e time within
the laws and clean contrary to the ethics of cricket. But there was also
a deal of talk about what was 'due to the public'; talk which would have
been altogether wide of the mark in the old days, when Oxford and
Cambridge met to play a mere friendly match and the result concerned them
alone."

"And is this," I asked, "the sum of your indictment?"

"Yes, I think that is all. And surely it is enough."

"Then, as I make out, your chief objections to spectacular cricket are
two. You hold that it gives vast numbers of people a false idea that they
are joining in a sport when in truth they are doing no more than look on.
And you contend that as the whole institution resolves itself more and
more into a paid exhibition, the spectators will tend more and more to
direct the development of the game; whereas cricket in your opinion should
be uninfluenced by those who are outside the ropes?"

"That is my case."

"And I think, my dear Verinder, it is a strong one. But there is just one
little point which you do not appear to have considered. And I was coming
to it just now--or rather Prince Ranjitsinhji was coming to it--when you
interrupted us. 'From a purely cricket point of view,' he was saying,
'not much can be said against exhibition cricket.' And in the next
sentence he goes on: 'At any rate it promotes skill in the game and keeps
up the standard of excellence.'"

"To be sure it does that."

"And cricket is played by the best players to-day with more skill than it
was by the best players of twenty or forty years ago?"

"Yes, I believe that; in spite of all we hear about the great Alfred Mynn
and other bygone heroes."

"Come then," said I, "tell me, Is Cricket an art?"

"Decidedly it is."

"Then Cricket, like other arts, should aim at perfection?"

"I suppose so."

"And that will be the highest aim of Cricket--its own perfection? And its
true lovers should welcome whatever helps to make it perfect?"

"I see what you are driving at," said he. "But Cricket is a social art,
and must be judged by the good it does to boys and men. You, I perceive,
make it an art-in-itself, and would treat it as the gardeners treat a fine
chrysanthemum, nipping off a hundred buds to feed and develop a single
perfect bloom."

"True: we must consider it also as a social art. But, my dear fellow, are
you not exaggerating the destruction necessary to produce the perfect
bloom? You talk of the crowd at Lord's o