FRENCH IDEAS ON CRICKET

Lake County Press, Issue 978, 5 September 1901, Page 2

FRENCH IDEAS ON CRICKET

[Bt Captain Philip Trevor.] " T'Sieu," said he with a bow, " M. Jean Bull renders himself." And he handed me a letter. " Would monsieur excuse me?" Monsieur would. So I took the one and returned the other. John Bull wrote : "My friend M. Fontenoy's fortnightly tourist ticket expires on Tuesday next. He is anxious to add a few chapters on cricket to the book on England which he has written during his stay in the country. Please give him any information that you can." We sat down, and at this moment the umpires, refreshed with lunch, walked out of the Oval pavilion. "Bien!" said M. Fontenoy, "Messieurs les seconds ! They measure the ground." The last bell had rung, and the police were busy chasing out of the arena those Derby dogs of the cricket field, the men who will inspect the pitch. " Helas," said my companion. " Les gendarmes! les gendarmes! They have brought themselves to know. Le sport! adieu!" I reassured him, but I think he was disappointed to learn that the performance was quite legal. Then the Derbyshire batsmen went *o the wicket, and Lockwood and Richardson bowled their fastest. The former delivered a maiden over, and great was M. Fontenoy's excitement. Two general appeals for a catch at the wicket were answered 'n the batsman's favor. "Ah ! the enemy call to him to go. He has had enough; but Mister the second shakes his head, and will not make consent. My faith, but he is brave." The last ball of the over realised a bye, and then Richardson had a turn at tie object of M. Fontenoy's admiration. I should explain that a deep slip on the boundary had just saved the four, and the batsmen had crossed at a walk. Not unnaturally, my companion drew erroneous deductions. "See —the brave one again; he takes all upon himself. Will not the comrade of him give him help?" Three good length balls were sent down, but the fourth was overpitched, and promptly got its deserts. " Enfin—enfin—he is; saved ! His comrade runs to him! And he himself? He runs to meet his friend he will embrace him ! Bravo—bravo !" And he( joined in the applause which greeted a fine off drive. But his demonstrations of joy suddenly eeased.

" Helas, helas ! they have missed ! They have run past, the one and the other! No ; all is well. They turn. This time each shall find the arms of his friend. Sacre! They miss once more. See, they stand far apart and call loud the one to the other. They will yet try once again? Hark! They call' No.' All is ' lost. Tbey do not make th"e venture." It looked from the seats in the pavilion to be an easy three; but Hayward throws in unerringly, as ft rule, from the deep field, and •'he Derbyshire men would not risk it. With the very next ball sent dowr. the batsman was quite at sea. He had evidently entirely lost sight of it in its flignt, ana his left leg appeared to bend inwards. Thf ball struck him on the knee. " How's that?" from more than half a dozen throats, although this was a first class match, in which a good example should be set. Perhaps the M.C.C. may yet have to make their instructions v ith regard to Law No. 48 even stronger still. The umpire held up his hand, and the batsman retired. " Ah"!" said M. Fontenoy, with a sigh of relief, " generous M. le Second! He permits him to leave ! Honor is satisfied! See, Be comes back to us. Why do they not make applause? Look, my friend, he frowns. Oh, how he frowns! The audience is silent. Then it is I myself who will make applause." I onlyjust had time to stop him adding insult to injury to the poor defeated cricketer, who had only scored two; and as he had already made himself sufficiently conspicuous, I invented a miserable subterfuge of an excuse, and left him. As I rose to go I heard one of the many self-constituted lecturers of the Oval pavilion explaining to my foreign friend that the batsman was looking annoyed because he thought; he had been unfairly (given out, whereas he (the lecturer) could positively state tha" the ball would have knocked the middle stump out of the ground. " Yes, he did happen to be a Surrey man," he admitted to a neighbor who objected to the statement;' " and," he added, with some warmth, " I don'l care anything about being at an angle of 45deg with the wicket. I don't care tuppence for your angles, sir. I've got my eyes about me, sir, and I've played cricket before you were born, sir. Yes, sir, before you were born, sir, I've "

I quickened my pace to a run, and lied incontinently. I had heard the same Ihing in the same place so often before. At the close of play, as the pavilion seats emptied, I creptback to Monsieur with an elaborate excuse for my absence, which he accepted with native grace. He begged that I would not distress myself, as he had fared excellently. With a touch of incomparable pantomime he intimated that at the moment of my departure he was distracted, desolate, inconsolable; but that, as was his wont at a crisis, he had come unto himself and resolved to be calm. "And then, my friend, you are a race generous, magnanimous, hospitable ! Are you not? Is it not so? It is enough. All this I had learnt myself before; but those who have been decorated with the Order of the Club de Surrey, they are charming!" He parted his hands, spread his firgers spasmodically, and purred with contentment at the mere thought of the pleasure he had experienced. I grew interested, and was about to put a leading question. But he did not need furnishing with a cue. " Yes, it was he himself who had but nonbeen con/ersiag with many of the directors of that club which was at once the most elite and distingue in all the world. He would return to France and render himself to his friends, and to them would he teli that he had exchanged the affable talk with them of the Club de Surrey, which was, as it were, of all the clubs the jockeys of England."

I tried to explain to him that the term "jockey" must be used sparingly in connection with cricket and cricketers, and that it did not always convey a compliment. However, he was too enraptured to heed interruption of any kind or de■cription. "Yes, they themselves had told him—they of the directorate. Why, the grand Lor' Mayor himself "' It had come at last. I wondered how he could have steered clear of it so long. Yet it was disappointing, for I had begun to imagine that I had met an original Frenchman. I joined him in a tribute of reverence to the Chief Magistrate, and shunted him out of the siding in which he had rolled on to the main track of crbket again. He had certainly made the best use of his time, and the gentlemen who had apparently been good enough to introduce themselves to him had certainly provided him with a great deal of informa-

tion which (I was compelled to admit to him) was also quite new to me as well. Finally, he produced his note book, which he had used assiduously, and begged that I would inspect it at my leisure, give him my opinion on it, and add remarks, should I consider that there was any subject winch was not fully and adequately provided for therein. We then performed the prescribed motions of parting, and went on our respective ways. I cannot say to what extent those entries were the result of his own deductions and observations, or how far they were a Han-sard-like production of what his friends " the directors " had told him. But there was evidence of both sources. With the aid of a couple of translators and a precis writer I gathered the material for his chapters into a rough tabulated form. The digested essence of his note book led me to believe:

1. That the Society de Surrey was the first club in the land. 2. That cricket was played by kind permission of the Lord Mayor of London. 3. That the said first'club in the land had not been very successful because there were a dozen better elevens inside the pavilion rails than that which performed outside. 4. That the said dozen invariably performed inside the rails only. 5. That the presence of police on the field of fray was a slur on the honor of the combat. 6. That " Messieurs les seconds " were sans reproche, but terrible pitiless. 7. That the batsmen and the bowlsmen had dejeuner together, but at one long table under the eye of the president. 8. That Ranjitsinhji was probably of French extraction. 9. That when a. team of Frenchmen came to play England they might be tmsted to comport themselves as Frenchmen. I am looking forward with interest to the elucidation in book form of the first eight points, but the proposition contained in item No. 9 has my cordial concurrence