Page:Cricket (Hutchinson, 1903).djvu/65

Rh — as one who takes a view which the majority would condemn as childishly charitable—that he really does not believe, in spite of all that has been said, that any "gentleman," by which he means "amateur," has ever been known to sell a match, and he cites an instance in which for curiosity's sake he put the honesty of a certain noble lord to the test by covertly proposing selling a match to him. But though his lordship, who seems to have been betting against his own side, had actually £100 on the match, even this inducement was not enough to tempt the nobleman from the paths of virtue.

We will hope that no amateur did fall, and may join with Beldham in "believing it impossible," but the fiction that they did was used by the Legs to persuade any man of difficult honesty to go crooked. "Serve them as they serve you," was the argument, or one of the arguments, used. That "fine old man" whom Mr, Pycroft drew out so freely gives no edifying pictures of the players of the day: "Merry company of cricketers, all the men whose names I had ever heard as foremost in the game, met together, drinking, card-playing, betting, and singing, at the Green Man—that was the great cricketers' house—in Oxford Street—no man without his wine, I assure you, and such suppers as three guineas a game to lose and five to win—that was then the sum for players—could never pay for long."

That was their rate of payment, and that their mode of life—perhaps not the best fitted for the clear eye and the sound wind.