Cricket quotes

The quotation is ‘sgrittare, to make a noise as a cricket; to play cricket-a-wicket, and be merry.’ I have no doubt myself that this is a mere coincidence of sound.

The cricket (on the hearth) is a merry little beast, or has that reputation.

The term ‘cricket-a-wicket’ is a mere rhyming reduplication of sounds like ‘hob-nob’ or ‘tooral-ooral,’ or the older ‘Torelore,’ the name of a mythical country in a French romance of the twelfth century.

To this a critic, Britannicus Severus, answers that ‘Gentlemen who have Cricket in their heads cannot afford to pore over a parcel of musty Authors.’

Indeed, your cricketer is rarely a bookworm.

and play up,’ cries this English bard.

He learned a little Latin of a worthy old Jesuit, but was a better hand at the fiddle. In that musical old England, where John Small, the noted bat, once charmed an infuriated bull by his minstrelsy, Nyren performed a moral miracle.

He played to the gipsies, and so won their hearts that they always passed by his hen-roost when they robbed the neighbours.

Music and cricket were the Hambledon man’s delight. His father, Richard Nyren, was, with Thomas Brett, one of the chief bowlers. Brett was ‘the fastest as well as straightest bowler that was ever known’; no jerker, but with a very high delivery.

M.C.C. then proclaimed an edict against all round-hand bowling. Mr. Knight proposed to admit straight-armed bowling, which could not be called ‘throwing.’

To define a throw was as hard then as now—a man knows it when he sees it; it is like the trot in horses.

Mr. Knight’s proposed law ran, ‘The ball shall be bowled; if it be thrown or jerked, or if any part of the hand or arm be above the shoulder at the time of delivery, the umpire shall call No Ball.’

rules. But nobody so pleases; and Marylebone legislates practically for countries that were not even known to exist when wickets were pitched at Guildford in the reign of Henry VIII.

Marylebone is the Omphalos, the Delos of cricket.

The club may be said to have sprung from the ashes of the White Conduit Club, dissolved in 1787. One Thomas Lord, by the aid of some members of the older association, made a ground in the space which is now Dorset Square.

and, in 1830, Dark bought the remainder of the lease from him. The first match on our present Lord’s, or the first recorded, was M.C.C. v. Hertfordshire, June 22, 1814. In 1825 the pavilion was burned, after a Winchester and Harrow match.

The burning of the Alexandrian Library may be compared to the wholesale destruction of cricket records on this melancholy occasion.

In 1816 the Club reviewed the Laws: the result will be found in Lillywhite’s ‘Scores,’ i. 385. ‘No more than two balls to be allowed at practice when a fresh bowler takes the ball before he proceeds.’

I shall never forget the miraculous wickets we tried to pitch on the old College Green at Glasgow, and the courage displayed by divinity students in standing up to Mr. Barclay there.

As for St. Andrews, golf is too much with us on that friendly shore, and will brook no rival.

*** The author of the historical introduction is much indebted to the Bishop of St. Andrews, a veteran of the first University Match, for his kindness in revising proofs, and adding notes.

(2) the successful drive at golf, when the globe is despatched on a journey of 180 yards; (3) a crack to square-leg off a half-volley just outside the legs.

When once the sensation has been realised by any happy mortal, he is almost entitled to chant in a minor key a ‘Nunc Dimittis,’ to feel that the supreme moment has come, and that he has not lived in vain.

After what has been said in the foregoing chapter we shall here only touch upon the cricket of the past in so far as seems necessary to make this dissertation on batting tolerably complete, and shall then proceed to discuss the principles and science of …

The same player on a bowler’s wicket is not less uncomfortable than the proverbial fish out of water.

A man may be a lion on a lawn, but a mere pigmy when the ground is not a lawn.

There are a great many of these lions on lawns in these days, and to hear them all with one consent begin to make excuse when they have been bowled out on a crumbling wicket is very amusing.

but, notwithstanding this, the result of his efforts will be that, though all proper and necessary postures may be assumed, he will be bowled out, for the bat, except by a lucky chance, will always be in the wrong place, though held quite straight.

If cricket could be played with no ball, the careful eyeless cricketer would shine; but the introduction of that disturbing element dashes all his hopes to the ground.

There is a ball that in these days more frequently than any other succeeds in bowling people out, and that is the familiar ‘tice’ or ‘yorker.’

at any rate you have made an effort, and not given up in despair.

It is like a timid man running away from danger instead of facing it, as he should, and it is better to try and to fail than not to try at all.

Never mind your average; you cannot win a match by such tactics, though you may make a draw of it.

We actually saw a cautious player receive four consecutive off balls and not make an attempt to hit one.

What pleasure can there be in batting if these tactics are adopted?

And let such players please think of the unhappy spectators.

you run the minimum of risk by hitting at them, if only you observe the two rules which ought to be hung in your bedroom and branded into your brain, ‘Put the left leg over,’ and ‘Get on the top of the ball.’

Above all things do not play for a draw.

From what has been said on the principles which govern the proper playing of fast and slow bowling, the reader may be led to think that slow bowling is far more difficult to play successfully than fast.

An imitator of Carlyle, for instance, revels in the brusque eccentricities of the great man’s style, but he never succeeds in portraying his noble qualities.

It is much the same in cricket: genius defies imitation, and is only by poor struggling humanity to be admired.

In the prime of his play nothing in cricket was grander than the sight of W. G. Grace scoring two runs off a ball that any other cricketer would have been only too happy to stop.

The appeal was made and the facts examined, the deadly verdict was given, and it was a case of a return to the pavilion.

The batsman on such occasions as these may look pleasant; but that is only one of the beneficent results of civilisation, for, as a matter of fact, he feels extremely bitter, and there are innumerable swords in his heart.

In the case mentioned the unhappy batsman felt hot and out of breath after his exertions in running the five runs, and there was a sad reversal of the pleasant feelings that attend a successful hit—the applause of the crowd was all wasted, the expected …

Her brother, accustomed to play against what in those days was the only known style of bowling, viz. under-arm, was somewhat perplexed and worried with this unknown feminine species of ball, which doubtless he found difficult to tackle.

How amusing it would have been to have watched this keen cricketer, probably not unconscious of his own merits as a batsman, entirely puzzled by the deliveries of a lady!

We are not told whether his feelings of shame at being thus defeated, or of delight at discovering this new style of bowling, predominated, but we are told that shortly afterwards he made his début as a round-arm bowler, and met with (until he was …

G.’s?’ and immediately assuming the well-known and somewhat inartistic pose of the English champion, proceed to toss the ball lifeless up in the air. Now this is not the way to learn how to bowl.

Bowling, like everything else worth doing, takes a lot of careful practice before it can be expected to meet with success.

There can be no doubt that were boys carefully trained at school in the art of bowling, as they are in that of batting, our universities, from which the ranks of our first-class cricketers are usually replenished, would be continually sending up men who could …

Great was his astonishment and disgust, and as he retired crestfallen to the pavilion he said to the writer, who was one of the fielding side on that occasion,

‘It was not the ball or the bowler that did that; it was all owing to my confoundedly skinny legs!’

A dodge well worth trying with this ball is to bowl a good length about two feet to the leg of the batsman;

As the slow bowler walked up to the wicket to bowl, the big hitter turned to him and said, ‘What, are you going to bowl your donkey-drops? I’ll hit them all out of the ground.’

‘If you keep on doing it I shall have to go off,’ was the modest reply.

The third ball of the over there was a terrific slog; the bat fairly whistled with the speed it went through the air, and the ball, touching the shoulder, landed in short-slip’s hands.

W. G. Grace hardly ever gets one; directly the ball leaves the bowler’s hand he sees its destination, viz. an inch inside the crease; he puts the bat out to meet the ball, and makes it one of the easiest possible, viz. a full-pitch.

If there were no such thing as misjudgment on the part of a batsman, there would be no such thing as a ‘yorker.’ It depends for its very existence on being taken for something else.

If every batsman were perfectly accurate in his sight and judgment of pitch, every so-called ‘yorker’ would be neither more nor less than a ‘full-pitch.’

Thirdly, because it usually twists very much less than the right-hand leg-break.

It is not the ball which twists the most that gets the wickets; it is the ball that just twists enough to beat the bat.

The mode of attack generally adopted by a slow left hander is to place all his men, with the exception of a short-leg and a deep mid-on, on the off side.

‘That’s Dr. Grace, the champion,’ said the papa; and ‘Who is the little one?’ the child continued. ‘That is Briggs.’ Dead silence for a few moments, and then,

‘Papa, is Briggs Dr. Grace’s baby?’

Although power of pace, straightness, and command over the ball are the really essential qualities of good fast bowling—as, indeed, of all sorts—there are many occasions when fortune smiles upon bowling which possesses none of these good attributes.

It is a strange fact connected with cricket that a good captain is but seldom met with.

The game has made such progress in popularity during the last thirty years, and the numbers of those who are proficient in its different branches have increased so enormously, that we should certainly expect to find in our county and other important matches captains who …

In these times of improved batting and perfection in grounds, three whole days have been decided on as the time within which every county or club must win, lose, or draw the match.

The game is not to lose or to draw; it is to win; and the side that can win most matches in the time allowed is plainly the best side.

And should a side make so many runs as to render it impossible to win if they make more, whereas if they get out they must almost inevitably win, and can scarcely lose, we consider it would not be acting up to the true principle …

His knowledge of geography was not up to his cricket capabilities; for after a serious collision in the Indian Ocean, on his voyage to Australia in 1882, a mishap which subsequently ended fatally to him, he said:

‘No more ships for me: I’ll home again by the overland route!’

At the beginning of the innings the two bowlers put on should both be asked which end suits them best;

Thinking that the latter were really being treated rather badly, the writer ventured humbly to ask the umpire whether the last appeal (an enormous thigh right in front of all three stumps to a straight one) had not been a very near thing.

‘Lor bless you, sir,’ was the reply, ‘I have been his valet for fifteen years, and I dussn’t give him out; he gets awful wild at times.’

A little knowledge is a dangerous thing to umpires as well as everyone else. A ball in a country match hit the batsman’s leg, skied up in the air, and was caught by point. ‘How’s that for leg before wicket?’ shouted the bowler.

‘Lor bless you, sir,’ was the reply, ‘I have been his valet for fifteen years, and I dussn’t give him out; he gets awful wild at times.’

A little knowledge is a dangerous thing to umpires as well as everyone else.

A ball in a country match hit the batsman’s leg, skied up in the air, and was caught by point. ‘How’s that for leg before wicket?’ shouted the bowler. ‘How’s that for a catch?’ said point.

No umpire should ever be chosen to stand in first-class matches unless he possesses the perfect use of these two senses. More than once in important matches we have seen an umpire with his ears stuffed full of cotton-wool.

This, no doubt, was an excellent preventive against catching cold in the head, but it was a monstrous thing to see the result of a match of some interest depending upon the amount of sound that could penetrate through two or three layers of wadding.

An umpire should possess powers of quick decision, because every time his opinion is asked he has to give it at once, and with firmness.

It does not succeed in running a man out once in a thousand times, it often enables a run to be got by an overthrow, and it uselessly troubles the wicket-keeper.

A batsman is next door to an idiot who is got out by such means, and we suspect that it is often done to secure the applause of an unthinking mob.

This is an art which the above-mentioned critics lament as having died out. It may be suspected that they missed as many catches as the present generation, but still the present generation miss more than they ought.

Let your first thoughts be concentrated mainly on straight and off-side balls, and pay no regard to the applause of any save those whose knowledge of the game makes their approbation valuable.

A player with no aptitude for wicket-keeping on first going to that position will undergo moments of unspeakable agony.

Spectators do not thoroughly realise the position of the wicket-keeper, indeed nobody can who has not attempted the art. In the first place, we will suppose a very fast bowler; in the second, a fast and possibly a rather bumpy wicket;

One reads how a bail has been sent a distance of thirty or forty yards by a fast ball, and that bail may take the wicket-keeper in the eye in transitu.

The writer was once struck by the ball on the eye and by the bail on the mouth at very nearly the same second.

The wicket-keeper is grimly told that he must not flinch, and that he never can be really good if he does not keep his legs still. True, most true;

… in his well-known book ‘Jerks in from Short-leg,’ says that if there is no good field at point in an eleven, the captain should choose the fattest man, for nature makes it impossible for him to get out of the way of a hard hit.

In other words, it sometimes strikes him in the most prominent part of his person and saves four runs.

Perhaps Roger Iddison, of Yorkshire fame, who died in the year 1890, could have testified to the truth of this remark, and perhaps Mr. Key will take to the position in the maturity of his cricket life.

He must have a good wicket made, and all who are going to play in the match must come for some part of the play. And this is a good opportunity for letting young bowlers come and try their hand, with sixpence on the wicket.

I have much faith in that sixpence on the wicket.

It is useless to waste any trouble on a boy who has not got cricket at heart, but it is a great deal of use training one who has.

You must try and raise the standard of a village eleven by letting them play when you have the chance against teams who are stronger than themselves.

A licking is good medicine for them sometimes;

and if, on the other hand, they win by the chances of the game, a victory of this kind ‘sets their tails up.’

will no more ‘push leg balls among the slips.’

This is the melancholy of mortal things.

Our wickets keep falling in this life. One after the other goes down.

This is the melancholy of mortal things.

Our wickets keep falling in this life. One after the other goes down.

They are becoming few who joined in those Border matches where there was but one lady spectator, when we made such infrequent runs, and often dropped a catch, but never lost heart, never lost pleasure in the game.

Habits of that kind thoughtfully cultivated will not desert you in first-class cricket.

Great scores at cricket, like great work of any kind, are, as a rule, the results of years of careful and judicious training and not accidental occurrences.

If you have occasion to travel a considerable distance to play, make an effort to get to your destination the night before, or at least some time before, the match begins.

But when the hundred is reached, who can describe the joy that thrills him as he hears the hand-clapping and shouting!

I will not say, be modest in the hour of victory, but rather be modest after it.

It is after the victory, as we listen to outside praise, that conceit and its enervating influence steal in. Turn a deaf ear, and remember it was in fear and trembling that you reached the much-desired score.

It is after the victory, as we listen to outside praise, that conceit and its enervating influence steal in. Turn a deaf ear, and remember it was in fear and trembling that you reached the much-desired score.

Quiet confidence is a widely different thing from conceit.

The former will help you to a run of big scores, the latter will cripple every effort to sustain your hardly earned reputation.

I can assure all young players that there is a new and curious sensation in facing balls of this kind.

Skill, patience, a quick eye and ready arm are useful for the occasion, but dogged pluck is worth the whole of them.

Do not let thoughts of hard knocks trouble you, or your chance of scoring even a double figure will be remote.

‘Hulloa, there, wake up!’ shouted he. Quick as lightning turned the coverpoint, and seeing something dark dashing past him made a dart, and caught, not the ball as he had thought, but a swallow.

Talk of Royle or Briggs after that!

Writing at the close of Mr. Stoddart’s disastrous tour, it must be said that if the Australians bring over a representative team in 1899 it will be looked forward to with the keenest interest.

played seven innings for a total of 35 runs.

Take courage, then, young cricketer, and know that if you fail, you fail in good company.

Most extraordinary have been the vicissitudes of fortune in several of these matches. Oxford in 1871 had a fine eleven, which easily defeated Cambridge by eight wickets; and in 1872 they played no fewer than eight of their old eleven.

Ottaway if he had sent a thousand balls to him. However, on the present occasion Ottaway was out, those he had to bowl to were not first-rate batsmen, and Cobden could bowl a good yorker.

You might almost have heard a pin drop as Cobden began his run and the ball whizzed from his hand.

Mr. Hill played the ball slowly to cover-point, and rather a sharp run was made. As the match stood, Oxford wanted 2 to tie and 3 to win, and three wickets to go down: Mr. Butler to receive the ball.

I don’t think I hit at it all. Of course at such a distance of time my recollections are somewhat vague, but the one point I am quite sure of is that I was bowled off my leg.’

With these extracts before them, the matter is now left to posterity.

At first sight it appears impossible that amateurs—men who play when they chance to find it convenient—should be able to hold their own against professional cricketers who make the game the business of their lives.

No boy can become a good cricketer who has not a natural capacity for the game. The batsman must have a good eye and is all the better for a good nerve; the fieldsman must be active; the bowler—ah! what must he have?

Nascitur non fit; we will not commit ourselves at present to his requirements.

In saying this do not let it be supposed that we wish those only to play cricket who are likely to become good cricketers—far from it;

… large public school, it is no easy matter to keep it in proper order and provide good match and practice wickets throughout the summer for a large number of boys, especially as the ground is generally required for football or other purposes during the winter.

However, the better the ground the better the batsmen; and if this be true, a good ground is one of the most important requirements in the training of our cricketers.

As a boy grows in years he will require, and will probably get, more instruction, and if he meets with a coach of good judgment and experience he will soon learn all that can be taught.

It is this: when you go to the wicket in a match don’t be thinking of this or that position, or this or that stroke, but fix your eye on the bowler’s hand as he comes up to bowl.

Think of and watch the ball only; if you learn correct habits in practice, your instinct will throw you into the right position and enable you to make the right stroke, provided that your eye does not fail you with the ball.

We do not purpose to describe how each stroke should be made or to enumerate all the instructions that should be given to the youthful batsman;