Gentleman Players

[Richard]

I'd always thought it was a solidified story with firm evidence it did happen.

It's nothing more outrageous than that which happened with Geoff Boycott in 1977 when he played in some charity match for someoneorother and got out in the first over or something, then the blokey who'd arranged for him to play also arranged for him to bat for the other team (so to speak, obv.), which he did and scored a large century. Then he scored another one for Yorkshire a couple of days later, then the next week he came back into the Test team and scored another one. And another one later on his home ground to bring-up 100 First-Class hundreds.

In games of cricket of no consequence, it really doesn't matter in the slightest what players of a greater calibre than the mass get up to.

 

[neville cardus]

I'd always thought it was a solidified story with firm evidence it did happen.

The closest to that painfully frequently-repeated yarn that I can come is an anecdote told me by David Frith: "Wilfred [Rhodes ...] relished telling of trapping WG leg-before. Bob Thoms raised his finger, but the Old Man seemed reluctant to depart. 'Y're out! Y're out! You'll have to go!' bellowed Thoms. And so WG went."

In games of cricket of no consequence, it really doesn't matter in the slightest what players of a greater calibre than the mass get up to.

Unless, of course, they didn't get up to them. My theory is that much of the apocrypha surrounding W.G. originates with his contemporaries.

The primary aim of a story-teller (a good one, at least) is to keep his listeners interested. To explain that Roland Leather was a first-class cricketer who played one match for Yorkshire in 1906 before launching into a glowing account of his shoving a bail down a pig-headed umpire's throat detracts somewhat from the charm and interest-value of the tale. It is far easier to take the stand-out figure of the time -- and I shan't field any queries as to whom that was -- and project all such tales onto him.

My theory on "They came to see me bat, not you umpire" is that the perpetrator was in fact Harry Jupp, about whom Lord Harris wrote thus:

"Jupp loved batting and was quite difficult to get to leave the wicket if there was a chance of the umpire deciding in his favour." Having been bowled, "[h]e stooped, picked up and replaced the bails, and took his guard. 'Aren't you going out, Juppy?' asked the opponents' captain. 'No,' said Jupp, 'not at Dorking'; and he didn't."

Sounds rather familiar, that.