War and Cricket

Given England’s long and rich sporting heritage, it seems natural that the theme of sport was often used in war poetry from 1914 onwards as a means to encourage young men to sign up for active service. By drawing parallels between playing sport and fighting for one's country, the notion of battle and warfare could be played down, so that to join the army was seen merely as the equivalent of joining a sports club. Accordingly, poets often turned to the “Gentlemen’s Game” for inspiration, and the game of cricket seems to have played its part in bringing in army volunteers.

This is something that Ernest Williams Hornung does, for example, in his poem, “Lord’s Leave”, where the imagery of a game of cricket is used. As a keen cricketer himself, Hornung writes of how the war has disrupted the game at Lord’s Cricket Ground. But, on the other hand, “The Schools take guard upon a fierier pitch / Somewhere in Flanders”, where the game is “bigger”. There is an overriding sense of optimism with regard to the final outcome of the war since such is the skill and dominant force of England's “team” that the side “can’t be beaten!”

At the same time, Hornung uses this parallel as a means to attack and scorn Germany, for if cricket is a Gentleman’s game and a mark of a civilised nation, then the Germans, who don’t understand the rules, can only be considered as a race of barbarians:

Cricket? ’Tis Sanscrit to the super Hun

..............................................................

Better one sporting lesson learnt at Lord’s

Than all their Kultur. . . .

Hornung’s son, Arthur Oscar, joined up and was killed in Ypres on 6th July 1915.

Likewise, in the poem, “The Cricketers of Flanders”, war is seen as no more than a game of cricket in which, moreover, the British have a distinct advantage over the enemy because their talent for bowling cricket balls also serves to throw bombs:

Full sixty yards I’ve seen them throw

With all that nicety of aim

They learned on British cricket fields.

Ah! Bombing is a Briton’s game!

(Anonymous)

In the midst of fighting, they can almost imagine that they really are bowling in a match, whilst friends look on and drink tea nearby. Furthermore, such noble exploits will long be the subject of conversation after the war has finished, when it will be told of how,

Britain’s fighting cricketers

Helped bomb the Germans out of

France.

The last line serves to confirm this parallel, as the fighting man is portrayed as, “A sportsman and a soldier still”.

Jessie Pope, like Hornung, also sees how the war has disrupted this national sport. In her poem, “Cricket - 1915”, she wonders where the burly sportsmen have disappeared to that once graced the “lush and rank” cricket pitches of England, before realising that they have gone

. . . ‘on tour’,

To make their country’s triumph sure.

They’ll take the Kaiser’s middle wicket

And smash it by clean British cricket.