Robert Henry Lyttelton

“ Nobody of proper feeling will claim a hole because his opponent's caddie has sheltered the ball from the wind with his body, or because the ball has been moved by the wind after the player has put himself in a certain attitude, though he has no more touched it than he has the moon. Golf, indeed, has come to be so much hedged round by rules that these defeat their own object, and by respectable people are ignored. It always appears to me that rules of any game should be such that it is to the advantage of the game that they should be enforced always and by everybody. ”

“ What more can a bowler do than bowl such a good ball that the batsman fails to touch it with his bat, and only stops it with his leg? The bowler suffers the hardship. He has done all that a man can do, but, under the present law, he has not met with his reward. In the case of by far the largest class of bowlers—those who bowl right hand and with a break back—there is no reason whatever why the leg should ever prevent the ball from hitting the wicket. It is the essence of forward play that the ball should be smothered. ”

“ The practical abolition of leg-hitting, by the wonderful accuracy of modern bowling, has robbed the game of no small amount of its æsthetic enjoyment, for, in the first place, a leg-hit is a lovely stroke to witness, as is a catch against the ropes, and lastly, prettier than any was the good throw-in. ”

“ If a man is off his drive he nevertheless has to play with his driver or brassey off the tee, for to drive with a cleek is ignominious and fatiguing withal. The player with only an ordinary capacity perhaps may feel really confident with only one club, and yet has to play with several; so of him it may be said that every stroke—except that played with one club—is a trial to his nerves. A fearless man is fearless because he has confidence, and to feel confidence is impossible when playing with a club that bitter experience has told you you cannot use. ”

“ I have already said, in the chapter on bowling, that on the modern true wickets plain accuracy is not sufficient to get batsmen out. I have never seen, with perhaps the exception of Peate, a better length bowler than Jack Hearne, and when the wicket is not of the easiest he has a good break and becomes very deadly; but you see batsmen, some of them not by any means first-rate, merely playing straight forward, and Hearne becomes easy. To get your opponents out on a hard wicket, you must sacrifice some accuracy to obtain turn and twist, and change of pace. ”

“ We are all conscious of having in our hearts some soft spot for a real hero, and at cricket each man has his hero. If he happens to be a bat, who does not know the sensation that runs through our frame when he is seen walking to the wicket? It may be a difficult bowler's wicket, yet somehow we have trust and confidence in him, for the first essential of our hero must be that he succeeds where others fail. In these days everybody gets runs except when there is a soft wicket and a sun caking it on the top; then there are few indeed who can show even moderate batting except our hero. ”

“ School cricket has every element of fun and enjoyment in it; the scoring is not too high, for the wickets are not always dead true; the hits, except in the school matches, are all run out, the spirits are elastic, and hope springs eternal in the boyish breast. The school hours have to be kept, and in the games there is not often continuous cricket for more than two to three hours, so there is none of the weariness that is the curse of the modern first-class cricket—the inevitable result of batting preponderance and bowling impotence. ”

“ I am trying to put forward what I cannot help thinking tends to the good of the game, and I think that anything which promotes medal or score play unduly and depresses match play is not to be encouraged. It is easy to say it, but I implore everybody who plays golf to remember that it is a game and not a business. A singularly charming form of golf is a foursome suitable for all ages and links, and can there exist any golfer who would prefer playing a foursome by strokes and not by holes? ”

“ At the same time I think the benefit of the doubt, which by an unwritten law of cricket seems invariably given to the batsman, might in this particular be given to the bowler. It is bad play to put the leg in front of the wicket, and in these days of gigantic run-getting the bowler ought to have the benefit of the doubt, and not the batsman. An umpire has many things to think about—he has to count the balls, he has to look at the bowler's feet to see that he does not go over or wide of the crease; he ought to look at the arm of some bowlers to see that they do not throw. ”

“ A genius at any game is not, and cannot be available for purposes of comparison, for he is sui generis; and I am inclined to think that Vardon, Roberts, and Grace must be placed on three equal pedestals as geniuses at golf, billiards, and cricket. But in considering the question as to the top players outside those on whom is stamped genius, there is not very much to choose. At any rate, I have heard men of undoubted fairness and every qualification to judge, admit they cannot say. ”

“ What visions of dropped catches pass through my mind as I look back over thirty years' experience of cricket—a chapter might be written on them—and how many old cricketers live, deep in whose hearts linger bitter memories of catches in the hands and out again. True, some men have hands that are not well adapted for holding catches. A small, fat, fleshy hand is one out of which the ball is apt to bound—it lacks grip and holding power—but even such hands, if the owners thereof would only hold them in the right position, would hold catches and not drop them. ”

“ In football you run your hardest and kick your hardest, and few spectators are much the wiser; and a nervous man can always hit hard at golf off the tee and through the green, for as he has not got to think of strength, he is less likely to fidget and foozle the ball. But when you are fifty yards from the hole, and a bunker yawning between you and it, or when you have to lay an approach putt of twenty yards more or less dead to win or halve a hole, then the question of nerve becomes everything, because strength is everything. ”

“ I have heard it said that batsmen will not consent to have their powers of run-getting crippled, that they refuse to allow that any reform is necessary. I refuse to believe that batsmen as a class are so selfish, have so little of the true interests of the game at heart. If true, it is a most melancholy fact. If anybody, of course, is really of opinion that it is immaterial whether a match is finished or not, that person is justified in opposing any reform. ”

“ Everything was run out, so throwing from long distances became absolutely necessary, and moreover very beautiful to look at; in fact, nothing prettier in cricket could be seen than a low, skimming, long hop, thrown in from eighty yards off, neatly handled by the wicket-keeper, the bails knocked off with no fuss, and the batsman run out by inches. ”

“ There is one simple reason why, as it appears to me, fast, vigorous batting is likely in Australia to die a natural death, and this reason is what I call the detestable system of playing matches to a finish, regardless of time. One side wins the toss, goes in to bat on a hot day, and stays in as long as it can on wickets like the proverbial billiard-table. Time is no object, and that side develops a painfully slow style of play. In some conversation I had this year with Howell, the Australian bowler, I said, "I cannot imagine how you ever get a good batsman out!" ”

“ Real cricketers who love a close finish and a decisive result can only see their hearts' desire on a wet wicket and unpleasant weather. The ignorant spectator who understands and appreciates a hard hit, but does not understand or appreciate a hanging ball being beautifully timed and returned along the ground to the bowler, might have been taught better things, but his taste has been vitiated and his baser nature pandered to by the high scoring of the day. ”

“ When we get old our enthusiasm is tempered by judgment, and criticism makes its appearance; it is true that we note what is good, but we note what is bad also, and when this is realised, it can be seen at once that as far as the thing to be judged is considered, the conditions are so different that our judgment ought to be carefully weighed and balanced by the sifting of facts and figures.
Is the game of golf as played now easier than it was thirty or forty years ago, and are the players now better or worse than they were then? ”

“ No longer do batting and bowling, when the wickets are hard and easy, meet on equal terms. The game has become a question of how many hundreds can be scored; the bowler has been beaten by the mowing machine and the heavy roller; and the only people who can be said to enjoy the game are some of the spectators, who have probably never played cricket, and care only to see hard hitting, and the batsmen themselves. It is no wonder that the busy man, who can only afford to play a game one day in the week, has taken to golf. ”

“ If the difference between a hero and the common herd may be defined, it is that one possesses real genius and the rest do not. When, however, we are asked to define genius, all we have to say is that to do so is impossible; but, for our present purpose, it is sufficient to say that a batting genius is a man who can adapt his play to circumstances and has the power of watching the ball. If the wicket is fast and easy, the man of genius can play forward and hit all round the ground, but his style is not stereotyped ”

“ What can be said of golf? What is the reason of golf coming to stay in England and in America, too, if report speaks truly? It is not easy to say why such is the case. Anybody can understand why football is a popular game; it is fast for one thing, and there is violent exercise in it, which an Englishman always loves. And in the case of cricket anybody can understand the joy of hitting a ball over the ropes, while the excitement of playing before crowds appeals strongly to many of us. ”

“ My own opinion is that, though the batsman and wicket-keeper may be in a better position to judge than the umpires, they cannot be infallible, and that the only man in the world who can know whether the ball is thrown or bowled is the bowler himself. Nobody could convince me that in Utopia, or any other place where all cricketers were sportsmen, and everybody wholly virtuous, there would be any bowling that was not fair. ”

“ Here is one of the reasons why golf has been taken to in England with a vigour and force that certainly is the most astonishing feature in the history of games that I have any experience of at all.
I have said that nobody can become a really first-rate golfer who has not begun the game early in life. I believe this to be absolutely true; but it is equally true that a very respectable skill can be acquired by men whose eye and muscles are attuned to games, if they have never handled a club till thirty years old. ”

“ At cricket you may play against any eleven, and you may enjoy your game. But golf is a painful game when played against an opponent of a certain type. The sulky player who is moody and never smiles, the fierce-tempered man who makes you miserable while he curses his caddie who has not the right of reply, the man who seems to be caring for nothing except for his own welfare and is barely civil to you, and, lastly, the man with a total absence of humour. ”

“ In other words, given a man of inexhaustible patience, a straight bat, and a good eye, there is no reason why he should ever be got out. Anybody who saw Noble bat in this year's test match at Manchester will see that this is no exaggeration. It is not possible in England to devote more than three days to any match, and I, for one, maintain that it would be the ruin of the game if more time were given. A continuation of summers like 1899 and no alteration of the rules would produce an absolute deadlock of international cricket in this country. ”

“ It would be absolutely impossible to play a good game with the feather balls which are exhibited as curiosities in some club rooms, as it would be at cricket to play a good innings with Robinson's bat, of colossal weight in the blade and very thin handle, which you may see at Lords. But the very old players had to play with feather balls, while the modern player has had every imaginable choice of the finest gutta-percha to choose from. ”

“ Cricket, during the progress of a match, may present every form of excitement or the reverse. The game may at one moment look an absolute certainty for one side, ten minutes after it looks an equal certainty for the other side; the downfall of a batsman who is well in and scoring rapidly often has, and it is to be hoped often will again, turn the fortunes of a match. While he was in, the scoring was fast, and the bowling looked easy: now he is out, the boot is altogether on the other leg, the bowlers are happy, and the two batsmen who are at the wickets both look like getting out every over. ”

“ If you don't want to talk yourself you can be as dumb as a drum with a hole in it, as Sam Weller says, and you may go farther, and forbid anybody to speak to you; but to stamp and swear because somebody within hearing distance of you chooses to talk to a friend is ridiculous and silly, partly because it is contemptible, and partly because, as you are not in a position to stop all conversation on the links, you must grin and bear it. ”

“ When a golfer or billiard player of mature years wonders why he is never able to play a certain club or a particular stroke, you may point out to him the fact that there are a great many boy cricketers with quite a fair talent for the game, who with the best coaching in the world cannot get rid of some particular fault, such as a fatal one of pulling a leg-stump ball. In practice the coach sometimes hugs himself with the belief that the fiend is banished, but in a match it may come back any moment ”

“ You cannot in golf ever be quite certain how the ball will lie except on the tee and putting-green. You experience during your walk of 150 yards to the ball alternate feelings of hope and fear, hope that the ball is lying on a smooth place and easy to hit, fear that it is in a cup or has a lump behind it. There is also the uncertainty that has a twinge of agony about it, and that is the question how you are going to hit it; even the best players foozle sometimes. Without uncertainty there is no really first-class game where a ball is concerned ”