Page:Jubilee Book of Cricket (Second edition, 1897).djvu/478

456 the county teams with players possessing the requisite amount of skill. The small number of amateurs in first-class cricket is very noticeable. It is the result of the fact that, though there are innumerable amateur players of a certain standard, there are only a few who have both the necessary leisure and the necessary skill for first-class cricket.

Spectacular cricket must be first-class, because the people will have results. Bad or mediocre play does not convince them: it is not what they want. The development of cricket has taught them what the game is when played skilfully, and they would soon cease to care about going to matches if the play were poor, or if it sank to the average standard that can be attained by men who only played cricket occasionally and as a recreation. There are players who can come into first-class cricket from other pursuits, and make centuries. But players like Mr W. H. Patterson and Mr A. G. Steel are very rare indeed. Even if there were thirty such—and I do not suppose there are more than three—how could sufficient players of the necessary degree of skill be got together to provide first-class matches in all the many cricketloving towns in England? I cannot see how cricket, as a great institution for providing popular amusement, could, as things are now, exist without a class of people who devote themselves entirely to it. In calling cricket a great institution for providing popular amusement, I am not taking into consideration the motives of men in playing or the reasons why county clubs are formed or championships instituted. I am merely regarding the result of cricket as it is played nowadays.

And this result is, that hundreds of thousands of people of all classes can go and enjoy themselves by looking on at the game. Their convenience is consulted, accommodation is provided for them, and good cricket such as their hearts delight in is shown them. The clubs, it is true, want their shillings or sixpences. But how does this affect the question, so long as the people see what they desire to see and the sight is good for them? Going to see cricket-matches is neither a bad nor a neutral but a good thing. Of this I am quite sure in my own mind. But I do not quite know how to prove it. Perhaps no one disputes it. Why, then, this outcry against present-day athleticism as an evil? No one would try to argue that cricket is the finest thing in the world. But it is a really good thing, and satisfies better than any other kind of exhibition the desire for athletic sight-seeing which is so marked a trait in the English character. The chances are that a strong popular desire, if not bad, is very good, and