My career in first-class
cricket having, after a very happy period, reached its
end, I gladly comply with the request of the Editor
of Wisden's Almanack to jot down some personal impressions
which may be of interest to present and future readers
of the book.
The honour has been done
me of referring to the period of my active participation
in important cricket as The Hobbs Era, and I should
like to say at once how mindful I am of this distinction.
Roughly thirty years have gone by since I first played
for Surrey under the residential qualification, and
nothing has ever occurred to cause me the slightest
regret that I took the advice of Tom Hayward and migrated
from Cambridge to London. Without blowing my own trumpet
I can say that when I went to the Oval I knew pretty
well my own capabilities; it was just a question as
to how great I should find the difference between first-class
and Minor Counties cricket. The feeling was strong within
me that I could make good, but I little thought then
that I should achieve the success in an even higher
sphere of cricket than that to which I was then aspiring,
or that I should be the first man to beat the record
of that wonderful batsman, W. G. Grace, in the matter
of making centuries. However, this article is not meant
to be a statement of what I myself have accomplished;
the purport of it is to give in some slight degree my
ideas on the changes that have come about in the game-whether
of improvement or otherwise-and the points that have
struck me as being worthy of mention.
The era to which my name
has been given by you, Mr. Editor, covers first-class
cricket from 1903 to 1933. The War came to rob all of
us of four solid years of the game, and although I played
a little last summer I think that I really finished
in 1933 when at 50 years of age after, roughly, 30 seasons
at the Oval, I was beginning to feel that the strain
of the game day after day was getting just a little
too much for me. There was also the fact that younger
players were knocking at the door, and that it did not
become me, having had a longer innings than most cricketers
of modern days, to stand in the way of promising recruits
who wanted to feel that their positions in a county
eleven were secure. So even though I scored one century
last season I still fall short by three of the two hundred
I had fondly hoped to obtain. Records after all are
ephemeral; they are only made to be beaten by somebody
else, and while it is nice to think that one has accomplished
something out of the common there are other and more
important considerations to bear in mind. The new leg-before-wicket
rule, which is being tried experimentally may, if adopted,
have a far reaching effect on batsmen, but at the back
of my mind there is the impression that someone will
come along one of these days and surpass the 197 hundreds
which now stand to my credit.
Before my time there were
other epochs in our great game. The days of top-hats,
when Alfred Mynn, the Lion of Kent and other famous
men were in their prime, are now far distant. Then came
the Grace period when that marvellous batsman stood
out head and shoulders above everybody else; the Hon.
F. S. Jackson, Ranjitsinhji, G. L. Jessop, Tom Hayward,
C. B. Fry, A. C. MacLaren, George Hirst, J. T. Tyldesley,
Victor Trumper, M. A. Noble and others too numerous
to mention were contemporaries in what has been described
as the Golden Age of cricket. It will be seen therefore
that my own follows in a natural sequence in this recurring
cycle.
For the full Wisden Online experience
This
is a promotional area. Please return to the main Wisden
site by clicking here