How many great cricketers have learned their trade on Parker's
Piece at Cambridge Tom Hayward was one of them; Jack Hobbs is another; even Ranji used to play there on occasion, though his natural home was Fenners. Today Parker's Piece is as bespattered with cricket pitches on a Saturday afternoon as Regent's Park, and all the odds are that at least one of the hundred or so players who will be dotting the green with white from May onwards may one day be fighting for the ashes at Lord's or Old Trafford or Sydney or Melbourne. He may even, though this is less likely, get, like Hobbs,_a double-column in The Times on his seventieth birth- day—a sense of values which I heartily endorse. For Hobbs is one of the great cricketers of history, and cricket history is a great thing in itself. He is among the immortals who have scored 3,000 runs in a season; he retired when only three short of 200 centuries. As opening batsman with Hayward for Surrey, or with Sutcliffe for England, who that has seen him will forget him ? He brought character to cricket—and what is cricket, or any other sport, without " the rigour of the game."
* * * *
Previous page
