The Republican. [volume] (Oakland, Md.) 1877-current, 1884-08-23
A National Sport.


garlic with him wherever he goes, and
a Chinaman is never to be met without
his pigtail, so wherever a sufficient
number of Englishmen are collected
they will surely organize themselves
into a cricket team. AS soon as 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 ac-
cepting challenges and playing Oft
matches. In Zululand, in the intervals
of tedious and pestilential marches,
assegais were set up as wickets, and
the English soldiers knocked sweet
potatoes about with knobkerry,
which did duty as bait and more re-
Gently in Egypt, while Sir Garnet
Wolseley was slowly working his way
to victory, the British marines were
making long scores in the dust of Alex
andria. The knapsack of every French
soldier is said to contain a tield-mar-
shal's baton; but certainly Tommy At
kins" never started on q march without
a bat and ball and set of wickets on
his back.
1t has indeed become a hackneyed
phrase that Englishmen take cricket
with them wherever they go, vet few
perhaps understand how completely it
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
an, and Ceylon with its half-dozen
Tubs, but also from Alden in Arabia,
and Zanzibar. In America, though
base ball holds the foremost place in
popular esteem throughout the North,
whether in the States or Canada, crick-
ct is played regularly; while in Mexico
and at Panama, as well as all along
the southern continent, from Guiana to
Buenos Ayres, Montevideo and Estanca
Adela, round to Chill and Peru, up the
Plate River, the astonished natives
have seen the aliens amusing them
selves after the fashion of the cold eli
mates whence they came. In Europe
it is needless to say how widespread
the game is, while in all the strange
hooks and corners where Englishmen
have found home it is Systematically
practiced.
Mr.. Alfred Jingle's famous account
of the cricket match in Ceylon, in
hot lnI 20 10
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 a rather highly
colored piece of reporting; but lightish
blue jackets play at Acapulco with the
temperature of the field at l45 degrees,
and match was reported from Upper
India year or two ago when, in the
middle of the hottest month of one OF
the hottest seasons ever recorded, two
elevens met and actually played out a
game. mot living thing" the re-
porter wrote. dared the heat, and vet
each side scored over hundred runs.
The vultures even had taken refuge in
the shade, but the British soldier ran
the overthrows with all the energy he
could have shown at SandhurSt on an
English summer day." The ground,
too, had its defects, for long-leg stood
waist-deep in brushwood, while back
stop had ravine behind him over
which he had to scramble for every bye.
But even this compares somewhat
favorably with that Egyptian cricket
ground described as 1.-THE acres of
brown powder, within the center an OBJ.
long patch of lime and sand, seven
palm-trees being dotted about the
| field. Yet whatever the obstacle, the
cricketer will have his game, and
whether on the beach of Turks Island
or the single of Pernambuco, throws
all his energy into the work before him.
Indeed much of the foreign history OF
England might be written from its
matches, for wherever regiment or 9
man-of-war is stationed, there will
cricket be played Every Nation ir
turn has wondered at the Englishman
the lethargic Hindoes to see the
sahib, in whose hands are life and
death, pursue ball which any one of his
hundred subordinates would esteem it
favor to be allowed TO fetch for him;
and the pigtailed Chinaman and
swarthy Malay to behold the "Tuan, -"
otherwise so dignifed and important q
person, taking delight in running back.
ward and forward with q heavy bat in
his hands which a servant might Just as
well have carried. The bewildered
Japanese as well as the astonished Pc.
ruvians have dubbed the game as
Madness" just as in India a picnic is
called "lunatic's dinner" and fancy
ball fools dance"
Yet in India the natives are ceasing
to wonder and are beginning to play
themselves. At first they would have
nothing to say to game that tested the
nerves and fatigued the limbs; but after a
bit the more robust bodies caught the
great truth that healthful exercise was
one of the secrets of the Englishmen' 5
power, and one by one the swarthy
players came on to the field.
At Bareilly not long ago-where the
keener air and more rugged country
have bred a vigorous class-a school
eleven of native lads beat the artillery
team, and local journals now record
regularly the prowess in the field OF
Hindoo and Mohammedan cricketers of
Agra and Lucknow, Delhi and Lahore,
Benares and Allahabad. Travelling,
too, from India eastward, we find in