First of all sports, be first alike in fame."

It had its calumniators, who said that it "propagated a spirit of
idleness" in bad times, when people ought to work and not play, and
that it encouraged gambling. But the game began to prosper, and
several noted men, poets and illustrious statesmen, recall the
pleasurable memories of their prowess with the bat and ball. In a
book of songs called _Pills to purge Melancholy_, published in 1719,
we find the verse--

"He was the prettiest fellow
At football or at cricket:
At hunting chase or nimble race
How featly he could prick it."

In the early part of the eighteenth century the game was in a very
rudimentary condition, very different from the scientific pastime it
has since become. There were only two wickets, a foot high and two
feet apart, with one long bail at the top. Between the wickets there
was a hole large enough to contain the ball, and when the batsman
made a run, he had to place the end of his bat in this hole before
the wicket-keeper could place the ball there, otherwise he would be
"run out."

The bat, too, was a curved, crooked arrangement very different from
our present weapon. The Hambledon Club, in Hampshire, which has
produced some famous players, seems to have been mainly instrumental
in reforming and improving the game. Its members introduced a limit
to the width of the bat, viz., four and a quarter inches--the
standard still in force--in order to prevent players, such as a hero