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James Pycroft. The Cricket Field
The Cricket Field
Table of Contents
PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION
PREFACE TO THE FIRST EDITION
THE CRICKET FIELD
CHAPTER I. ORIGIN OF THE GAME OF CRICKET
CHAP II. THE GENERAL CHARACTER OF CRICKET
CHAP. III. THE HAMBLEDON CLUB AND THE OLD PLAYERS
CHAP. IV. CRICKET GENERALLY ESTABLISHED AS A NATIONAL GAME BY THE END OF THE LAST CENTURY
CHAP. V. THE FIRST TWENTY YEARS OF THE PRESENT CENTURY
CHAP. VI. A DARK CHAPTER IN THE HISTORY OF CRICKET
CHAP. VII. Βαττολογια, OR THE SCIENCE AND ART OF BATTING
CHAP. VIII. HINTS AGAINST SLOW BOWLING
CHAP. IX. BOWLING.—AN HOUR WITH “OLD CLARKE.”
CHAP. X. HINTS ON FIELDING
CHAP. XI. CHAPTER OF ACCIDENTS.—MISCELLANEOUS
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James Pycroft
Or, the History and Science of the Game of Cricket
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A late author has very sensibly remarked that Cricket could not have been popular in the days of Elizabeth, or we should expect to find allusions to that game, as to tennis, foot-ball, and other sports, in the early poets; but Shakspeare and the dramatists who followed, he observes, are silent on the subject.
As to the silence of the early poets and dramatists on the game of cricket—and no one conversant with English literature would expect to find it except in some casual allusion or illustration in an old play—this silence we can confirm on the best authority. What if we presumed to advance that the early dramatists, one and all, ignore the very name of cricket. How bold a negative! So rare are certain old plays that a hundred pounds have been paid by the Duke of Devonshire for a single copy of a few loose and soiled leaves; and shall we pretend to have dived among such hidden stores? We are so fortunate as to be favoured with the assistance of the Rev. John Mitford and our loving cousin John Payne Collier, two English scholars, most deeply versed in early literature, and no bad judges of cricket; and since these two scholars have never met with any mention of cricket in the early dramatists, nor in any author earlier than 1685, there is, indeed, much reason to believe that “Cricket” is a word that does not occur in any English author before the year 1685.
