A Christmas Cardus
READING old Defoe the other evening, I was brought up by the following : I would propose that the public exercises of ' our youth should by some public encouragement (for penalties won't do it) be drawn off from the foolish boyish sports of ;, cocking and cricketing, and from tippling, to shooting with a , firelock (an exercise as pleasant as it is manly and generous)." Then came Mr. Cardus's new book on cricket, and Defoe's concluding words transferred themselves at once to that triumphant and matured world, both as it exists in action
and as Mr. Cardus's writings reflect it. I wish Defoe could '• return to be convinced of his error, and to read Mr. Cardus. ' The chief quality distinguishing Mr. Cardus among many contemporaries whose reports on the great games from hour ,
to hour we read with appetite, is best pointed to through his own prefatory note on the essays now arranged. They were of course contributed to the Manchester Guardian, but "written with book publication in view sooner or later.'! That is, they belonged from the first to a vision, or philosophy, of cricket and cricketers which at once gave them large life, control, and a deeper purpose than mere details. But this assertion is not to be misunderstood. In his third essay, " Measure for Measure," Mr. Cardus drives the " humbug of :cricket " right over the pavilion into Greenland's icy moun- tains. He is no trafficker in the cant which has done our rather remorseless game so much harm in partibus infidelium. The effigy of IV; G., after all, is our tribal deity.
As an obserVer of what is 'passing out in the Middle, Mr.' Cardus has long been pre-eminent.- Experience has enriched I his insight, and not - wearied his eyesight either ; where you and I see a stroke made, he perceives also a psychological " signature." He enjoys his:: cricket in two times—the immediate, and the imaginary ; and the thing just done May be to him, and to us who find our way by Iiiimagnetic guidance, the term of a pernianent indiViduAity. When men have attained the technical glory which we see abounding in modern cricket in its higher levels, then this question of personal 'values beeothes ' intense.- Tfiht underlying-contest of will which proceeds round the wickets is interpreted to us by Mr. Cardus with all Mastery of'human nature and prose style. if he continues to add to the said intensity as a spectator apprehend; it, I almost feel as though I should never again dare to witness a Test Match. The adventure already involves such a complexity of considerings; One bowls, fields, bats, umpires—all the lot, in the spirit ; and vet, as Mr. Cardus shows us, the argument has still other acute passions.
Should this problem of a fascinated spectator keep me away, I must hope that Mr. Cardus will long continue his radiant art, by means of which the best of cricket seems at one's command though the fog -.blackens. round. In Good Pays, besides character studies of many great players and free discourses on aspects of the game, this summer's Test Matches are fully recorded (Mr. Cardus's recording being, as I have said, always pregnant with significances). Now, the Tests of 1934 must have appeared to many in the light of a bleak topic. When one was watching the opening Of Australia's second innings at the Oval, with England reduced to appointing. Woolley wicket-keeper (and a great many libels have been uttered on Woolley's fielding !), there could be felt round the ring a glumness, an opinion that the sublime was tumbling into the ridiculous. Weaker spirits rebelled, and only the use of a leg-theory attack cheered them up. Of that mood there is no expansion in Mr. Cardus's history. "For my part," he says at the beginning of the hook, "I revelled in the Test Matches of 1934, and I shall remember the greatness of them all my life." - He is a severe judge of the home side's performances, but his whole work shines with his genius for "getting on with the game."
EDMUND BLuNDEN.
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