An enthusiastic house captain is apt to believe that
by assiduous practice the most unlikely and awkward recruit can be
converted into a useful batsman, and the result is that he will drive
all his house day after day to the nets, until they begin to loathe
the sight of a cricket ball.
We should recognise that cricket is a game for the few; the majority
of boys can never make good cricketers. And happy are those schools
which are near a river and can provide an alternative exercise in the
summer, which does not require exceptional quickness of eye and wrist
and does provide a splendid discipline of body and spirit. In the
summer it is well to exempt all boys from cricket, who have really a
taste for natural history or photography. Summer half-holidays are
emphatically the time for hobbies, and it is a serious charge against
our games if they are organised to such a pitch that hobbies are
practically prohibited. The zealous captain will object that such
"slacking" is destroying the spirit of the house. We must endeavour to
point out to him that the unwilling player never makes a good player,
and that such a boy may be finding his proper development in the
pursuit of butterflies, a development which he would never gain by
unsuccessful and involuntary cricket. House masters too are apt to
complain that freedom for hobbies is subversive of discipline, and to
quote the old adage about Satan and idle hands.
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