We were watching a test match in cricket the other day with our son (all our sons think cricket is a waste of time whereas my husband and I love it) when he wondered why and when the five day game came into existence. The 50 and 20 overs forming a game came in my lifetime, I am pretty sure. So why did they choose to go with the 5-day game? After all it doesn't fit with the school day, though I suppose a lot of these games were played at boarding schools. None of the cricket formats would fit into a school day, though. Not if anything else was to be taught. I realise if you want two innings each it needs to be at least 4 days, but why not just one innings?

Caro wrote:

After all it doesn't fit with the school day, though I suppose a lot of these games were played at boarding schools. None of the cricket formats would fit into a school day, though. Not if anything else was to be taught.

Was much else taught at the great English public schools? Rugby, I suppose, during the colder months. I have no idea about your innings question, Caro, but your post reminded me of a cruel jibe made recently about the British by some American commentating on the recent Duchess of Sussex débacle. It was - apparently seriously - suggested that, not only did the beastly British invade, loot and pillage most of the globe, but we also forced everyone (no doubt at gunpoint) in the Empire to play cricket. Well, we obviously taught the former colonies too well: they now regularly thrash us at our own game. Serves us right - villainy never prospers in the long run.

Cricket began in the late 16th century and became our national game during the 18th century: I wonder if  that silly George III tried to impose it on the settlers in the New World and it was that, rather than all the fuss about taxation, that triggered the loss of our American colony?

Dr Johnson did not include a definition of "cricket" in his dictionary, which is a great shame. Just found this:


In 1871, a London journalist and cricket enthusiast named Frederick Gale lamented that the famous lexicographer Dr. Samuel Johnson did not define cricket in his dictionaries. Gale took the liberty of suggesting what a conversation between Johnson and his biographer, Boswell, might have looked like, if the topic had indeed arisen. Johnson’s imaginary description for Boswell ran like this:


"Sir, cricket is a manly game, demanding exercise of patience and temper, combined with some danger, and therefore requiring courage. The two men at the wickets are viceroys, who alternately rule each other’s kingdom, and the space between the batsman’s wicket and the popping crease, though it be but four feet in extent, is as much the batsman’s kingdom, so long as he can hold his fortress, which is called a wicket, as Ireland is the Lord Lieutenant’s. The laws of the game are just and reasonable as the laws of chivalry were, and it is a sport which interests rich and poor, old and young, and promotes good will towards men,’ and one which ought to be supported by the bishops and clergy, who can mix sociably with their parishioners on the village green without losing their dignity and self-respect. Sir, if I had been a bishop I should have played cricket."



Oh heck, just not cricket at all - you can tell that nonsense was written by a Victorian. Johnson would be turning in his grave.  But I think the Indians and the Australians and the South Africans and all the other member states of the Commonwealth (except, oddly, the Canadians) do actually rather enjoy their cricket, even it the game was originally imposed upon them by us Brits. Not all bad, you see.

Perhaps we should have tried to convert the EU while we had a chance. Can't imagine the French or the Germans being any good at it, though, but you never can tell...






"It's no good, sir - they're never going to understand silly mid on, let alone bowling a googly!"

Johnson may have neglected to mention cricket in his dictionary, but only because he reckoned that if the bard couldn't be bothered with it then neither should he. An admirable and generally sound approach to distinguishing between words that were worthy of inclusion and those which weren't, but which ended up - at least when it came to what might be termed "popular sport" - advertising a rather odd range of preoccupations that engrossed the English at their leisure.

Anyone for Lóggats? (we have Hamlet to thank for this one)

Lóggats. n.s.

Loggats is the ancient name of a play or game, which is one of the unlawful games enumerated in the thirty-third statute of Henry VIII. It is the same which is now called kittlepins, in which boys often make use of bones instead of wooden pins, throwing at them with another bone instead of bowling. "Hanmer".
(Johnson's dictionary 1755 edition)

Johnson tagged "Hanmer" at the end to acknowledge that he was deferring in matters of physical exertion (of which he himself was as intentionally ignorant as possible) to the expertise of the 1st Baronet Thomas H., who had written an exhaustive list of things, including physical pursuits, that were being lost to English culture in the Restoration period, some never having recovered from Puritan cultural purges, and others - like Lóggats - which had fallen foul of monarchs of times past. His argument, one familiar to all champions of heritage preservation today, was that these many incremental losses of such little things as popular pastimes added up over time to a fundamental loss of a nation's very soul, and that it was government's overriding sovereign duty, even more important than foreign policy, taxation or warmongering, to ensure their survival, revival and protection or risk having no country worth governing any longer. Hanmer, going straight to the top, even managed to present his publication in person as a gift to Charles II who, it was recorded, asked Hanmer - in a remarkable example of the "I dare you to laugh at my ignorance" defense strategy still beloved of his successors to this day - why he had omitted strawberries, which that year could not be bought for love nor money in London. The self-inflicted injury to the 1st Baronet's tongue by his own teeth is not recorded, just presumed.

That bit about losing the nation's soul is very pertinent right now in NZ/Aotearoa. Just today on the news we heard about this: "story that broke in yesterday's NZ Herald outlining the New Zealand Rugby Players Association's (NZRPA) opposition to the proposed acquisition of a share of NZ Rugby by American private equity firm Silver Lake."


As far as I could gather there is a proposal to sell either 15% or 25% (I can't remember which I heard on Radio NZ) to this equity firm and it is causing ructions. I hadn't heard of it till this morning. But I am pretty sure the phrase "selling our soul" was used. Money is starting to spoil all sports, I feel. The amount professional football (I call it 'soccer') players get is quite obscene in our eyes. And even at a local schoolboy level especially in Auckland the rich schools keep poaching promising players. And the Pacific nations keep losing their best players who want to play for the All Blacks. 
Sorry, this has got off any history. 

In either the penultimate or final year at primary school (where girls and boys were separated for sports - the boys got to go to the field and girls stayed in the playground, sexism much?) a teacher taught us stool ball (or something which masqueraded as it, we didn't actually use stools) for something a bit different from rounders (we never branched out into lacrosse or croquet). I was a duff at sports I fear but I can remember the boys coming back early from the field once and saying we weren't doing too badly - for girls.