One is frightfully excited about them; one is very pleased when one does well and depressed if one does badly. One works oneself into a state of nervous misery before a match, and one of hysterical excitement after it. Victory and defeat mean a great deal. And it was with a real surprise that I realised a few months ago at the end of a very pleasant season that, although I should continue to play football for another ten years, and cricket, I hope, for another forty, I should never again really care whether the side for which I am playing wins or loses--care, that is to say, as I cared at school about a house match. In club cricket and football one asks for a good game in pleasant company, and victory is incidental. While one is playing, of course, one is keen, but one will not brood afterwards over one's mistakes,--not as one does after a school match. There is, I suppose, no public school man under the sun who does not now and again on some winter evening drop his paper on his knees and curse himself because, fifteen years ago, he missed a catch at an important crisis--that is one of the things one never ceases to regret. That awful moment when one picks up the ball with tingling fingers and tosses it back to the bowler; it is for all time a vivid memory. One does not feel like that about an ordinary catch in an ordinary club game. One is annoyed with oneself; one is sorry for the bowler; one apologises to the captain, but one remembers that one is out, after all, to enjoy oneself.
That is the difference between school and club cricket. At school one is not out to enjoy oneself. It is a business, this getting of runs and taking of wickets. There are cups for house matches, and there are cups for batting and bowling averages, and it is a sin to miss a catch. There are few worse things than the anxiety attendant on those who play on the fringe of a school side. Not only is one worried about one's own performances, but about one's rivals. If one has made a duck oneself one cannot, in spite of one's patriotism, be anxious for a particular rival to retrieve the fortunes of the side with a century. A first eleven cap is valued far too highly for such unselfishness. It is equally little fun to be a member of a bad fifteen. One is subjected to a series of complaints and recriminations. One grows sick of the whole business. And I can remember during the first winter of the war the relief with which we learnt that the Tonbridge match had been scratched. We had a poor side. We knew that we should be thoroughly trounced, and that, for the next week, the lives of those who had not distinguished themselves would be made wretched. We never for a moment questioned the justice of this tyranny. The Lord our God was a jealous God. We had to serve him. But we were not sorry that an occasion for his wrath should be removed. I very much doubt whether the actual playing of games was as pleasant at school as it is outside it.