Quotations from P G Wodehouse are copyright of, and reprinted by permission of, the Trustees of the Wodehouse Estate © 2012 The P G Wodehouse Society (UK)

The P G Wodehouse Society (UK) cricket team The Gold Bats v The Hollywood Golden Oldies CC on August 3rd 2008

This game was played at the Metropolitan Police Sports Ground in Bushey, Hertfordshire at 2:00 pm. The event proved to be a great success, even though the weather was a little damp at times. The HGOCC are on a tour in this country and played their first game against the Gold Bats. Included in their tour is a day at Lords, where of course Plum played, and a game against the MCC Social side at Gerrards Cross. Plum also played for the Hollywood Cricket Team, being one of it's founding members, and HGOCC is a sister club to this.

Members of the P G Wodehouse Society (UK) will be pleased to know that a full report on this interesting day will be published in Wooster Sauce. Below please find below two photographs of this day.

"Out!" an unfortunate HGOCC player's bails fly off to the right!

A group photograph of the Gold Bats, HGOCC and Umpires at close of play

The following hilarious letter was written to our Wooster Sauce editor by Andrew Chapman, a member of the society who lives in Shropshire. Murray Hedgcock, our umpire and society patron, was the major subject of this letter and so his reply is also given below!

Gold Bats v Hollywood

The Editor

Wooster Sauce

5th August 2008

Dear Sir,

I refer to the after match festivities at Bushey when the Gold Bats played the Hollywood Cricket Club on Sunday 3rd August. As the match itself will no doubt be more than adequately reported elsewhere, I need not touch on the historic nature of the day, when England won at cricket against an overseas side, but I would like to draw attention to the most interesting, informative and humorous discourse given by Mr Murray Hedgecock after the game. Mr Hedgecock touched on an amazing variety of aspects of English, American and Australian culture related to the leather and willow, including pointing out to our guests that Australia took a baseball team to the U S of A in the 1880s and won the series 10-3.

However, it is important, I feel, that any of your overseas readers present at this august occasion are enabled to avoid the potential for confusion inherent in an otherwise excellently conceived and delivered commentary. It was after all less than a hundred years ago when Plum himself helped to found the Hollywood club, and I fear that because of their relatively recent exposure to the game and the antipodean lilt and authority with which Mr Hedgecock delivered his treatise, our American cousins are in danger of conceiving the notion that cricket, this most English of activities, has its roots in Australia, rather than in villages the length and breadth of our own dear land. Regrettably we have to concede that the Australians have developed a theoretical and practical understanding of the game which is temporarily superior to that demonstrated by the teams selected in Mr Hedgecock’s adopted homeland – Americans with an enthusiasm for the history of the game may have knowledge of this – but when the Pilgrim Fathers set sail in the early 1600s, the use of wicket gate at the entrance to the churchyard was in its infancy as a target for the bowler and a castle to be defended by the batsman, and when the religious dissenters landed in Virginia and Pennsylvania, the design of their churches was perhaps deliberately different in this vital detail of design and construction, with the tragic result that cricket never properly developed in New England.

When on the other hand Mr Hedgecock’s forefathers set sail for Australia in the convict ships of the 1700s–1800s, the wicket gate of the church had metamorphosed into the set of stumps which could easily and temporarily be transported to the sacred square, the centre of the traditional village green. It was natural that those transportees, and indeed others of like mind, should seize every opportunity to practise this most rewarding of recreations in their Aussie prison yards. It was equally inevitable that a rivalry, nay, even a hostility, should develop between those who sent men to the ends of the earth for stealing a loaf of bread for their hungry children, and the aforesaid transportees settling in new lands so far away from home and family. Accordingly, Australia has learned to breed venomous fast bowlers while England generally relies on the guile of its spinners. English cricket eventually died for the first time on 29th August 1882 at the Oval in London - but the Ashes were rescued in Melbourne and brought back to Lords the following year by Lord Darnley. Since then, many men of both nationalities have breathed new life into this blend of rivalry, hostility and, yes, even enmity, as when questions were asked in both parliaments about the English tactics in 1932-33. But it has to be conceded that in all but a few test series since the flowers of England’s youth were taken in two world wars – with notable exceptions – the Aussies have had the edge. Nowadays for the wider world, the kings of cricket live in the southern hemisphere, but, sir, in the sporting days of yore, England’s Glory was more than a box of vestas.

In many of those Ashes test cricket series in England, rain came to the rescue of a potentially embarrassed English team, the result being a draw. In our game against transoceanic opponents on 3rd August, rain again intervened – to the advantage of the Gold Bats. The English team won against a frozen Hollywood side shivering from the effects of weather which contrasted alarmingly with that of their own homeland. But in England, especially when we are batting and have a chance to win, we have on occasions to appease the gods of cricket and complete a game in conditions which are a test of character. Indeed, the fact that Mr Hedgecock umpired throughout the match without a murmur about the conditions perfectly illustrates the character-building qualities of the game. Perhaps we shall be able to welcome back our American cousins some day to play a game in weather which compares more favourably with the best of conditions for cricket. We certainly hope so, and, who knows, the result may be very different.

One final thought. Mr Hedgecock laid down, I suggest, in his reference to the victorious Australian tour of the USA 120 years ago, a way forward for English cricket. If the American baseball leagues could possibly persuade the Australian cricketers to play baseball instead, it might leave the coast clearer for England to find a way to beat the other test sides like South Africa, the West Indies, India ... On reflection, perhaps that would be too much to ask. Let us concentrate, then, on encouraging the United States of America to play cricket – and we might be able to look forward to an English victory in more than a single test series – until the memory of the Boston Tea Party fires the passions of the eastern states and, sadly, like those other matches, England’s Glory will once again become but a sporting memory.

I remain, sir,

Yours etc.

Andrew Chapman (signed)

PS. I understand from Mr Hedgecock that his ancestors settled in Australia of their own accord. Any inference that compulsory repatriation might have applied to his ancestors is entirely coincidental and without foundation.

Murray's reply runs as follows:

Dear Sir

Apart from pointing out that there is no “e” in the middle of my surname, and stating that I have proof that my ancestors were all free settlers in the Great South Land, I can have nothing but high praise for your remarkable analysis, and especially its imaginative construction. I am also most gratified that it confirms that at least one of my audience stayed awake.

Now, if you can only persuade Ye Ed to publish it in full, given her continuing space problems (she even has some of my most urgent copy kept on file) …

That I fear may be an even more difficult task than having England regain the Ashes next year.

Yours appreciatively

MBH