The Eaton Democrat. (Eaton, Ohio) 1875-1903, 1884-08-21
4 National Sport

4 National Sport
just as d italian carries his love for
garlic with him wherever he goes. and
o Chinaman is never to be met without
bis pigtail, 80 wherever a sufficient
humber Of Englishmen are collected
they will surely organize themselves
into q cricket team. AS soon DIS the
British soldier had accomplished the
occupation of Cyprus he began to
play cricket there; on the plains of
Candahar, with Ayoub Khan almost in
sight, the officers of the different Brit
ish regiments were industriously &C
cepting challenges and playing ef
matches. In Zululand, in the intervals
of tedious and Presidential marches,
assegais were set up as wickets, and
the English soldiers knocked sweet
potatoes about with a knobkerry,
which did duty as a bat; and re-
Gently, in Egypt, while Sir Garnet
Wolseley was slowly working his way
to victory, the British marines were
andria. The knapsack of every French
soldier is said to contain a tield-mar-
shal's baton; but certainly ssTommy At
4 Hills hOfOt I'd UOo Oh q lloLSh "1OA1Oat
a bat and ball and set of wickets on
his back.
1t has indeed become q hackneyed
phrase hat E~nglishmen take cricket
with them wherever they go, yet'few
perhaps understand how completely i
is true. In Africa. not only at Natal
and Georgetown, Wynberg, Port Eliza
beth, Sundays River. and other spots
in the south, but on the western coast
at Lagos and elsewhere, and on the
north in Algeria and in every part of
Egypt, the game is played. In Asia
not only have matches been recorded
from every part of India and Burmah,
the China and Straits settlements. ia
pan, and Ceylon with its half-dozen
clubs, but also from Alden in Arabia,
and Zanzibar. In America, though
popular esteem throughout the North,
whether in the States OF Canada, crick-
ct is played regularly; while in Mexico
the southern continent, from Guiana to
Buenos Ayres, Montevideo and Estancia
Adela, round to Chill and Peru, up the
Plate River, the astonished natives
have seen the aliens amusing them
| St1fCS dltOI Gu0 ldoulOu VI buO COlo I'LL
mates whence they came. In Europe
the game is, while in all the strange
hooks and corners where Englishmen
have found a home it is systematically
practiced. At Gibraltar and Malta, in
Jamaica and on St. Helena, New Zea-
land and Nova Scotia, the Bermudas,
Barbados, the Falkland Isles, and the
Feejees-at all these places matches
have been settled as well as the climate,
the country, and the circumstances
would allow.
Mr.. Alfred Jingle's famous account
of the cricket match in Ceylon, in
which hot water had to be poured on
the ground to make it possible to pitch
the stumps, and where the field all
dropped in their places asphyxiated, has
always been received as arather highly
colored piece of reporting; but lightish
blue-jackets play at Acapulco with the
temperature of the field at 145 degrees,
and a match was reported from Upper
India a year or two ago when, in the
middle of the hottest month of one oil
the hottest seasons eve recorded, two
elevens met and actually played out a
game. 'Not a living thing" the re-
DOIG6E WIOGc, udICu tllO uCdU, uuu q
each side scored over a hundred runs.
The vultures v e had taken refuge in
the shade, but the British soldier rar
the overthrows with all the energy hi
could have shown at Sandhurst on ar
English summer day." The ground
too, had its defects, for long-leg stood
w~aist-deep in brushwood, while back
stop had a ravine behind him over
-L:zI L. LoI - -, ~ l1o co. L-o
But v e this compares somewhat
favorably with that Egyptian cricke
ground described as ''the acres Of
brown powder. within the center an OBJ
long patch of lime and sand, seven
field" Yet whatever the obstacle, the
whether on the beach of Turks Island
or the single of Pernambuco, throw;
all his energy into the work before him.
Indeed much of the foreign history o
England might be written from it
matches. for wherever a regiment OF
man-of-war is stationed, there viii
cricket be played. Every Nation il
turn has wondered at the Englishmal
the lethargic Hindoos to see the
sahib, in whose hands are life and
death, pursue a ball which any one of hi
hundred subordinates would esteem il
a favor to be allowed to fetch for him;
and the pigtailed Chinaman and
swarthy Malay to behold the 'sTuan,'
otherwise so dignifed and important
person. taking delight in running back
ward and forward with a heavy bat il
his hands which a servant might just a
well have carried. The bewilderet
Japanese as well as the astonished Pc
ruvians have dubbed the game a
"Madness," just as in India a picnic i
called a '.lunatic's dinner, and fancy
{ ball a 'sfool's dance"
Yet in India the natives are ceasins
to wonder and are beginning to pla,
themselves. At first they would hav
) nothing to say to a game that tested tn
nerves and fatigued the limbs; but after
bit the more robust bodies-caught tn
great truth that healthful exercise wa
! one of the secrets of the Englishmen'
/ power, and n by one the swarth,
PLAYERS came on to the field.
At Bareilly not long ago-where tn
keener air and more rugged countr
J have bred a vigorous class-a schoo
!, eleven of native lads beat the %artiller
{ team, and local journals now recor,
) regularly the prowess in the field G
Hindoo and Mohammedan cricketers o
Agra and Lucknow, Delhi and Lahore
Benares and Allahabad. Travelling
= too, from India eastward, we find j
Burmah and Singapore, in China an
. Japan, the native joining in the amuse
ments of the English communities; an
whether at Rangoon or Annoy, Nagasak
or Yokohama, the heather names hav
\ their place in every cricketing eleven
t With the English language the Englis
pastime has travelled round the world
Empty beer bottles, it has been said
have hitherto marked the advance an
limits of British enterprise; but wit
greater truth it may be alleged that tn
;. presence or absence of cricket define