Top People at Lord's
By KENNETH
GREGORY
0 Ti those who have feared for the safety of the Establishment had been at Lord's last Friday, a glance at the marquee shared by the Carl- ton and Cavalry Clubs would have reassuredthem. Everywhere there prevailed an atmosphere of studied opulence. Everywhere save in the arena itself, where the youth of England were not so much on fire as smouldering like November leaves. Eton and Harrow were locked in combat.
As I passed through the Grace gates, it struck me that here alone could one rub shoulders with the top people for four shillings. I thought of a youth called Compton who once sold scorecards at Lord's.
Behind me a florid gentleman in a military warm—the temperature must have been about seventy—was explaining how precarious had been his journey from Camberley. 'But I had to get here for lunch. One's duty, y'know.'
Behind the Pavilion a cleric, his legs as bandy as an inside forward's, was preaching to the world in general and in particular to a lady whose demeanour suggested the had been converted in Edwardian times.
'One must visit the museum, my dear. It's one's link with the past., They have a sparrow inside, killed by a ball. Some Cambridge fellow bowled it . . . an Indian. I dare say he would be a Pakistani now. . . They stuffed the sparrow.'
A spotless Etonian, topper tipped well forward to reveal the ringlets which dropped inside his collar, leaned on his umbrella. Icould have sworn he was criass-gartered. He carried the Melody Maker.
The press box was empty except for PA and The Times. The Telegraph absent on such an occasion? Surely. not. I gathered that Eton's Baskervyle-Glegg had been dismissed early. (I was sorry about this as he was the only hyphenated man playing.) Far away in front of the Tavern some empty coaches shone in the morning sun— were they pulled there by horses or estate cars? Here and there a topper was raised and waved and replaced with practised precision. Suddenly down the steps of the Warner Stand tripped a blonde with the makings of a Briinnhilde and very pink arms. In the middle Harrow bowled and Eton played meticulously forward, umpire Muncer tossed his stones ostentatiously from hand to hand, and a black cat regarded play from deep square leg. Eton were consolidating and The Times decided to watch from behind the bowler's arm.
The cricket was desolate. Yet did not correspon- dents declare recently in our old imperial four- penny that University batting is no longer what it was now that Eton and Harrow do not provide the backbone? Granted Maclaren and Jackson who captained England before the First War were Harrovians. So was Byron. Granted, too, that had Coleridge played cricket he would have bowled leg breaks, and that Tennyson's beard was superior to. W. G.'s. These reasonings were re- buked by a cry of anguish, Eton's Clegg having snicked a ball hard to gully from whose breast- bone it rebounded 'yard or two. The cries of anguish came from Harrow supporters.
At lunch Eton had scored 78 in two and a half hours. True the pitch was slow and the bowling steady, but Eton were batting by a book beyond whose preface they had not progressed. The ball short of a length on the off stump can be thumped square of the wicket if one steps back to make room for the stroke. Step back off the wicket? Not at Eton! Ironical, because their coach Jack O'Connor was not so long ago a quixotic batsman who had been known to put leg theory as bowled by Larwood and Voce to the sword.
The afternoon was glorious. The swirling mass side-stepped one another as though performing some huge and ritualistic dance, its steps studied from birth. This was P. G. Wodehouse set to music by Edward German in an age of skiffle. Bemused, I reflected on the perfection of debs' teeth; encouraged, I searched in vain for a pair of ankles to match. An exquisite gazed proudly at a girl whose fingers rested light as a moth on his sleeve. They walked round the ground four times, their steps growing more nimble the while, their. smiles the happier. Two sleek lawyers argued a case which, one said, should never have been brought, a plump child in pink listened politely to the wisdom of three score years and ten as he discoursed on the work of Henry Moore. Oh! serenely content top people of the island race! At last I saw where the Battle of Waterloo was won. Yet turning to the expanse of green, 1 beheld cricketers whose total lack of imagination told me why our opening battles are always lost.
At 3.50 The Times. having remarked how naked and ashamed he had felt in his lounge suit amidst the Pavilion nobles, noted the sixteenth Harrow bowling change. Shortly afterwards the Daily Telegraph, in tail coat, surveyed the empti- ness of the press box with the eye of one who is accustomed to weddings, Ascot and Lord's and even more to his own magnificence. Can the Telegraph be trying to muscle in on the top people? I looked for the Mirror in a coronet.
Though the crowd at Lord's moved me deeply, the batting—with its five Etonian boundaries in five hours—moved me not at all. When Harrow took over and a batsman hit a full toss to cover rather as an inexperienced grocer might scoop sugar. I could bear it no longer. I fled. Past the two sleek lawyers who had changed their location but not their stance. Past the smiling debs and the hard-mouthed mamas. Past the quavering cleric to the gate. There the plump child in pink was still listening politely to the wisdom of three score years and ten. Then she spoke : 'Daddy dotes on Braque.'
Outside, in St. John's Wood Road, the cars were gathering. One chauffeur was standing rigidly at attention. Several others were at the ready. A pity the Lambeth Conference should have kept the Bishops away. But even without their spiritual aid compromise was reached. The match ended in a draw.
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