A Proper Game of Cricket
Mary Mitford makes an appeal for the traditional village cricket match.
July 31 1823
King George IV 1820-1830
Mary Mitford makes an appeal for the traditional village cricket match.
July 31 1823
King George IV 1820-1830
In 1819, Lady’s Magazine began publishing Mary Mitford’s sketches of village life in Berkshire, and was rewarded with a satisfying leap in circulation from 250 to 2,000. This extract comes from the beginning of a reflection on the superiority of village cricket over the professional game; given that Mary was writing to help pay off her father’s huge gambling debts, her point of view is understandable.
Abridged.
I doubt if there be any scene in the world more animating or delightful than a cricket-match:— I do not mean a set match at Lord’s Ground for money, hard money, between a certain number of gentlemen and players, as they are called* — people who make a trade of that noble sport, and degrade it into an affair of bettings, and hedgings, and cheatings, it may be, like boxing or horse-racing;* nor do I mean a pretty fête in a gentleman’s park, where one club of cricketing dandies encounter another such club, and where they show off in graceful costume to a gay marquee of admiring belles, who condescend so to purchase admiration, and while away a long summer morning in partaking cold collations, conversing occasionally, and seeming to understand the game — the whole being conducted according to ball-room etiquette, so as to be exceedingly elegant and exceedingly dull. No! the cricket that I mean is a real solid old-fashioned match between neighbouring parishes, where each attacks the other for honour and a supper, glory and half-a-crown a man.
* In the terminology of the time, Gentlemen were amateur sportsmen, Players were professionals; cricket clubs would pay working-class professionals to play alongside a well-to-do amateurs who had learnt the game at schools such as Eton College. There was a certain rivalry between the two thanks to their social distinctions, and a Gentlemen vs Players match was arranged in 1806. The event became a regular fixture in 1819, the year in which Mitford started writing for Lady’s Magazine, and continued until 1962, when the Marylebone Cricket Club (MCC), national administrators of the game, abolished the distinction. The final game was played in September 1962 at Scarborough.
* For several years now, Mary had been writing to help pay off her father’s huge gambling debts, so her enthusiasm for village cricket over the high-stakes County game is understandable. This essay was published in July 1823, a little over three years after the family had been forced to downsize from the imposing family home that George Mitford had built at Grazeley, near Reading, in 1802. At least some of the money for the house was Mary’s. George had bought Mary a ticket in the Irish lottery as a present for her tenth birthday five years earlier, and Mary (who had chosen the winning number, 2224, because it added up to her age) had netted £20,000, which according to Measuring Worth would be well over £2.5m today.
Suggest answers to this question. See if you can limit one answer to exactly seven words.
Why was Mary Mitford not keen to watch cricket at Lord’s?
Because so much gambling went on there.
Express the ideas below in a single sentence, using different words as much as possible. Do not be satisfied with the first answer you think of; think of several, and choose the best.
Mary liked village cricket. She disliked the County game. County cricket attracted gamblers.
See if you can include one or more of these words in your answer.
IContrast. IIPrefer. IIIUnlike.