Page:Jubilee Book of Cricket (Second edition, 1897).djvu/30

8 A yet more cogent reason is, that the scope for personal gratification is so much smaller in fielding. A man bats and bowls for his side, it is true; but if he makes a large score or takes a number of wickets, he not only does his side a signal service, but he affords himself an immense amount of satisfaction. There is nothing wrong in this. Cricket is a game, and should be played for pleasure. But there is this to be noted: success in batting or bowling cannot fail to combine the advantage of the whole eleven with the pleasure of the individual. A batsman or a bowler feels he is doing something by his own efforts and to his own credit. A fieldsman, on the contrary, has in a certain sense no individual existence; he is a subordinate part of a whole. He is point or slip or mid-off, not Smith or Jones or Robinson. The conditions of the game practically make selfish fielding an impossibility. A man cannot field "on his own" as he can bat or bowl. The result is that there are many, far too many, cricketers who, being ambitious to succeed in the game, give any amount of time and trouble to batting or bowling, as the case may be, in order to excel in one or in both, but only pay just enough attention to fielding to ensure a comfortable mediocrity. They know that, unless they acquire a certain degree of skill, their deficiency will be noticeable and regarded as so much against their claims to be chosen as bats or bowlers. Further than that they do not go. Nearly every one can without much trouble become a moderately good fielder, because fielding is far easier than batting or bowling. In the same way, real excellence in fielding is within the reach of a great many more cricketers than is real excellence in batting and bowling. But whereas many are eager to excel as bats or bowlers, few care to aim at more than average excellence as fielders. In fact, few cricketers do their very best in the field. They satisfy certain requirements, but do not give their whole soul to this branch of the game.

When I say that bad fielding is the rule rather than the exception, I refer rather to what might be than to what is. Taking into consideration the amount of time devoted to cricket, and the respective difficulties of acquiring a high degree of skill in batting, bowling, and fielding, one cannot but recognise that the average results attained are not satisfactory in the case of the first two. And this is true, though the actual number of really fine fielders is larger than that of tiptop batsmen or bowlers. Take a dozen village cricket-teams: there is probably no bat or bowler among them all of more than fifth- or sixth-class merit,