitched. And it is of him that we must think when we would reconstruct the cricket world of 1830.

For Nyren was the Homer of cricket and the Homeric days have passed. In 1923 the soil is no longer virgin. Cricket is a different game, and for the novelist it is less intriguing. There is no betting, there is no dishonesty, and, though we hear whispers of the questionable diplomacy of the northern leagues, it would hardly be possible to invent a cricket story with a credible villain. Nat Gould found no difficulty in writing a hundred novels of the racecourse; it is extremely difficult to write one of the cricket field. No scope is provided for dramatic narrative. Cricket in the lives of most of us is a delightful interlude—pleasant hours in pleasant company; and we do not take our success or failure very seriously. At school it is important: caps and cups are at stake, positions of authority go to the most proficient; and it so happens that the only great cricket story of recent times is a school story, P. G. Wodehouse’s Mike. But apart from school it is hard to find in cricket a motive of sufficient strength to allow of the development and presentation of dramatic action. On the racecourse large sums of money are at stake. On the success of a horse may depend the future happiness of the hero and the heroine. But I doubt if the result of a cricket match has in recent years ever involved much more than the temporary loss or gain of personal prestige. In Willow the King J. C. Snaith chose a cricket match as the setting for a summer idyll, but the author of Brooke of Covenden would hardly rank that story highly among his many very considerable achievements. The moment for the great cricket novel has passed: irrecoverably perhaps. And in the winter months we find ourselves returning as of old to a few books of reminiscence and to our long yellow-backed, tattered row of Wisden, and of the two we find Wisden the more companionable.