the Cambridge men in 1893 and in 1896 had no business to bowl badly to prevent them, whether it was in the written laws of cricket or not. Opinions, however, will differ about this matter. It is for the historian rather to point out that these events were really effects of a general cause at work in recent cricket—the growing keenness of competition, which is slowly changing a pleasant game into a serious business. The Oxford and Cambridge match was at first, perhaps, too much of the former: it is now tending in the direction of the latter.
No human institution is perfect: it will always tend to excess or defect. But how nearly perfect in its own way is cricket, and especially Oxford and Cambridge cricket! It is a game which keeps boys out of mischief. It is a training of youth for a manly life. It lays up a store of strength and health against old age. It makes individual men lifelong friends. It unites whole schools and universities. Learning itself has gradually learnt to take up a different attitude towards cricket. It has discovered that the waste of time formerly imputed to cricket is really due to frivolity, that cricket is consistent with study, and that the cricketer makes a good schoolmaster. The truth is, that athletics are an integral part and a powerful support of all education: they make it popular. Oxford and Cambridge are like twin stars shedding the light of learning from a distance. The Oxford and Cambridge boat-race and cricket-match are the two anchors of the universities in the heart of the English people.
