From: sundar+@cs.cmu.edu (Sundar Vallinayagam)
Subject: "W.G" (A.G. Gardiner)
Date: Mon, 13 Apr 92 23:09:58 GMT
Organization: School of Computer Science, Carnegie Mellon


I used to post essays by A.G. Gardiner ("Alpha of the Plough")
on soc.culture.british in my younger days :-)  But due to
copyright reasons and also due to the fact that my advisor
expects me to _work_ )-:just because he pays me (can you believe
that ?!) I discontinued the posts :-)  But then I haven't
seen my name on the network for quite a while and am in the
danger of forgetting it.  So here goes...

(Hey, I think I _did_ post this one before.  May be not.
 But I simply am unable to resist this itch to post. So
 if you have read this one before, hit the `n' key, or
 "forever hold you peace".  <---- I have been waiting for
 an excuse to use that phrase for a long time!)



From: Pebbles on the Shore
      (J.M. Dent & Sons Ltd., England. 1916)

                       "W.G"

               A.G. Gardiner (1865-1946)


The worst of spending week-ends in the country in these
anxious days is the difficulty of getting news.  About
six o'clock on Saturday evening I am seized with a furious
hunger.  What has happened on the East front?  What on the
West?  What in Siberia?  Has Greece made up its heroic
mind?  Is Rumania still trembling on the brink?  What does
the French communique say?  These and a hundred other questions
descend on me with frightful insistence.  Clearly I can't go
to bed without having them answered.  But there is not an
evening paper to be got nearer than the little railway station
in the valley two miles away, and there is no way of getting
it except by Shanks' mare.  And so, unable to resist the
glamour of The Star, I start out across the fields for the station.

As I stood on the platform last Saturday evening devouring the
latest war news under the dim oil lamp, a voice behind me said,
in broad rural accent, "Bill, I say, W.G. is dead."  At the word
I turned hastily to another column and found the news that had
stirred him.  And even in the midst of world-shaking events it
stirred me too.  For a brief moment I forgot the war and was
back in that cheerful world where we used to be happy, where we
greeted the rising sun with light hearts and saw its setting
without fear.  In that cheerful world I can hardly recall a time
when a big man with a black beard was not my King.

I first saw him in the 'seventies.  I was a small boy then, and I
did him the honour of playing truant--"playing wag" we called it.
I felt the occasion demanded it.  To have the god of my idolatry
in my own town and not to pay him my devotions--why, the idea was
almost like blasphemy.  A half-dozen, or even a dozen,  from my
easily infuriated master would be a small price to pay.  I should
take the stripes as a homage to the hero.  He would never know,
but I should be proud to suffer in his honour.  Unfortunately
there was a canvas round the field where the hero played, and as
the mark of the Mint was absent from my pockets I was on the wrong
side of the canvas.  But I knew a spot where by lying flat on your
stomach and keeping your head very low you could see under the
canvas and get view of the wicket.  It was not a comfortable position,
but I saw the King.  I think I was a little disappointed that
there was nothing supernatural about his appearance and that
there were no portents in the heavens to announce his coming.  In
a general way I knew he was only a man, but I was quite prepared
to see something tremendous happen, the sun to dance or the
earth to heave, when he appeared.  I never felt the indifference
of Nature to the affairs of men so acutely.

I saw him many times afterwards, and I suppose I owe more
undiluted happiness to him than to any man that ever lived.  For
he was the genial tyrant in a world that was all sunshine.
There are other games, no doubt, which will give you as much
exercise and pleasure in playing them as cricket, but there is
no game that fills the mind with such memories and seems enveloped
in such a gracious and kindly atmosphere.  If you have once loved
it and played it, you will find talk in it enough "for the
wearing out of six fashions," as Falstaff says.  I like a man
who has cricket in his soul.  I find I am prejudiced in his favour,
and disposed to disbelieve any ill about him.  I think my affections
for Jorkins began with the discovery that he, like myself, saw
that astounding catch with which Ulyett dismissed Bonnor in
the Australian match at Lord's in 1883--or was it 1884?  And
when to this mutual and immortal memory we added the discovery
that we were both at the Oval at the memorable match when
Crossland rattled Surrey out like ninepins and the crowd mobbed
him, and Key and Roller miraculously pulled the game out of the
fire, our friendship was sealed.

The fine thing about the wrangle on cricket is that there is
no bitterness in it.  When you talk about politicians you are
always on the brink of bad temper.  When you disagree about the
relative merits of W.B. Yeats or Francis Thompson you are
afflicted with scorn for the other's lack of perception.  But
you may quarrel about cricketers and love each other all the
time.  For example, I am prepared to stand up in a truly Christian
spirit to the bowling of anybody in the defence of my belief
that--next to him of the black beard--Lohmann was the most
naturally gifted all-round cricketer that has been ever seen.
What grace of action he had, what an instinct for the weak spot
of his opponent, what a sense for fitting the action to the
moment, above all, what a gallant spirit he played the game in!
And that, after all, is the real test of the great cricketer.
It is the man who brings the spirit of adventure into the game
that I want.  Of the Quaifes and the Scottons and the Barlows
I have nothing but dreary memories.  They do not mean cricket
to me.  And even Shrewsbury and Hayward left me cold.  They
were too faultily faultless, too icily regular for my taste.
They played cricket not as though it was a game, but as though
it was a proposition in Euclid.  And I don't like Euclid.

It was the hearty joyousness that "W.G." shed around him that
made him so dear to us youngsters of all ages.  I will admit,
if you like, that Ranjitsinhji at his best was more of a magician
with the bat, that Johnny Briggs made you laugh more with his
wonderful antics, that A.P. Lucas had more finish, Palairet more
grace, and so on.  But is was the abundance of the old man with
the black beard that was so wonderful.  You never came to the
end of him.  He was like a generous roast of beef--you could
cut and come again, and go on coming.  Other men flitted across
our sky like meteors, but he shone on like the sun in the
heavens, and like the sun in the heavens he scattered largesse
over the land.  He did not seem so much a man as an institution,
a symbol of summer and all its joys, a sort of a Father Christmas
clothed in flannels and sunshine.  It did you good merely to
look at him.  It made you feel happy to see such a huge
capacity for enjoyment, such mighty subtlety, such ponderous
gaiety.  It was as though Jove, or Vulcan, or some other god
of antiquity had come down to play games with the mortals.
You would not have been much surprised if, when the shadows
lengthened across the greensward and the umpire signalled that
the day's play was done, he had wrapped himself in a cloud of
glory and floated away to Olympus.

And now he is gone indeed, and it seems as though a part, and
that a very happy part, of my life has gone with him.  When
sanity returns to the earth, there will arise other deities
of the cricket field, but not for me.  Never again shall I
recapture the careless rapture that came with the vision of
the yellow cap flaming above the black beard, of the Herculean
frame and the mighty bared arms, and all the godlike apparition
of the master.  As I turned out of the little station and
passed through the fields and climbed the hill I felt that the
darkness that has come upon the earth in these days had taken
a deeper shade of gloom, for even the lights of the happy
past were being quenched.
-- 
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ramli@orca.ele.uri.edu
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Newsgroups: rec.sport.cricket