some better arguments than these if he wants to
defend gladiatorial cricket. At least he allows that a change has come
over the game of late years, and that this change has to be defended?"

"Yes, he admits the change, and explains how it came about. In the
beginning we had local club cricket pure and simple--the game of your
Village Green, in fact. Out of this grew representative local cricket--
that is, district or county cricket which flourished along with local club
cricket. Out of county cricket, which in those days was only local
cricket glorified, sprang exhibition or spectacular or gladiatorial
cricket, which lived side by side with, but distinct from, the other.
Finally, exhibition and county cricket merged and became one. And that is
where we are now."

"Does he explain how exhibition and county cricket came, as he puts it, to
be merged into one?"

"Yes. The introduction of spectacular cricket (he says) changed the basis
of county cricket considerably. For many years the exhibition elevens and
the counties played side by side; but gradually the former died out, and
the new elements they had introduced into the game were absorbed into
county cricket. The process was gradual, but in the end complete.
The old county clubs and the new ones that from time to time sprang up
added the exhibition side of cricket to the old local basis. The county
clubs were no longer merely glorified local clubs, but in addition
business concerns. They provided popular amusement and good cricket; in
fact, they became what they are now--local in name, and partly local in
reality, but also run upon exhibition or spectacular lines."

"A truly British compromise! Good business at the bottom of it, and a
touch of local sentiment by way of varnish. For of course the final
excuse for calling an eleven after Loamshire (let us say), and for any
pride a Loamshire man may take in its doings, is that its members have
been bred and trained in Loamshire. But, because any such limitation
would sorely affect the gate-money, we import players from Australia or
Timbuctoo, stick a Loamshire cap with the county arms on the head of each,
and confidently expect our public to swallow the fiction and provide the
local enthusiasm undismayed."

"My dear Verinder, if you propose to preach rank Chauvinism, I have done.
But I don't believe you are in earnest."

"In a sense, I am not. My argument would exclude Ranjitsinhji himself
from all mat