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Abstract
For Patrick Morrah, the ‘golden age’ of English cricket came at the dawn of the twentieth century, spanning the two decades between 1895 and 1914 (Morrah, P. The Golden Age of Cricket. London: Eyre & Spottiswoode, 1967). Beginning in 1895 and the burgeoning of the ‘Indian summer’ of W.G. Grace, the game was as popular as ever in the home country, while overseas cricket's influence had spread to all boundaries of Britain's empire. This article will explore the growth of cricket's significance during the latter part of the nineteenth century – a time when within Britain and Her colonies, such as those in South Africa, the game came to symbolise the very essence of English, Victorian society. The article will investigate issues of race, gender and professionalism within the world of cricket as well as those institutions responsible for shaping the sport into the revered and exclusive ‘Englishman's game’.
Notes
1 Sandiford, ‘England’, 9.
2 Sandiford, ‘England’, 9
3 CitationMangan, ‘Series Editor's Forward’, xi.
4 CitationCardus, English Cricket, 9.
5 Quoted in CitationTozer, ‘Sacred Trinity’, 159.
6 CitationWilliams, Cricket and Race, 1.
7 CitationMorrah, The Golden Age of Cricket, 148.
8 CitationChurchill, My Early Life, 97.
9 Morrah, The Golden Age of Cricket, 223.
10 This had not always been the case. Although aristocratic patronage had launched cricket as a major sport, it had always been tempered by support from other classes. The list of members of the White Conduit Club (the effective forerunner of the MCC) in 1784 showed only a third of them with titles or military rank, and this process of dilution continued strongly with the MCC itself through the nineteenth century. CitationBrailsford, British Sport, 90.
11 Brailsford, British Sport, 91.
12 CitationHolt, Sport and the British, 136.
13 See CitationPerkin, ‘Teaching the Nations How to Play’. Birley has suggested that cricket was attractive to the Victorians because of its exclusive ‘code of honour’; ‘part of the punditry of cricket is that it has laws, not mere rules like lesser games. The high code assumes unquestioned adherence to these laws, written and unwritten, to the letter and the spirit’. CitationBirley, The Willow Wand, 20.
14 CitationSandiford, Cricket and the Victorians, 25.
15 CitationSandiford, Cricket and the Victorians, 34.
16 CitationSandiford, Cricket and the Victorians, 54.
17 Of 111 presidents of the MCC between 1825 and 1939, only 16 were neither knights nor peers. Holt, Sport and the British, 112.
18 All the Year Round (conducted by Charles Dickens, 1877), quoted in CitationRayvern Allen, Cricket's Silver Lining, 241.
19 See CitationRoberts, Paternalism in Early Victorian England.
20 CitationGann and Duignan, The Rulers of British Africa, 5.
21 CitationLowerson, Sport and the English Middle Classes, 174.
22 CitationLowerson, Sport and the English Middle Classes, 170.
23 CitationSteel and Lyttelton, Cricket, 357.
24 CitationMidwinter, W.G. Grace, 117.
25 The strength of the amateur ethos relied heavily on the influence of the aristocracy within society. CitationCannadine's The Decline and Fall of the British Aristocracy, describes how this influence may have waned but there was enough momentum to sustain a strong ethic of ‘amateurism’ going into the middle of the twentieth century. Cannadine, The Decline and Fall of the British Aristocracy.
26 See Cunningham, Leisure in the Industrial Revolution.
27 CitationBaker, ‘Whose Hegemony?’, 2.
28 CitationHargreaves, Sport, Power, Culture, 45.
29 CitationHargreaves, Sport, Power, Culture, 35–6.
30 Perkin, ‘Teaching the Nations How to Play’, 216.
31 CitationKnight, The Complete Cricketer, 305.
32 Morrah, The Golden Age of Cricket, 232.
33 CitationLord Hawke, Recollections and Reminiscences, 66.
34 CitationRanjitsinhji, The Jubilee Book of Cricket, 464.
35 The demarcation between amateur and professional cricketer officially ended on 26 November 1962 when the 156-year history of the Gentlemen versus Players contests came to an end. See CitationFrith, The Golden Age of Cricket 1890–1914, 14.
36 CitationBox, The English Game of Cricket, iii.
37 CitationWilliams, Cricket and England, 15.
38 CitationWilliams, Cricket and England, 114.
39 As David Frith explains of the Golden Age: ‘Class distinctions held firm, in cricket as in real life, though it has long been a prime claim for English cricket that it has brought all breeds of men together in a pavilion. This it may have done, creating an additional mystique, but it could never bring about any real fusion of species’. Frith, The Golden Age of Cricket 1890–1914, 12.
40 CitationSandiford, ‘England’, 24.
41 CitationTranter, Sport, Economy and Society in Britain, 1750–1914, 41.
42 Cited in CitationBrodribb, The English Game, 11.
43 The publication of Charles Darwin's On the Origin of Species in 1859 had a marked impact on the Victorians. David Brown, for one, has shown how ‘Social Darwinism’ infiltrated Victorian sport and affected how it was both perceived and played: ‘Moral earnestness and compassionate gentility symbolized ideal qualities which it was deemed necessary for men to possess if they were to be perceived as “men of character” and “decent” members of society’. Through cricket this could be enacted. See CitationBrown, ‘Social Darwinism’, 216.
44 Sandiford, ‘England’, 29.
45 CitationMerrett and Nauright, ‘South Africa’, 57.
46 CitationWinch, Cricket in Southern Africa, 16.
47 The notice read: ‘A grand match at cricket will be played for 1,000 dollars a side on Tuesday, January 5, 1808, between the officers of the Artillery Mess, having Colonel Austin of the 60th Regiment, and the officers of the Colony, with General Clavering. Wickets to be pitched at 10 o'clock’. Cape Town Gazette and African Advertiser, 2 January, 1808.
48 See The Diamond Fields Advertiser, ‘Sport and Pastime in South Africa’, 19.
49 CitationArcher and Bouillon, The South African Game, 81.
50 CitationWarner, Cricket in Many Climes, 176.
51 For a useful examination of the relationship between religion, cricket and empire, see Sandiford, ‘England’, 9–33.
52 CitationGreen, A History of Cricket, 197.
53 For a detailed account of South African cricket around this period, see CitationAllen, Logan of Matjiesfontein.
54 Cited in Holt, Sport and the British, 6.
55 Draft rules of the South African Cricket Association (SACA) were first passed at the inaugural congress of delegates, held at Kimberley on Tuesday, April 8, 1890. See CitationHenderson (ed.), South African Cricketer's Annual. Season 1889–90, 140.
56 Cited in CitationTransvaal Cricket Union, Yearbook 1898–9, 5.
57 Sandiford, Cricket and the Victorians, 44–9.
58 CitationMcCrone, Playing the Game: Sport and the Physical Emancipation of English Women 1870–1914, 42.
59 CitationMcCrone, Playing the Game: Sport and the Physical Emancipation of English Women 1870–1914, 144.
60 CitationPark, ‘Sport, Dress Reform and the Emancipation of Women in Victorian England,’ 17. Many women may have felt empowered by playing cricket: ‘What a glorious sensation it is’ wrote Miss Mitford, in Our Village, ‘to be winning, winning, winning! Who would think that a little bit of leather and two pieces of wood had such a delightful and delighting power?’ Cited in CitationPycroft, The Cricket-Field, 43.
61 CitationPollard, ‘Women as Cricketers’, 121 (capitals in original).
62 CitationPollard, ‘Women as Cricketers’, 121 (capitals in original)
63 Athletic Star, 2 June 1890, 5 and 23 June 1890, 1. Quoted in Sandiford, Cricket and the Victorians, 45.
64 The Cricketer's Annual, Illustrated London News and Buckinghamshire Examiner offered the opinion that the experiment had ‘demonstrated that ladies could play cricket very well’. Sandiford, Cricket and the Victorians, 45.
65 Quoted in McCrone, Playing the Game, 144.
66 Quoted in McCrone, Playing the Game, 144, 200.
67 CitationGrace, Cricketing Reminiscences and Personal Recollections, 219.
68 Sandiford, Cricket and the Victorians, 46. In 1879, the same year that Britain was at war with the Zulus in South Africa, Richard Daft was captaining an English cricket side to Canada and America. In 1893 he wrote Kings of Cricket, a book proclaiming the manly virtues of cricket as the ‘national game’. See CitationDaft, Kings of Cricket, 1893.
69 Sandiford, Cricket and the Victorians, 153.
70 See CitationBolt, Victorian Attitudes to Race, 1971; CitationLorimer, Colour, Class and the Victorians, 1978.
71 CitationHobson, Imperialism: A Study, 159.
72 CitationGordon, Background of Cricket, 157.
73 See Williams, Cricket and Race, 18–19.
74 See Williams, Cricket and Race, 18–19
75 Among these was the South African test cricketer C.B. Llewellyn, who was allegedly coloured and played more than 300 games for Hampshire. Ahsan ul Hak played for the MCC and in three matches for Middlesex in 1902. C.A. Ollivierre, a black West Indian, played 110 matches for Derbyshire between 1901 and 1907. Mehta, who had played for the Parsees, became a professional with Lancashire in 1903 though he never played for its senior teams. Williams, Cricket and Race, 20.
76 In 1996, Cricketer International described Ranjitsinhji as ‘perhaps the most enduring emblem of that luxurious cricket before the carnage of the First World War’. Cricketer International, 35.
77 A Rajput aristocrat, he had been adopted at an early age by the Jam Vibhaji of Nawanager as heir to the throne. But following an internal struggle he was ousted from the succession and sent to Cambridge to continue his ‘education’ overseas.
78 Williams, Cricket and Race, 22.
79 Quoted in CitationWilde, Ranji, 134.
80 CitationArlott, Rothmans Jubilee History of Cricket 1890–1965, 40.
81 This famous book represents a general treatise on cricket, conceived on a grand scale and containing chapters on every aspect of the game. It had since been suggested that the real author was C.B. Fry. In the prefatory note to the book, Ranjitsinhji in fact pays tribute to the assistance he received not only from Fry but from W.J. Ford, Professor Case, Dr Butler (Master of Trinity College, Cambridge), A.J. Gaston (a Sussex journalist), as well as other writers on county cricket.
82 From a speech quoted in CitationPridham, The Charm of Cricket Past and Present, 15.
83 Williams, Cricket and Race, 32.
84 Morrah, The Golden Age of Cricket, 32. Jackson has been described by Morrah as a ‘many-sided man of wide interests, and a thorough-going amateur to whom cricket was a recreation and a relaxation’. Williams, Cricket and Race, 168. He was typical of the age.
85 See CitationBirley, Land of Sport and Glory, 158; The Willow Wand, 96.
86 Sandiford, ‘England’, 11.
87 Box, The English Game of Cricket, 72–3.
88 Quoted in CitationPodmore, ‘Public Schools Matches’, 60.
89 CitationAltham and Swanton, History of Cricket, 119.
90 Quoted in Holt, Sport and the British, 76.
91 CitationCook, Character and Sportsmanship, 72.
92 Perkin, ‘Teaching the Nations How to Play’, 212. Demographically, leaving aside Eton, Harrow and Winchester, these public schools catered more for the upper middle class – the sons of the clergy and the higher professions who looked not to business but to professional and government service for their future careers.
93 Anthony Kirk-Greene links athletic ability in the public schools to the shaping of the ideal British Imperial administrator. There is a ‘direct link,’ he suggests, ‘between the rites de passage of a British public school and the self-discipline of fair play … between the system of school prefects and the principles of indirect rule … An important key is to be found in understanding the role and relevance of sport in the making of our-man-on-the-Imperial-spot’. CitationKirk-Greene, ‘Badge of Office’, 180, 191.
94 CitationGurdon, ‘Public School Cricket’, 31.
95 See for example, , Athleticism in the Victorian and Edwardian School; ‘Imperialism, History and Education’, 1988.
96 CitationTaylor, ‘Play Up, But Don't Play the Game’. 78 (italics in original).
97 Athletic News, 15 July 1876, 4. Cited in Taylor, ‘Play Up, But Don't Play the Game’, 78.
98 In July 1914, less than a month before the start of the Great War, Hornung had characteristically chosen ‘The Game of Life’ as the title for one of his last school sermons; ‘… the way we played for our side, in the bad light, on the difficult pitch, the way we backed up and ran the other man's runs; our courage and unselfishness, not our skill or our success; our brave failures, our hidden disappointments, the will to bear our friend's infirmities, and the grit to fight our own: surely, surely, it is these things above all others that will count, when the innings is over, in the Pavilion of Heaven’. E.W. Horning quoted in Chichester, E.W. Hornung and his Young Guard, 31–7. Cited in Tozer, ‘A Sacred Trinity’, 17. This was typical of the cricket–war rhetoric preached within Britain's public schools since the days of the Boer War.
99 From the Uppingham School Magazine, September 1900, 265. Cited in Tozer, ‘A Sacred Trinity’, 18.
100 See CitationNewsome Godliness and God Learning, 1961. The success of their teachings must be viewed against the backdrop of a general decline in religious conviction. In 1851, for example, a survey indicated that 40% of Britain's population were regular churchgoers. During the time of the Boer War, 50 years later, the figure had fallen to around 25% and as low as 20% in the cities. Birley, Land of Sport and Glory, 178.
101 Sandiford, ‘England’, 20. Most notably, the Reverend Charles Powlett was the founding member of the Hambledon Club while the Reverend James Pycroft, a curate of Dorset from 1856 to 1895, gave his long life to reading and writing about cricket after having played for Oxford against Cambridge at Lord's in 1836. For 30 years he was a member of the Sussex County Cricket Club committee. Reverend Archdale Palmer Wickham was wicketkeeper for Somerset between 1891 and 1907 while Revered A.R. Ward was hugely influential in the development of first-class cricket at Cambridge University. Cardinal Manning, before his ordination, also represented Harrow against Eton and Winchester. Strikingly, between 1860 and 1900, one in three Oxbridge cricket blues (209 amateur players) took holy orders, of which 59 played county cricket. CitationMarqusee, Anyone but England, 69.
102 Sandiford, ‘England’, 21.
103 CitationBaucom, Out of Place, 155.
104 CitationGreen, Wisden Anthology 1864–1900, 5.
105 Quoted in Brodribb, The English Game, 122.
106 Reverend James Pycroft, cited in Brodribb, The English Game, 11.
107 See CitationScott, ‘Cricket and the Religious World in the Victorian Period’, 134–44. For Keith Sandiford, ‘it is significant, in analysing the late-Victorian frame of mind, to notice that Waugh chose to write about cricket rather than soccer and thus his Christians were [virtuous] batsmen and not bowlers [Satanic and devious]. He adopted, in other words, the Victorian habit of glorifying the bat at the expense of the ball, while also supporting the popular view that soccer lead to too many emotional excesses’. Sandiford, Cricket and the Victorians, 36.
108 Sandiford, ‘England’, 28.
109 CitationGemmell, The Politics of South African Cricket, 200.
110 CitationBradley, ‘The MCC, Society and Empire’, 27.
111 Ranjitsinhji, Jubilee Book of Cricket, 365, 462.
112 Citation The Times . The M.C.C. 1787–1937, 5–6.
113 Quoted in CitationColdham, Lord Harris, 109.