Page:Cricket (Hutchinson, 1903).djvu/486

362 Something of this kind possibly still exists in the remoter parts of our sportive country, but as it is my intention in the present paper to set down nothing about village cricket that has not come within the scope of my own experience, I must forego at the outset the attractions of these humorous irrelevancies, and speak the truth as far as I know it, even at the risk of making my contribution to this historic work unnecessarily serious.

For the same reason I must deny myself the pleasure of dishing up once more the innumerable funny stories about village cricket that appear periodically in books of this kind; and I have further registered a solemn vow to leave the top-hat period severely alone, and make no reference to Fuller Pilch, Caffyn, Mynn, or any other belted heroes of prehistoric days. So what it comes to is this: I am going to put down here my own experiences and opinions of village cricket as it is played to-day by my own village eleven, of which I have the honour to be captain, and if the result turns out unsatisfactory and of little interest, kindly believe that the fault lies in my incapacity of expression, not in any lack of excitement in the cricket. That at least is beyond reproach.

Please don't think from the above that, unlike the heroines of most of our modern stuffy plays, our club has no past! On the contrary, I have before me now the accounts of our village club right back to 29th July 1865, when we expended the sum of £1: 7s. in the following irreproachable manner:—