I have already exposed the fallacy[9] that to practise part by part is necessarily to produce a jerky and disjointed stroke; at first it may do so, but eventually the parts will easily combine into a unity, if we do them rightly. My own Tennis and Racquet strokes are no longer jerky and disjointed, but once they were so. Use has fused the parts into a whole.
Quite apart from success and enjoyment in Cricket, the game demands these and many other exercises, not only as apprenticeship, and as corrective of faults, but also as supplementary. For the last fallacy which we expose is that Cricket as played at present is at all a complete exercise for the body. A few reforms will be suggested in a subsequent chapter.
Cricket as she is played does not bear one tithe of her possible fruits; the soil is not properly prepared for her; she is left to grow anyhow. This is a sad error, if only because she is not a natural game--a game of natural movements. What more unnatural is there for most of us than to play forward correctly? The same applies to most games, for example to Lawn Tennis. Here we must consider the advantages of Cricket not as the practice and play now are, but as they easily _might be, if all-round Cricket were well prepared for and taught, well practised and played_; learnt and cultivated with science, not haphazardly; in moderation, not too little, not too much; with conscious care at the start, until conscious correct care has begotten sub-consciously correct ease.
The first advantage of the game, as it should be, is economy. If it only saves doctors’ and druggists’ bills, it is worth its cost in time and money. Professionals earn a healthy living by Cricket. Many schoolmasters, many clerks and partners, owe their position largely to their Cricket. This is but common sense. To play Cricket well is at least as good a qualification as to know well the names and dates of many prophets, kings, battles, and other dull trivialities.
For Cricket should develop the intellect. Quite apart from the effect of bodily health and activity upon brain-work, quite apart from the tonic of recreation and change of employment, Cricket should give lessons for life: it should teach co-operation, division of labour, encouragement of individuality; it should teach the art of mastering the mechanisms, the A B C, so indispensable to success; it should foster observation, rapid decision, then rapid action, judgment by results, memory, foresight. It _should_--though it seldom _does_. This intellectual aspect of Cricket is of national importance. We need intelligent leaders and workers: Cricket might easily be made to produce them. We need such in war as in peace: as Ranjitsinhji insists, “after all, Cricket is warfare in miniature. It is man against man, general against general,” and, we may add, team against team.