Sporting Aspects
All-Rounder
By J. P. W. MALLALlEU ECONOMICS have had a lot to do with Yorkshire's controlled passion for cricket. Our villages are built round mills rather than farms and two handred weavers can find work on a space which would not keep even two farm workers busy. Hence our villages are concentrated instead of scattered, they have populations of thousands instead of hundreds and immediately round them there are plenty of open spaces ready for cricket instead of agriculture. In a Yorkshire village, therefore, there is no question of having to wait for the vicar to finish a wedding or for the Squire's two young sons to come home from school before you can make up an eleven. It is not possible for Yorkshire village children to live long without hearing the sound of bat on ball or seeing their elders at play. They absorb cricket almost with their mothers' milk and within a few years are impatiently claiming a place in one of the three, four, even five teams run by their village. It is not surprising, in such an atmosphere, that to the majority of Yorkshire boys cricket seems one of the important things of life. A. A. Thomson says that in his childhood when the great George Hirst was omitted from a 1902 Test Team, ministers of religion publicly prayed that the scales might fall from the misguided selectors' eyes. Thomson is a Scotsman but he came into Yorkshire at his most absorbent age and has never looked back. He played cricket, he watched cricket, he read about cricket, he wrote about cricket. When today he snatches a half day from the office, his boss says: " Why shouldn't the poor fellow go to Lord's for lunch ? I don't believe in attacking a man on his religion." This was only half a joke, for Thomson says that as a child he imagined that the Almighty looked like Lord Hawke sitting on a green and gold cloud. Indeed he backed his opinion by quoting that line " pavilioned in splendour." Now he has written a new book, Cricket. My Pleasure,* which will not only warm the hearts of Yorkshiremen, who will look into it as into a mirror, but may even thaw the hearts of less civilised people who think that cricket is only a game. The most obvious characteristic of this book is its would-be partisanship. Yorkshire is all that matters. Thomson will admit that there are good non-Yorkshire cricketers—C. B. Fry, for instance. But he hated Fry because Fry made such- large scores against Yorkshire. As always, however, the partisan- ship begins to mellow. He does not, in the •end, regret that Yorkshire has let so many promising players go to other counties. In fact he regards all this as one of the greatest missionary efforts among the heathen since Saint Augustine. 'Further, and almost against his will, he finds himself lured by the magic of Ranji or the technique of Hobbs until he admits them, with nine Yorkshiremen, into his ideal England team. Another obvious characteristic of the book, and of all cricket fans, is the worship of past heroes. Some of these heroes Thomson never even saw. But just as George the Fourth finally convinced himself that he was present at the Battle of Waterloo, so Thomson has come to believe that he was present at Test Matches which were, played before he was born. So some of the men who stand out most prominently from these pages are men whose playing days ended long ago, men whom I can remember only by those early photographs with three potted aspidistras where the slips should be. There is Tom Emmett who bowled all one afternoon and as he limped, dripping, from the field demanded to know why the Captain had not given him a rest. Tom had forgotten that, " as no gentleman was available," he him- self had been made Captain for that match. There is Kortright who bowled so fast that one ball bounced straight over the pavilion rails for six byes. There is Walter Brearley
* Museum Press, 12s. 6d.
who, having annoyed the crowd by appeals for 1.b.w., broke the batsman's stump with his next ball and, carrying the two halves to the ring, shouted to the crowd: " Well, was that out ? " There is David 'Hunter, kindly, courteous David, stumping a victim_ almost with reluctance and always saying " good afternoon " as the man left for the pavilion. There is Bosanquet denying that his googlies were unfair. They were, he said, merely immoral : and always, throughout the book, there are George Herbert Hirst and Wilfred Rhodes.
But are these men really old ? As long ago as March 3rd, 1904, when the England team he led had just won the Ashes, Plum Warner said: " This is the golden evening of my cricket career." Yet only this week I stood beside this same Plum Warner on the terrace of the House of Commons and thought not of evening but of midsummer. Great cricketers are indeed without age. Thomson talks of Arthur Wood, who, having watched three successive, balls shave the stumps, said to the batsman: " Have you ever tried walking on the water ? ". He talks of Macaulay—oh no, for once he is referring to the historian. He talks of Hutton, of Compton, of Lindwall, of Miller and these men are no older, no younger, no less and no more alive to him than were the heroes he never saw.
Recently Thomson asked George Hirst what he thought was the best, thing in cricket. Hirst replied: " Why, being an all-rounder of course. When you're both a batter and a bowler you enjoy yourself twice as much." Thomson is him- self an all-rounder—player, spectator, reader, and writer. He has enjoyed himself four times as much and all his enjoyment has poured into his book.
But in grown-up years he has been living in the South and I detect an ominous softening. When in 1926 Yorkshire failed to win the Championship for the first time in five years, his step-uncle Walter was distressed. " Ah _well," said Thomson, " Yorkshire can't win every time." " Why not ? " asked' his step-uncle Walter. I'm on Walter's side there. If Thomson doesn't watch out he'll have his daughter supporting Essex.
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