A CRICKETER'S LOG.*
THE post-War revival of first-class cricket has astonished its most ardent partisans and it has been marked by an output of cricket literature--instructional, conversational and bio- graphical--on an unprecedented scale. Mr. Jessop is a little late in the field, his illustrations and his matter are not entirely new, but publishers and editors are learning that those who talk and read about cricket have appetites that never fail. And in A Cricketer's Log they will find plenty of the food they love served in a style as unacademic and as full of surprises as the author's batting.
Cricket in the Jessop family, of which Gilbert's arrival com- pleted a full eleven, owed nothing to heredity or to parental encouragement. Gilbert successfully removed the cover from the first ball he received, a painted rubber one, but his effort resulted in a dose of mustard and hot water and other painful correctives. In his early years the game went on in an under- ground passage by candlelight or in a garden eight yards square below the back windows, despite the terrors of darkness and the weight of the paternal hand. At the age of twelve he played for Cheltenham Grammar School as a long-stop and as a bowler the year after. When only fifteen he became a schoolmaster. Every opportunity for net or match practice was eagerly seized— on one occasion he carried his bag eight miles—and the class of cricket in which he played rose steadily. A mastership at Burford brought him in contact with the Smiths of Witney, near Oxford. From "Uncle Bill," the eldest of that family of athletes, he received advice particularly precious to a budding genius, "to stick to one's own style . . . and never to lose sight of the fact that a half-volley was a half-volley whether it came along on a county ground or a village green." A summer term spent at Beccles in Suffolk may well have produced some envious comment from his colleagues : "I arrived at the College the first week in May, and shook the dust of Beccles off my feet in the second week in July. In between this period I enjoyed a pleasant holiday and joined Gloucestershire in their Southern Tour." He had had some fun out of local cricket too, with an average of 138 for thirteen innings and a hundred wickets for 2.5 runs apiece I For the next twenty-one years he was a mainstay of the Gloucestershire team. Two long chapters describe the fortunes of the county in those years, with "W. G." as the hero up to 1900, a dominant figure and an untiring enthusiast to the end, even in his golfing days. We can well believe that Gloucester- shire was a big draw on any ground, but if there is much truth in the saying that "W. G." "built most of the pavilions in England," it is safe to add that a goodly sum was spent in the expectation of seeing Jessop bombard them. At the age of twenty-two Mr. Jessop went up to Cambridge. The only words that suggest his reasons for doing so are these : "Despite the frequent interruptions necessitated by such matters as lectures and chapels—both early and late—I enjoyed my cricketing days at Cambridge." There is nothing in the rest of the book that makes one doubt that this is a serious comment on higher education. For such a great player his record in his four 'Varsity matches is disappointing, a result which he ascribes to over- confidence rather than to nerves.
Mr. P. F. Warner took him on his American tour in 1897, and after reading of his sufferings on the sea one marvels that ho ever went on board a liner again. But he crossed the Atlantic a second time and went with Mr. 3faclaren's team to Australia in 1901-1902. He gives a full and interesting account of the Test matches of these tours and of subsequent Test matches in England in which he took part. The last Test match of 1902 is a seasoning to a book on cricket that no author can omit, and it was a personal triumph for Mr. Jessop. It is regrettable that modesty so often prevents him from referring in any but the briefest manner to what must have been for the spectators the most delectable moments of the day. Fancy passing from his fifty to his century in that match with the words "ten minutes later" I What a ten minutes that must have been and what a volume would have been written if, say, Victor Hugo had been the hero of it I It may be from fear of corrupting the youth that Mr. Jessop gives so few details and not a single illustration of his style. Even the attitude which earned him the nickname of "The Croucher " might be unnoticed were it not that an exceedingly tight pair of trousers borrowed on the
• A Cricketer's Log. By Gilbert L. Jessop. illustrated, London: Hodder and Stoughton. ElOs. net.] spot for a Gentleman and Players match compelled him "to smell less of the pitch than usual."
"A Few Reflections "at the end of the book are full of wisdom. The merits of the "two-eyed stance" as a weapon of defence against the swerve and its drawbacks in restricting offside play are clearly put. The reader will make the obvious deduction that he can to some extent secure the advantages and avoid the drawbacks by altering his stance to suit the bowling and facing the in-swinger more squarely. The brief remarks on dealing with the googly, on the 1.b.w. rule and on the present state of English cricket make us wish for more from one who has been so exceptionally successful in uniting the interests of his side with those of the spectators. Mr. Jessop by his convincing advocacy in the Press did more than any man to introduce the Saturday start, and his " log " is proof that no man better understands the fascination of the game.
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