On this day: Aug 28, 1915
Few places are more drearily eloquent of the war than Lord’s. There are some soldiers in training and in a little garden tucked away behind the Pavilion a Volunteer Training Corps has its headquarters. Otherwise all is silent and deserted. But now and again if we are lucky, we may light on a spectacle both quaint and cheerful. On the sacred sward two teams of small boys from County Council schools are playing a cricket match with all the solemnity befitting the occasion. The training of new armies has churned up their usual pitch, and so here they are at Lord’s, their runs duly recorded on a giant telegraph and cheered from the Mound. There are not many onlookers, but each side has its band of supporters, including a row of enthusiastic little girls in print frocks, while impartial applause is provided by the soldiers off duty. In less than no time we, too, are enthralled, wishing that there was no odious drill to call us elsewhere, for the cricket is well worth watching. The home team, from a Marylebone school, has been got out for a small score, and their opponents from Battersea are quickly catching them. The fact of paying rates in Chelsea turns us at once into frantic Battersea patriots, and we hope that Marylebone may be beaten into a cocked hat. The two batsmen are extremely small: one may be 12 or 13, the other looks as if he could not be more than 11, and one of the two opposing bowlers towers over them.
The two are clearly masters of the situation and let the runs come quite slowly and steadily. There is something essentially professional in their methods: they bat as if they had three days before them, like a pair of Shrewsburys in embryo. Yet they are spirited runners between the wickets and, whenever the ball goes towards a rather deep cover-point, they steal swiftly and silently across the pitch with all the intimate understanding of a Hobbs and a Rhodes. The tinier of the two has a crop of brown curly hair and one very large pad on one very small leg. The soldiers have christened him “Little Tich”. He has a fine variety of strokes, and does his full share of the run getting. Some day, perhaps, if there is ever a “Gentlemen and Players” match again, we may see “Little Tich” on the scene of his early triumphs breaking the hearts of the Gentlemen of England.