Fenner’s and the Oval

“Know ye not that they that run in a race run all, but one receiveth the prize? Even so run; that ye may attain. And every man that striveth in the games exerciseth self-control in all things. Now they do it to receive a corruptible crown; but we an incorruptible.”

— 1 Corinthians 9:24-25, ASV

Trinity College

Charlie Studd went up to Trinity College, Cambridge, in 1879, following Kynaston and George. He took his degree in 1883. He read for an ordinary pass degree, and nobody, least of all himself, thought of him as a student first. At Cambridge in the early 1880s cricket was not a pastime but a world, with its own heroes, rituals and newspapers, and the Studd brothers were among its princes. He played for Cambridge University from 1880 to 1883, and for Middlesex from 1879 to 1884. The three brothers set a record that was much talked about: each captained the University eleven in successive seasons, Charlie leading the side in 1883.

The figures of his career, as they stand in the cricket records, are those of a very good all-round cricketer. In first-class matches he scored 4,391 runs, with eight centuries and a highest score of 175 not out, and took 444 wickets. Most of that was done in five summers. Writers on the game in his day spoke of him as one of the best amateurs in England, a correct and stylish batsman and a bowler who could win matches. If he had gone on playing, many thought, he would have been among the greatest of his generation.

The Year of the Australians

The summer of 1882 was his finest. That year a touring team from Australia came to England, led by Billy Murdoch and with the fast bowler Fred Spofforth, the most feared bowler in the world, whom the newspapers called “the Demon.” They swept through the English counties. One of the few sides to beat them was Cambridge University. At Fenner’s, the University ground, at the end of May 1882, Cambridge won by six wickets. The match was remembered as a triumph of the Studds. Charlie made 118 in the first innings and 17 not out in the second, and took eight wickets in the match. Later in the season he made another century against the Australians, playing for the Marylebone Cricket Club.

On 14 August 1882 he completed what cricketers call the “double,” a thousand runs and a hundred wickets in a single season. Only W. G. Grace, the most famous cricketer who ever lived, had done it before him. According to the season’s records, Charlie reached his hundredth wicket by dismissing Grace himself.

He was twenty-one. He was chosen, as a matter of course, to play for England against the Australians at the Oval at the end of the month.

Seven Runs

The Oval Test of 28 and 29 August 1882 is one of the most famous matches ever played. It was the only Test match of the tour. The pitch was wet, the scores were low, and the tension in the last hour was so great that one spectator is said to have died of heart failure and another to have chewed through the handle of his umbrella. England needed only 85 to win in the fourth innings and, with Grace at the crease, seemed sure of them. Then Spofforth, bowling at his fastest and cleverest, took seven wickets. Wickets fell with the score hardly moving.

Charlie Studd had been bowled by Spofforth without scoring in the first innings. In the second, for reasons that have been argued about ever since, the England captain held him back until number ten in the order. Some said it was because he was the best batsman left and was being saved for a crisis; others that he was unwell, or that his nerves had gone in his first Test. He went in when the eighth wicket fell, and before he had faced a ball the ninth had gone too, with England still ten runs short. The last man, the Yorkshire bowler Ted Peate, came in to join him. Peate swung his first ball from Harry Boyle away for two, and a few balls later Boyle bowled him. Australia had won by seven runs. Charlie Studd walked off not out, without having faced a ball. When Peate was asked afterwards why he had not tried simply to give the strike to his partner, his answer passed into cricket legend: in substance, that he could not trust his partner. The exact words vary from one telling to another, but in every version he speaks of him as Mr Studd.

A few days later, on 2 September, the London paper The Sporting Times printed a mock obituary in affectionate remembrance of English cricket, which, it said, had died at the Oval on 29 August, adding that the body would be cremated and the ashes taken to Australia. That joke gave the contest between England and Australia its name. The young man who had stood helpless at the other end while English cricket “died” was, without any choice of his own, part of the birth of the Ashes.

To Australia

That autumn an English team under the Honourable Ivo Bligh sailed for Australia, with the declared purpose of bringing back the Ashes. Charlie and George Studd were both in it. The tour lasted the winter of 1882–83. England won the series of three matches against Murdoch’s team, and Bligh came home with a small urn, presented to him in Australia, which became the trophy itself. Charlie played in all four of the matches now counted as Tests on that tour, which with the Oval made five in his career. His Test record is modest: 160 runs at an average of 20, with a highest score of 48, and three wickets. He was a much greater cricketer than his Test figures suggest, but he never played for England again after February 1883.

Gentlemen and Players

There is a small detail in the story of the Oval that says a great deal about the world in which Studd played. When Ted Peate explained why he had not given his partner the strike, every version of his answer has him speak of Mr Studd. He did not call him Studd, or Charlie. He called him Mr Studd, because Studd was a gentleman and Peate was a professional.

English cricket in the 1880s was divided by class. The amateurs, called “gentlemen,” played for the love of the game and were paid nothing, or at least nothing officially. They came from the public schools and universities and were addressed as “Mr.” The professionals, called “players,” were paid to play. Most were working men from the mining and mill towns of the north and Midlands, and they were addressed by their surnames alone. The two groups often changed in separate dressing rooms and came onto the field by separate gates. Captains of England were almost always amateurs. The annual match between the Gentlemen and the Players was one of the great fixtures of the season.

Ted Peate was one of the best slow left-arm bowlers in England, and a far more experienced Test cricketer than the twenty-one-year-old Studd. But on the field at the Oval, in the most important moment of the match, he deferred to the young gentleman, and afterwards he was reprimanded by W. G. Grace for not trusting him enough. Whatever the rights and wrongs of the cricket, the scene is a picture of the world Studd came from. He grew up being called Mr Studd by men older, poorer and more experienced than himself, and taking it as natural.

The Bible has hard words for that kind of world. “My brethren, hold not the faith of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Lord of glory, with respect of persons” (James 2:1, ASV). “Hearken, my beloved brethren; did not God choose them that are poor as to the world to be rich in faith, and heirs of the kingdom which he promised to them that love him?” (James 2:5, ASV). When Studd gave up his fortune, he stepped out of that world in one sense. In another he never fully left it. The habit of command, and of expecting deference, went with him to China and to Africa.

The Corruptible Crown

It is important not to make Studd’s cricket a mere prelude to his “real” life. He loved the game and played it superbly, and even in his most severe years he did not teach that games were sinful in themselves; he told young Christians to play and enjoy them with thanksgiving. His complaint against himself was not that he had played cricket, but that cricket had taken the place of Christ.

Paul knew the games of his own day, and he wrote about them with respect. Every athlete, he said, “exerciseth self-control in all things.” The runners at the Isthmian games near Corinth trained for months for a wreath of pine leaves that withered within days. Paul did not sneer at them. He used them as a rebuke to Christians who would not take the same trouble for something that would last. “Now they do it to receive a corruptible crown; but we an incorruptible.”

Studd came to see his cricket in exactly those terms. He had given it all the discipline, energy and ambition that he had. He had trained, practised, studied the bowling of his opponents and rejoiced in his success. When he looked back on those years he could not condemn the game, but he could not forgive himself for having given a game what he had not given to God. Later, he would ask other Christians, sometimes harshly, why they would not work as hard for Christ as he had once worked for a bat and ball. The question was fair, and it came from experience. It was also a question he would sometimes press without mercy on people who had never had his advantages, his strength or his freedom.

In the late summer of 1883, with his degree taken and his fame at its height, nothing in his outward life suggested that anything was about to change. Then his brother George fell ill.