IN the summer of 1899 a schoolboy walked to the wicket at Lord’s to begin a Lancashire innings against Middlesex; with him was Albert Ward. He was a graceful young cricketer, and a little tuft of hair stood up on the crown of his head. His flannels seemed soft and billowy. This boy—his name R. H. Spooner—was making his first appearance in county cricket in his summer holidays, fresh from Marlborough. It would be hard to imagine a severer ordeal for anybody, a trial in the sacrosanct air of Lord’s, the searching eyes of the pavilion on you, MacLaren your captain, and one of the bowlers against you Albert Trott at his best, spinning and curving and dipping the ball astonishingly.
R. H. Spooner that day made 83, an innings full of strokes that seemed to ripple over the grass, light and lovely as sunshine. Straight from the playing fields of Marlborough he came and conquered—nay, the word conquered is too hard and aggressive for Spooner; he charmed and won our heart and the hearts of all his opponents. ‘It were a pleasure to bowl to Maister Spooner,’ said an old player to me the other day; ‘his batting were as nice as he were hisself.’ Yes, it was nice; it was the batsmanship of manners. Spooner told us in every one of his drives past cover that he did not come from the hinterland of Lancashire, where cobbled streets sound with the noise of clogs and industry; he played always as though on the elegant lawns of Aigburth; his cricket was ‘county’ in the social sense of the term. This flavour of equability took the grimness out of a Lancashire and Yorkshire match even; I once saw him score 200 against Hirst, Rhodes and Haigh, at Bank Holiday time, and he transformed Old Trafford to Canterbury. I’ll swear that on that day long ago there were tents and bunting in the breeze of Manchester while Spooner’s bat flicked and flashed from morning till evening.
He was the most lyrical of cricketers, and for that reason he had no need to play a long innings to tell us his secret. The only difference between 30 by Spooner and 150 was a matter of external and unessential form or duration; the spirit moved from the very beginning. A rondo by Mozart is just as complete and true as a symphony by him. One daffodil is as precious and delectable as a hundred daffodils. And a single stroke by Spooner had likewise a quality absolute, beyond the need of mensuration or any mathematical means of valuation whatever. It you consider Spooner’s average for the whole of his career it will tell you nothing of consequence about his cricket; as well count the words in a poem or the notes in an allegro.
I must suppose that he hit the ball hard, because I remember seeing fieldsmen blowing their hands after they had stopped a stroke by Spooner. And once I sat on the shilling side when Parker, of Gloucestershire, bowled his first ball in county cricket: Spooner pulled it clean over the rails, and it crashed amongst the dust and cinders like an exploding shell. Yet my impression today is that Spooner’s cricket was all bouquet; I think of it as I think of a rose, because of the perfume, not because of the substantial stuff which went to its making. Never did I see Spooner strike an ugly position, either at the wicket or in the field, where at cover he was the picture of swift, diving elegance.
If I called his batsmanship that of manners, I do not mean it was ever affected: every innings by Spooner was natural and modest, like the man himself. The poise was a consequence of an instinctive balance of cultured technical parts. What’s bred in the bone comes out in an innings; I never saw Spooner bat without seeing, as a background for his skill and beauty, the fields of Marlborough, and all the quiet summertime amenities of school cricket. He was my favourite player when I was a boy—he and Victor Trumper. And with a boy’s illogicality I at one and the same time thought him wonderful and yet always in need of my prayers. All the time I watched him—and often I played truant to do so—I said in my heart, ‘Please, Lord, don’t let Reggie get out; let him score a century.’ Sometimes I was more moderate: ‘Please, Lord, let Reggie make 95.’ I called him ‘Reggie’ even in my petitions to Providence. Like every delightful cricketer, he seemed at any moment ready to get out; no great batsman has ever been content to keep strictly within the scope of the things that can be done safely. I remember once seeing Spooner begin an innings against Hirst. All round his legs was the notorious Hirst ‘trap’—four fieldsmen holding out avaricious hands. And Hirst swerved the ball terrifically across from Spooner’s off stump. And time after time did Spooner flick the swinging ball at his wrists’ end through the leg-trap—each stroke a brave and lovely butterfly going into the flame.
Yet he was a sound as well as a brilliant batsman. There is a stupid legend about the batsmen of old. Because they made runs handsomely it is thought in certain places that they were constantly thrusting out the left leg and leaving their stumps exposed to the breaking ball. Not long ago a cricketer actually said to me, ‘Yes, Spooner was splendid to watch, but he couldn’t abide the googly.’ And I said, ‘God forgive you for blasphemy.’ In September 1912 Spooner made a century against South Africa, and amongst the bowlers were Pegler, Faulkner and Schwarz. These men have never had superiors as masters of the googly; they were as clever at spinning the ball as anybody today. Spooner played them carefully—with his bat, not with his pads. He was superb in his back strokes; he could hit a four from a defensive position. The second line of defence—which is the pads—was known well enough to the batsmen of the Golden Age: Arthur Shrewsbury organized it scientifically. But it was a second and not a first line of defence; Spooner never put his bat ignominiously over his shoulder to any ball and stuck out his legs crudely and ungraciously. The fact that he could achieve a great innings as a boy against Albert Trott is ample retort to the absurd notion that he was ever at a loss against swerve or spin. No bowler who ever lived could give to a cricket ball more than Trott’s curve and break.
Spooner and MacLaren—has a county possessed two batsmen who could begin an innings with more than their appeal to the imagination? They were as the King and the Prince, or as the eagle and the flashing swallow. Spooner was one of the cricketers who, when I was very young, made me fall in love with the game; I think of his batting now, in middle age, with gratitude. The delight of it all went into my mind, I hope, to stay there, with all the delight that life has given me in various shapes, aspects and essences. When the form has gone—for it is material and accidental, and therefore perishable—the spirit remains. And Spooner’s cricket in spirit was kin with sweet music, and the wind that makes long grasses wave, and the singing of Elisabeth Schumann in Johann Strauss, and the poetry of Herrick. Why do we deny the art of a cricketer, and rank it lower than a vocalist’s or a fiddler’s? It anybody tells me that R. H. Spooner did not compel a pleasure as aesthetic as any compelled by the most celebrated Italian tenor that ever lived I will write him down a purist and an ass.