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 DAYS IN
THE DIRT
UNIVERSITY
CRICKET AND
EMERGING
ADULTHOOD
Harry C. R. Bowles
 University Cricket and Emerging Adulthood

“University Cricket and Emerging Adulthood provides an e­ xcellent insight into

the everyday lives of young adults as they attempt to negotiate their way towards,
or transition away from, a career in professional cricket. The book is an impor-
tant read for those seeking to gain a critical understanding, and in-depth exposi-
tion, of identity construction as it relates to the life chances and choices of young
individuals seeking to make sense of their occupational journey. This richly
informative and evocative study translates beyond the realm of sport, offering a
strong conceptual anchoring to the theoretical appreciation of identity work.
Drawing upon a blend of social theory and ethnographic empiricism, in its most
honest form, the book is an indispensable work that uncovers the consequences
of those who are investing their lives into the uncertain and precarious world
that embodies professional sport.”
—Dr Andrew Manley, Lecturer at University of Bath, UK

“This text offers a compelling read and an excellent insight into the world of elite
university cricket and the ‘lifestyle’ it creates for its participants. All ethnogra-
phies are enshrined in time and location—after all, they reflect stories from a
specific time and place—but some present timeless accounts that cross the con-
textual barriers of sport and continue to resonate with the reader long after read-
ing. Whether you are a sociologist, social psychologist, coach or simply a cricket
lover, this book will intrigue and engage you. Throughout, Harry Bowles shines
a warm and empathetic light on the occasionally cold, closeted side of cricketing
life and captures the human side of his participants’ stories, while delivering a
frank dose of realism to those ‘chasing the dream’.”
—Dr Chris Wagstaff, Practitioner Psychologist and Principal Lecturer in
Performance Psychology at University of Portsmouth
 Harry C. R. Bowles

University Cricket
and Emerging
Adulthood
“Days in the Dirt”
Harry C. R. Bowles
Cyncoed Campus
Cardiff Metropolitan University
Cardiff, UK

ISBN 978-3-319-76281-4    ISBN 978-3-319-76282-1 (eBook)

https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-76282-1

Library of Congress Control Number: 2018936341

© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s) 2018

This work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the Publisher, whether
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illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microfilms or in any other physical way, and
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The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this publication
does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant
protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use.
The publisher, the authors and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information in this book
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 Foreword

There are many types of studies undertaken by PhD students. Some are
prescriptive and formulaic. Others are more free-form where the student
sets out on a kind of academic expedition largely unaware of where their
intellectual journey will take them. These latter projects are not trying to
prove or disprove anything. Rather, they are personal explorations of the
unique dialectic between researcher and researched and the melee of
activity in between.
It would be fair to say that the period since the 1970s has witnessed the
emergence of a body of knowledge around the social and cultural aspects
of sport whereby qualitative research methods and methodologies have
become a staple in the field. Yet relatively few social researchers have
managed to breach the institutional bounds of elite sport and fewer still
have carried out in-depth qualitative work within cricketing contexts. For
all the modern-day media coverage that it commands, elite sport remains
a heavily guarded affair, particularly in terms of who and what gains
access to its inner sanctums. The truth is, ethnographies of sport are hard
to find—and good ones are even harder. Here we are in luck.
In July 2014 I had the privilege of examining Harry Bowles’ PhD the-
sis—upon which this book is based. I knew from the moment that I
started to read Harry’s work that I was going to find out as much about
him as I was about his research. One of the hallmarks of ethnographic
craft is its deployment of empathy and sensitivity and, as you are about
v
vi Foreword

to discover, this work is replete with both. Seldom have I enjoyed reading
a PhD so much. Rarely have I met a beginning scholar with such an
innate sense of how to make the familiar strange. Indeed, one of the
things that impresses me the most about Harry’s work is his ability to tell
an accessible and engaging story whilst at the same time maintaining the
level of academic rigour expected within the ethnographic tradition.
For anyone even remotely involved with or interested in the inner
workings of elite sport this book is essential reading. It tells of cricket’s
insularity, its folklore, its characters. In so doing, it serves to contextualize
the investigative climate within which the underpinning research was
carried out whilst providing a highly reflexive account of the ethno-
graphic experience itself. It charts the complexities of data collection
(long days in the field, relentless note taking, ‘hanging around’ as the
awkward interloper), the tensions and anxieties of personal interaction,
the significance of researcher integrity. This is ‘real world’ research at its
best.
In turn, of course, we are treated to the detailed nuances of elite sport-
ing life and, more specifically, the experiences of trainee professional
cricketers. Presenting a case-study analysis of one elite cricket academy,
the work utilizes those methods of sociological enquiry traditionally asso-
ciated with ethnography (i.e. participant observation, semi-structured
interviews, and documentary analysis) in order to explore the day-to-day
lives of the young people concerned. The study depicts the way in which
academy recruits are socialized into the culture of professional cricket and
how their career expectations and aspirations are subsequently shaped by
the detailed complexities of institutional experience. At the same time,
the study provides insight into the personal and social lives of trainees.
Notably issues of self and identity emerge in terms of individual experi-
ence and interpretation. Furthermore, the influence of academy officials
is also considered in relation to the pressures, pitfalls and constraints of
trainee development.
What all of this illustrates is that sport does not exist in a social vac-
uum. On the contrary, it is shaped and formed amidst the richness of
broader social life, evolving and developing in accordance with the insti-
tutional practices and popular cultural messages that surround us. In this
sense, this book not only allows readers to reflect upon the ways in which
 Foreword
   vii

the underpinning principles of social science might challenge the values

and practices of elite sport, but also how they might enhance the way in
which we see the future of sport both in terms of its participatory and
structural formation. I believe that it is by way of such reflection that our
understandings of sport can continue to thrive and that the desire for on-­
going scholarship in this area will be stimulated and encouraged. Needless
to say, I trust that this book will act as both a stimulus and an encourage-
ment to all who read it.

University of Gloucestershire, UK Andrew Parker

January 2018
 Preface: An Insider to the Context

In his dossier on the practice of social science as an intellectual craft, Mills

(1959, p. 195), as though speaking to his apprentice, writes:

It is best to begin, I think, by reminding you, the beginning student, that

the most admirable thinkers within the scholarly community you have
chosen to join do not split their work from their lives. They seem to take
both too seriously to allow such disassociation, and they want to use each
for the enrichment of the other.

Mills’ account of ‘intellectual craftsmanship’ is one that holds true to his

thesis on the sociological imagination that places self at the centre of a
theory and research epistemology. According to Mills, scholarly craft
concerns more than the application of technical skills, knowledge and
practical wisdom. It involves the sculpting of identity, becoming one’s
work and allowing one’s intellectual curiosity to enter into one’s personal
experiences and vice versa. For Mills, research begins in the biography of
the researcher and develops to coexist and coevolve. This study, like many
others that have gone before it, followed much the same course.
Reflecting on my childhood, it seems strange that I should be writing
the Preface to my first academic publication. At school, I did not display
much of an appetite for academic work. It was on the sports field where
I excelled and I basked in the sense of achievement sport gave me, which

ix
x Preface: An Insider to the Context

I never felt in the classroom. Looking back at some of my formative expe-

riences involving education and sport, I am able to piece together some
of the fragments of my life’s history that connect me to the context and
central themes of this book.
I was eight years old when my father first took me to Lord’s Cricket
Ground to watch England in a Test match. I don’t recall who England
were playing, nor do I remember much about the day’s play. What I do
recollect is sitting there staring at my hands, transfixed by the enormous
pair of wicket keeping gloves he had bought to keep me entertained. It
was a cunning parental ploy and the beginning of our annual pilgrimage
to NW8 that remains to this day like the blood that binds us as father and
son. It was also the start of a relationship with the game that would have
its many highs and lows.
Since then, cricket, in a number of ways, has influenced the decisions
I have made as part of my life’s course. Indeed, this book is the product
of a body of ethnographic research that I completed as a Doctoral student
on the transitional experiences of aspiring professional cricketers. The
fieldwork context is based in one of six university centres of cricket excel-
lence that have been in operation since 2000, and a context that I once
attempted to join as a player and undergraduate student.
I never truly believed that I was good enough to make it as a profes-
sional cricketer, but on choosing to go to university, I thought it would
be good to spend three years training, playing and living under the pre-
tence that I could. Unfortunately, things did not transpire as I had hoped.
Time to move on and redefine myself through my studies—a process that
would eventually give me access to a community of aspiring professional
cricketers I had previously attempted to join, albeit under an entirely dif-
ferent guise.
I must, however, be careful not to discredit the role my cricketing
biography played in the process of gaining entry a second time around.
As I shall explain in introductory chapter of this book, my standing as an
‘insider to the context’ (Dandelion 1997) would prove crucial to the lon-
gevity of my fieldwork, and the richness of data I was able to capture. The
text, whilst grounded in data gathered from October 2010 to June 2013
(although the actual finishing date is hard to pinpoint accurately), is a
revision of the original work that draws upon new professional and
 Preface: An Insider to the Context
   xi

­ ersonal experiences, and a more mature understanding of the issues

p
addressed. It also contains supplementary data derived from follow-up
interviews and the relationships I have maintained with the people at the
centre of the study.
Before moving on to discuss the focus of the research in greater detail,
it is worth touching upon the academic disciplines from which the inves-
tigation draws. The research leans primarily on traditions of sociology
and social-psychology in their various theoretical and empirical forms, as
well as a number of other relevant ‘ologies’ and ‘isms’. Whilst this runs the
risk of frustrating some ‘ologists’ and even ‘osophers’, it may open up the
text to a wider audience and appeal to those interested in other, less con-
ceptual aspects of the work. Qualitative social science is an ever-growing
and diversifying field of inquiry which—despite its disciplinary and
methodological fractures—comes together around the common purpose
of shedding light on personal experience in a detailed, relatable and ethi-
cal way (Young and Atkinson 2012). It is interdisciplinary by nature and
its products should reflect—and be of value to—a broad community of
research and practice.
This work is intended as a piece of conventional ethnographic research.
It is conventional in the sense that I became immersed in the research
context as an active member of the participant group for an extended
period of time. Notwithstanding the inherent complexities of the pro-
cess, like Pryce (1986), the methodological approach was used to get
behind the scenes of cultural practice and obtain an up-close and per-
sonal account of the studied context and its people. Application of tradi-
tional ethnographic techniques such as participant-observation and
unstructured, field-based ‘interviews’ provided the means through which
day-to-day experiences were captured and explored on the pages of my
journal. What is presented, therefore, reflects some of the contextual
responses to real-life situations experienced by the group, mediated
through my interpretation and writing of those events. As both a process
and product of research the ethnography is reflexive and self-aware rather
than apologetic of its realist claims. What I recount as true is as close to
the truth as I could make it—in spite of some inevitable empirical and
editorial stage-management.
xii Preface: An Insider to the Context

There are of course always two sides to every story and the story that I
have chosen to tell is centred around one aspect of the players’ experi-
ences—namely the questions of self that were encountered by a group of
young men on their shared transitional journey towards professional
cricket and adult identity commitments. The research provides a compre-
hensive account of a process of identity exploration through which this
group of predominantly white British, middle-class and able-bodied
student-­cricketers actively constructed and made sense of their lives. The
analysis takes into account the particular characteristics of a collegiate-­
sport context that encouraged a process of self-questioning that featured
within the experiences of its student-athlete population, from the per-
spective of a white British, middle-class and able-bodied researcher in his
early to mid-twenties.
At the centre of this book, lies the notion of ‘self ’ and ‘identity’; two
closely related concepts which are often used in conjunction or inter-
changeably. Questions about the nature and importance of self and iden-
tity have captivated social scientists for many centuries and the literature
is littered with theoretical language pertaining to constructs of mind and
body. For simplicity, and to frame the empirical and interpretive elements
of the research, throughout this book, the term identity is used to refer to
a set of meaningful definitions ascribed to self, including a hierarchy of
goals, values and priorities, and conceptions of one’s potential (Baumeister
and Mauraven 1996). Self, on the other hand, is used in reference of a
more ‘global, multirole, core conception of the real person’ (Adler and
Alder 1991, p. 28). Both concepts are central to the research problem
that emerged during fieldwork of how a group of young men developed
the self and situational knowledge upon which to base prospective iden-
tity decisions.
Epistemologically, the research is rooted in what Willis (1978,
pp. 196–197) describes as the ‘self-reflexive technique’ which refers to the
ability of the participant-observer to experience empathy and analyse
‘how his [sic] own experience is minutely locked into another’s’. The
interpretative method I used involved me being able to recognise and
relate to some of the personal and shared anxieties expressed by the
researched group, and connecting them to the context in which they were
in and a wider social and historical frame of reference. Therefore, ­alongside
 Preface: An Insider to the Context
   xiii

relevant theoretical interludes, I continue to appear within the chapters

of this book not, I hope, to distract from the voices of the young men at
its heart, but to make explicit my voice among theirs and more accurately
reflect how I made sense of their concerns.

Cardiff, UK Harry C. R. Bowles

References
Adler, P. A., & Adler, P. (1991). Backboards and Blackboards: College Athletes and
Role Engulfment. New York: Columbia University Press.
Baumeister, R. F., & Muraven, M. (1996). Identity as adaptation to social, cul-
tural and historical context. Journal of Adolescence, 19(5), 405–416.
Dandelion, B. P. (1997). Insider dealing: researching your own private world. In
A. Tomlinson & S. Fleming (Eds.), Ethics, Sport and Leisure: Crises and
Critiques (pp. 223–244). Oxford: Meyer & Meyer.
Mills, C. W. (1959). The Sociological Imagination. New York: Oxford University
Press.
Pryce, K. (1986). Endless Pressure: A Study of West Indian Life-Styles in Bristol.
Bristol: Bristol Classic Press.
Willis, P. (1978). Profane Culture. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul.
Young, K., & Atkinson, M. (2012). Introduction: The practice of qualitative
research and thinking qualitatively. In K. Young & M. Atkinson (Eds.),
Qualitative Research on Sport and Physical Culture. Bingley: Emerald.
 Acknowledgments

I would like to express my gratitude to Professor Scott Fleming for his

continued guidance and the intellectual input he has donated to this
body of research. I would also like to thank my devoted parents,
Christopher and Elizabeth Bowles, for their unconditional love and sup-
port and Jessica Creak for putting up with me throughout the writing
process. Finally, I would like to extend my indebtedness to the people at
the centre of this study who accepted me into their lives in spite of the
nuisance this must have caused.

xv
 Contents

1 Introduction: A Day in the Dirt   1

2 Mr Cricket: The Story of a Cricket Aficionado  39

3 The Cricket Bubble: Notes on a Cricketing Lifestyle  67

4 Lady Cricket: From Flirtation to Cohabitation 117

5 Finding Their Level: Trial and Repudiation of a

Cricketing Identity 147

6 Conclusion: University Cricket and Emerging

Adulthood 187

Epilogue 203

References 219

Index  229

xvii
 List of Abbreviations

ECB England and Wales Cricket Board

HE Higher Education
MCC The Marylebone Cricket Club
PCA Professional Cricketers Association
TCCB Test and County Cricket Board
UCCE University Centres of Cricket Excellence
YCs Young Cricketers

xix
 List of Figures

Fig. 1.1 Adapted version of ECB strategic plan for cricket 2006–
2010: player pathway and programmes 7
Fig. 1.2 England cricket pathway—boys (2014) 8
Fig. 1.3 Indoor Cricket Centre interior layout (not to scale) 13
Fig. 1.4 Indoor Cricket Centre located in plan view (not to scale) 13
Image 1.1 Hanging out on the player’s balcony: Lord’s 17
Image 1.2 Caught in the act: the art of eavesdropping 17
Image 1.3 Writing fieldnotes the ‘old fashioned’ way: Wormsley
Estate Cricket Ground 18
Image 1.4 A lap of the boundary: a way of getting to know
individuals more personally 19
Image 1.5 Establishing a role: helping Josh with his warm up 20
Image 1.6 Celebrating the end of the 2011 university season 21
Image 3.1 Changing room entertainment: a spot of tennis to
pass the time 86
Image 3.2 No play due to rain. The Parks: Oxford 94
Image 3.3 Feeling captive: view from my hotel room:
Derbyshire CCC 106

xxi
 1
Introduction: A Day in the Dirt

The Indoor Cricket Centre is a white, metal clad building on the grounds
of a county and international cricket stadium. This purpose-built, box-­
like structure, with its elevated roof and synthetic floor, plays host to
cricketers of all age groups servicing the local community and elite athlete
populations. Cricketers as young as 8 years old can learn to play here with
access to all the facilities that international cricket stars use to fine-tune
their skills. It was inside this lofty space, amid bats, pads and sweaty kit,
that my association with a group of university cricketers began, and the
observational fieldwork upon which this book is based started in
earnest.
Armed with an A5 Black ‘n’ Red notebook, and rubber tipped pencil, I
watched from a respectful distance; my vision obscured by netting that
hung from the ceiling separating me from twenty or so young men going
through their paces. Caught up in my own self-consciousness, ears filled by
the sound of cricket balls hitting their targets, I stood still, afraid to disturb
the natural order of things, wondering what the hell I should be doing.
If truth be told, I was little prepared. I had read the handbooks and ‘how-
to texts’ and understood some of the principles, but the process of ethnog-
raphy was not a technical procedure that I could simply roll out. The sights
and sounds of cricketers practising in the nets was a scene with which I was

© The Author(s) 2018 1

H. C. R. Bowles, University Cricket and Emerging Adulthood,
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-76282-1_1
2 H. C. R. Bowles

familiar. As an insider to the context, I was not put off by the particularities
of the cricketing rituals taking place in front of me. I was, however, unsure
of my purpose and whether my investigations would get off the ground—
familiar territory for those who have attempted this type of research. So, I
picked up a bat that lay on the ground next to me and started to shadow a
few shots, comforting myself with each swing of the blade.1
It was January 2011 and preparations for the season were well underway. By
the end of March I would be taken further out of my comfort zone as gymna-
siums and sports halls were replaced with pavilions, dining tables and motor-
way service stations. It would take a while for players to let me into their lives
and for me to develop the confidence to pry. But cricketers spend a lot of time
together helping to spark relationships where there once were none. In sixty
cricket-related days that would follow the players’ last indoor practice, I would
spend twenty-two nights away with them, staying in ten different hotels and
travel more than four thousand miles up and down the country. Like getting
to know the players, it would take time for me to piece together the meaning
of their everyday experiences, and draw a connection between their lives and
the cricketing environment of which they were a part. What, for example,
could be learned from watching a game of first-class cricket in a thirteen thou-
sand seat stadium with no one in it? Or by witnessing the reactions of eleven
young cricketers come off the field at the close of play with their county oppo-
nents 447 for 1,2 and groan at the prospect of spending another “day in the
dirt.” This is, after all, what they wanted to do, right?

The Research Context

There is an inevitability about the start of the English cricket season. Rain
will stop play and a team of teens and early 20 somethings will get roundly
beaten by their professional opponents causing somebody to whinge
about the ‘first-class’ status of university cricket.3 First-class cricket has a

1
Parlance for cricket bat.
2
The score and situation of the match expressed in runs scored (by the side batting) and wickets
taken (by the side bowling).
3
In total, there are eighteen professional county cricket teams in England and Wales who compete
against each other domestically in a two-tier, ‘first-class’ competition, The County Championship.
 Introduction: A Day in the Dirt 3

longstanding association with higher education (HE) in the United

Kingdom (UK). The relationship dates back to June 1827 and the first
recorded two-day match between Oxford and Cambridge University at
Lord’s Cricket Ground, St. John’s Wood, London.4 After the first day’s
play, the game was abandoned due to bad weather with Oxford in a com-
manding position over their rivals. Regardless of the result, the match was
still one to be savoured for the student-cricketers who participated in the
fixture, whose destinations in life and sport were only beginning to
unfold. Out of the twenty-two students who played, fourteen registered
their first-class debuts of which six also registered their last.
The Varsity Match, as it is known, is a game that remains to this day,
and a fixture from which ‘first-class’ cricket’s affiliation with British
Universities has grown. It is a tradition of the English cricket season to
begin with first-class games ‘against the students’. This was once the
privilege of Oxford and Cambridge University Cricket Clubs, but is
now in the remit of six university centres of cricketing excellence
spread regionally across England and Wales. Founded in 2000 by the
England and Wales Cricket Board (ECB), the six university centres
incorporate thirteen separate HE institutions that offer a range of
degree courses to match the interests and academic abilities of the
aspiring cricketers they hope to attract.5 Individually and collectively
the academies are said to provide:

… an alternative pathway into professional cricket for young players who

might be unsure of their abilities or plans, or for those unwilling to make
an early choice between academia and sport, or simply for those who are
late developers. (Atherton 2013, p. 58)

Between October 2010 and June 2013 when the majority of this research
was conducted, each centre received a financial stipend from the Marylebone

4
Data on history of the Varsity Match retrieved from: http://cricketarchive.com/.
5
For more information on the origins of the university centres of cricket excellence go to:
https://www.ecb.co.uk/news/domestic/mcc-universities.
4 H. C. R. Bowles

Cricket Club (MCC),6 who took over the sponsorship of university cricket
from the ECB in 2005, of £82,400 per annum.7
The model upon which the university centres of cricketing excellence
(UCCEs) were based pre-dates the existence of the ECB as the national
governing body for cricket in England and Wales. The idea behind ‘the
scheme’ came from the former England, Lancashire and Durham open-
ing batsman Graeme Fowler who received the support of the Test and
County Cricket Board (TCCB), and a Prime Minister with a soft spot for
cricket, to start the first centre of excellence at Durham University in
September 1996. According to Fowler (2016, p. 196), the aim was pure
and simple. The centre of excellence at Durham was about giving young
players the chance to “finish their education and progress their game into
first-class cricket and beyond”. The priorities, he describes, were “educa-
tion first, cricket second, social third” in an environment built not just on
bricks and mortar, but on an “attitude” of excellence, and thus the centre
at Durham set itself apart from traditional university sport in its organ-
isation and focus. As the former Middlesex batsman and England cap-
tain, Andrew Strauss, recollects in his autobiography (2013, p. 31),
“overnight, the Durham University CC had gone from a ramshackle
organisation of talented students … to a highly professional set-up.”
While Oxford and Cambridge University had a long history of produc-
ing first-class cricketers and future England captains, the centre at
Durham was a forerunner to the start of a new high-performance sport
culture that was set to emerge amid a fast expanding HE sector.
A year after the centre of excellence at Durham University began, the
TCCB was superseded by the ECB which set about restructuring the gover-
nance of cricket in England and Wales, and resurrecting the success of a
national team in decline. In this context, the formalisation and regional
development of an organised system of elite university cricket can be read as
part of the ECB positioning itself as the central authority and governing body
for the UK’s national summer sport. It did so against a political backdrop that

6
Founded in 1787, the MCC is the largest private members cricket club in the world who sponsor
a number of cricketing initiatives aimed at ­developing the game both nationally and internation-
ally. Representing part of the cricketing establishment historically, the MCC remain involved in the
governance of the game as guardian of the Laws and ‘Spirit of Cricket.’
7
See  also  https://www.lords.org/mcc/youth-cricket/mcc-universities/centres-of-excellence/.
 Introduction: A Day in the Dirt 5

had seen a significant shift in government policy and funding for sport. In
1995, as Fowler was beginning to canvass support for his idea of a university-
based cricket academy, the then Conservative Government published a White
Paper, Sport: Raising the Game (Department of National Heritage 1995).
The policy statement signalled a move away from central government sup-
port for mass participation in favour of developing elite sport, and the role
HE institutions could have in fostering elite athletes (Green 2004).
Within the Conservative’s new policy framework, the allocation of
funding to national governing bodies (NGBs) would become conditional
on the explicit support of government objectives, forcing NGBs to (re)
consider their investment in performance sport (Houlihan 1997).
According to Green (2004), the mid 1990s can be viewed as a watershed
that would go on to shape the direction of sport policy into the t­ wenty-­first
century. Indeed, much of the rhetoric that features in Sport: Raising the
Game later featured in the Labour government’s strategy for sport, A
Sporting Future for All (Department for Culture, Media and Sport 2000).
Under Labour, funding to NGBs became directly linked to performance
targets and NGBs were required to produce national talent performance
plans identifying pathways from grassroots to international level (Green
2004). Furthermore, HE continued to be viewed as a site in which gifted
sportspeople could be nurtured, with attention placed on ensuring “con-
tinuity and progression” between the school sector and HE to prevent
talent being lost at this key transition point (Department of Culture,
Media and Sport 2000, p. 17)
Another central theme to the political discourse at the start of the ECB’s
reign in 1997, and the initiation of the UCCEs in 2000, was an emphasis
on widening participation to HE and encouraging more young people to
go to university as a means of reaching their socio-economic potential
(Leatherwood and O’Connell 2003). With the political stars aligned, the
ECB set about harnessing a helpful policy landscape to attract universities
to support the model of cricket and education successfully piloted at
Durham. To deliver the scheme, the ECB established a working group
consisting of several former professional cricketers with university back-
grounds who put the scheme out to tender and began the process of
6 H. C. R. Bowles

arranging the university consortiums to house five additional centres of

excellence in Leeds, Loughborough, Cardiff, Cambridge and Oxford.8
In an interview undertaken for the purpose of this research with a
member of the ECB’s original working group, the driving force behind
the expansion of the scheme was described as twofold:

As I recall there was certainly some discussion and debate around the fact
that the government of the time was really encouraging young people to go
to university. And I think there was a statistic being bandied around that
they wanted 50% of the population to go … and if that was the case then
a lot of cricketers would go down that route. So that was a part driver to it
I’m sure … [Another] key driver was that we had a number of players who
were going to university, who were either on first-class staffs or had played
a bit of first-class cricket, who were obviously talented cricketers and there
was a concern that their cricket development would drop-off.

These sentiments echo those found in the original University Cricket

Prospectus produced by the ECB. In the opening section ‘Commonly
Asked Questions’, the ECB state:

The potential benefits of the UCCE scheme for cricket are clear and well
founded: It is estimated that by 2005 nearly half of 18 year olds [in the
UK] will seek to enter higher education (many of England’s current Under
17 squads … wish to go to university). With this fact in mind, it is impera-
tive that cricketers with an inclination to go on to higher education are
given the facilities to develop their talent whilst completing their educa-
tion. ECB has a very real responsibility to look after the best interests of
existing and future cricketers. The scheme gives talented younger cricketers
… the best of both worlds—an excellent cricketing education to enable
them to fulfil their cricketing ambitions and greater security through
improved career opportunities outside of the game.

In one sense, the ECB understood its responsibility and duty of care towards
its young athletes. In another, it saw the development of the university centres

8
For more information on types of youth sports see European Commission DG Education and
Culture’s final report on the Education of Young Sports Persons (2004).
 Introduction: A Day in the Dirt 7

of excellence as a means of keeping “genuine talent” in the game and ensuring

going to university was not detrimental to player progress. Funding was thus
provided for high quality coaching and cricket facilities to be available at each
centre—including sports science and medical support—and a match pro-
gramme consisting of a minimum of 20–25 days of cricket for male cricket-
ers with the “potential to play first-class cricket.”
Following the MCC’s takeover of the scheme in 2005, the ECB con-
tinued to recognise the UCCEs as part of their player development path-
way in their 2006–2010 Strategic Plan for Cricket (see Fig. 1.1). The
centres were a component of the ECB’s County Programme aimed at
developing a ‘vibrant domestic game’, and part of the filtration process
through which players could progress from ‘playground to the Test arena.’
As a collective provision, the centres of excellence are unique in that no
other major cricket playing nation has a dedicated university cricket sys-
tem that rivals the scheme in its financing, organisation and scale.
Nevertheless, the system has not escaped criticism for the universities’
performances against county opposition that has caused many from inside
the professional game to question their ‘first-class’ status. Arguments of
this nature add to a growing sense of marginalisation despite the scheme’s
well publicised success. Since their inception, it is frequently quoted the

England
England Development Squad
National Academy
First-Class Counties England Programme
England
U15/17/19 Minor Counties County Programme

County Academies Community

Programme
Age Group Cricket UCCEs
District, County, Regional Premier League Cricket
Focus Clubs
Affiliated Clubs
Schools Cricket
3. Train to Train 5. Train to Win
1. Fun 2. Learn to Train
4. Train to Compete 6. Retirement and Retention
Age 5yrs 9 11 13 15 18 19 21 35 65+

Fig. 1.1 Adapted version of ECB strategic plan for cricket 2006–2010: player
pathway and programmes
8 H. C. R. Bowles

centres of excellence have produced around one fifth of the English quali-
fied players in the county system. Although a well-trodden route into pro-
fessional cricket, the university system is no longer an official part of the
ECB’s restructured Cricket Pathway (see Fig. 1.2). When the MCC cut
the funding to each centre to £46,000 per year in 2016, the ECB failed to
make up the financial shortfall arousing suspicion that the long-term
future of the scheme—as it was originally conceived—is under threat.
Against this uncertain backdrop, the Cambridge graduate and former
England captain, Michael Atherton (2017), provided a timely reminder of
the value of the university centres for cricket excellence. Writing in The Times,
he describes university cricket as an essential “buffer between the amateur
and professional game” and an important delay in a young player’s transition
into the all-encompassing realities of professional sport. Recognising the
holistic benefits of the scheme, Atherton (2017) highlights:

The most important reason for encouraging university cricket, though, is

to act as a brake on a game that is becoming ever more demanding of its

Years to World’s Best Normal Age

England

-3 22

England Performance
Prog. / Lions

-6 19

England Development Programme

-10 U16

Emerging Talent Programme

-13 U13

County Talent Programme

U8

Fig. 1.2 England cricket pathway—boys (2014)

 Introduction: A Day in the Dirt 9

players. More and more, the focus of professional cricketers is narrowing

because of the uber-professionalisation of the game, and that, in turn, is
storing up problems for when cricketers contemplate moving on in life.
Anything that encourages breadth and diversity of interest, or a chance to
gain qualifications that will help in later life, should be welcomed.

Atherton’s argument becomes even more pertinent when read in context

that the average age a professional playing career ends is 26. Some players
leave fed-up, or burnt out by the precariousness of short-term contracts
or a lack of first-team opportunities. Most simply find themselves surplus
to requirements forcing them to make a sudden and disorientating
­recalibration of their lives, just as many of their contemporaries in other
fields are beginning to progress.
Data from a Past Players Survey conducted by the Professional Cricketers
Association (PCA) (2013) on 500 former professional cricketers, with an
average playing career of 11 years, provides further illustration of some of
the vulnerabilities of a professional playing career. Of those sampled, the
highest proportion (31%) reported being made redundant (wanted to con-
tinue playing but couldn’t get a contract) as the reason they stopped playing,
with only 7% reporting they stopped playing because they had achieved
what they set out to do. At the point of retirement, 48% of ­professional
cricketers who had played 100 first-class games or more had no work lined-
up, and only 9% had saved enough money so that finding full-time employ-
ment was not a priority. This is in-spite of the fact that an overwhelming
majority of the sample reported either ‘a need to work’ (48%) or perceived
‘work as a priority’ (41%) as their careers came to an end. Furthermore,
57% of the cricketers surveyed were ‘not in control’ within 6 months of leav-
ing the professional game, with 33% still ‘not in control’ after two years.
Reflecting on their past and present occupational experiences, the data
are even more interesting in as much as just under half reported being less
than satisfied (33%) or disappointed (14%) with their playing careers, in
comparison to most of the sample reporting their post playing career to
have either satisfied (50%) or surpassed (34%) their expectations. These
findings point to the possibility that for many former players, life after
10 H. C. R. Bowles

cricket can be as rewarding professionally as their lives were as cricketers.9

For the few who ‘make it’, the data also suggest that to sustain a profes-
sional playing career and reach a level that provides long term financial
security and sense of fulfilment, is the exception rather than the norm.
Graeme Fowler’s appreciation of the difficulties professional cricketers
can face during and after their careers, and the value of education and
higher qualifications to unlock opportunities for young cricketers,
inspired the first university centre of excellence. In Fowler’s own words,
(2016, p. 206), a crucial component of the centres of excellence was
about helping young cricketers to “grow up … using cricket as the
model”, and in doing so, encourage them to think beyond the game so
that a career in professional cricket could be pursued out of choice, and
in the knowledge of alternatives, rather than necessity.

The Research Approach

It was within one of the six university centres of cricket excellence that
the data upon which this study is based were drawn. From the time the
research began in 2010, in the build-up to the 2011 season, the academy
consisted of a full-time Head Coach and Director of Cricket (Coach)
who had been in charge of the academy since its inception, a Team
Manager, an Assistant Coach and a squad of twenty-one players of a pre-
dominantly white, British, middle-class demographic. As students, play-
ers studied at three HE institutions—although most of the squad (15)
attended one ‘post 92’ university from which the academy was adminis-
trated and where most of the academy’s training facilities were based.
Players were enrolled on various courses ranging from degrees in
Mathematics, to Higher National Diplomas in Sport Coaching reflecting
a mix of secondary education backgrounds and academic achievements.
In cricketing terms, players’ biographies were consistent in as much as
they were all involved with other forms of representative cricket, from

9
For a journalistic account of what cricketers get up to at the end of their careers, see Felix White
(May, 2017) on ‘life after cricket’ in issue 152 of All Out Cricket Magazine.
 Introduction: A Day in the Dirt 11

‘minor’ county10 and second XI county cricket, to international playing and

development squads. All players were members of local cricket clubs com-
peting in Premier Leagues and other national competitions, and were
actively recruited by the Head Coach on the strength of their cricketing
CVs. For a few, this process led to a place at university on the grounds of
being talented sportspeople with an assumed interest in studying something
related to sport. Out of the original twenty-one players who consented to
take part in the research, seven were contracted to professional county teams
on a part-time, developmental basis, and it was these individuals who would
usually make up the core of what was an unofficial ‘playing squad’ of around
fourteen players that competed in the majority of the academy fixtures
throughout the summer (see Table 1.1 for complete player participant list).
To help them train and prepare throughout the winter, players were given
free access to university gym and fitness facilities where they would congre-
gate twice a week for one evening and one morning session of weights and
strength and conditioning. To practise their skills, they also had the use of
university sports halls for one-to-one and small group coaching sessions, as
well as the Indoor Cricket Centre at the local County and International
Cricket ground (see Figs. 1.3 and 1.4). It is here where the squad practised
together every Wednesday afternoon for three hours from late November to
the start of the season at the end of March. During the winter period, players
were also required to attend team meetings that were usually arranged at the
end of squad training on Wednesday afternoons in the Conference Suite that
overlooked the indoor practice area, or corporate hospitality box in view of
the ground, where Coach would set out his expectations and goals for the
season. The meetings also provided the opportunity for the Team Manger to
perform some of his basic ‘house-keeping’ by using the time to explain the
contents of the Season Handbook, and take orders for team “stash” (training
clothes and playing kit) complete with players’ initials and squad numbers.
No amount of fitness training, net practice or team meetings could
quite prepare the squad for Spring when, at the start of the season, the
team began travelling around the country from one cricket ground and
hotel to another in a nomadic type of cricketing existence. Games were

10
‘Minor’ county cricket differs from ‘major’ county cricket primarily for its ‘minor’, amateur status
and represents an organizationally distinct division of the game in England and Wales.
12 H. C. R. Bowles

Table 1.1 List of university players who agreed to take part in the study. Information
recorded at the time of consent
Year of
Participant Age Degree course study Role Contract
Josh 19 Social Policy 1st Wicketkeeper/ No
batter
Lewis 19 Philosophy 1st Batter Yes
Patrick 20 Accountancy 1st Batter Yes
Connor 19 Sport Coaching 1st Batter Yes
Simon 18 Business 1st Bowler No
Alan 21 Sports Massage 3rd Bowler No
John 19 Business 1st Batter Yes
Greg 19 Sport and PE 1st Batter No
James 18 Business 1st Bowler No
Lee 23 Management 4th Wicketkeeper/ No
batter
George 19 Sports Coaching 2nd Bowler Yes
Tim 21 Sport Management 2nd Batter/ No
all-rounder
Ben 19 Sport Coaching 2nd Bowler/ Yes
all-rounder
Ryan 20 Sport Science 2nd Wicketkeeper/ No
batter
David 20 Sports Coaching 3rd Batter No
Mark 21 Maths 3rd Bowler No
Luke 20 Sport Science 2nd Bowler No
Tom 21 Design 3rd Bowler No
Martin 18 Ancient History 1st Batter No
Michael 18 Sport and PE 1st Batter No
Steve 20 Sport Management 2nd Batter/ No
all-rounder
Alex 19 Sports Coaching 2nd Batter No
Andy 19 Sport Management 1st Batter No
Paul 21 Business and 3rd Bowler No
Management
Scott 18 Sports Coaching 1st Bowler Yes
Chris 24 Sport and PE 1st Bowler No

scheduled within a condensed period of approximately three months,

with the exact length of the season dependent on how well the team per-
formed in the various competitions. The back-to-back intensity of the
team’s fixture list gave players a taste of life on the road as a domestic
 Introduction: A Day in the Dirt 13

Outer wall
Access to
Seating area playing area

Net lane 1

2 Weights gym
Office
Fixed perimeter netting

area/surface
surface

Fixed perimeter netting

3

25m playing
playing 4
Retractable lane netting
UniturfUniturf

Changing
machines
Vending

6
rooms and
showers

36m 7

Stairwell Seating area Bowling machines

Main Outer wall

entrance

Fig. 1.3 Indoor Cricket Centre interior layout (not to scale)

Access Road
Security gates
(Player/staff access)

Indoor Cricket Centre

Spectator
Stand

Walkway from car park

Spectator Stand

Cricket Field Pavilion Car Park

Fig. 1.4 Indoor Cricket Centre located in plan view (not to scale)
Another random document with
no related content on Scribd:
 The objects, which a man may cherish are limitless. He may
rejoice in his strength, his personal adornment, his lands and money,
his books and works of art. He may find an eager interest in his own
image as pictured in the minds of his relatives, friends, or fellow
citizens. He may take pride in family or in personal glory and honor.
Men pose before the world; they act often with reference to the
appreciation they will receive. It is told that the poet Keats could not
live without applause. Carlyle says men write history, not with
supreme regard for facts, but for the writing. Nero conceived that he
was a musician, poet, and actor, surpassing in merit the geniuses of
his age.
Man’s attitude toward wisdom and religion, the quality of his
thoughts and feelings, his aspirations, constitute his spiritual interest.
The sentiments of his soul are his; for them he is responsible, and in
them he finds satisfaction or humiliation.
As one forgets self and self-interest, more and more he makes the
whole world his possession. Nature, the welfare of others, man in
history and literature, the Maker of all, may become objects of
regard. A French nobleman who in the vicissitudes of revolution lost
his estates and titles, but received a small pension from the
government, became a philosopher and had the world at his
command. For slight pay, willing service for his daily needs was his;
private gardens, public parks, the broad landscape, the sky were his
to enjoy, and he was free from care and fear. Some interests are
universal, not the heritage and possession of one, but, like sun and
air, free. They fall “as the gentle rain from heaven upon the place
beneath,” and bless him that receives. Rich in experience is he who
can see in the drifted gleaming snows on our mountain peaks more
than the summer’s irrigation, in the green plains of May more than
the growing crops of wheat and alfalfa, in the orchard bloom more
than the promise of fruit, in public education and charity more than
political and social prudence, in religious devotion more than
conventionality. For him blessings come on the morning breeze,
gleam from the midnight sky, appear in the quality of mercy, and
spring from communion with the Soul of Nature.
 Prometheus is said to have given to men a portion of all the
qualities possessed by the other animals—the lion, the monkey, the
wolf—hence the many traits that are manifest in his complex nature.
There is a slight suggestion of evolution in this—that man is but the
highest stage of animal development, and that his refined emotions
are but the instincts of the lower orders modified by complex
groupings. We grant the process, but not necessarily the inference.
An apple is none the less an apple because it is the product of an
unbroken development from a germ and simple shoot. The spirit of
self-sacrifice need be none the less valid because it is a late phase
of some simple instinct. We believe the world was fashioned
according to an intelligent plan, a plan gradually realized, and that its
meaning is found, not in the lower, but in the higher stages of
development. We explain the purpose of creation, not by the first
struggle of a protozoan for food, but by the last aspiration of man for
heaven.

“From harmony, from heavenly harmony,

This universal frame began:
From harmony to harmony
Through all the compass of the notes it ran,
The diapason closing full in Man.”

The latest science hesitates to question the validity of our higher

emotional life. It is becoming antiquated to say that, because we are
descended from animals, our sense of duty, our feelings of faith and
reverence have no more significance than the animal instincts from
which they may have developed. There they are in all their
refinement, need, and suggestiveness, and, as such, are a proper
ground of belief. A late philosophical evolutionist says it is useless to
theorize about our impulse to pray, its use or futility—we pray
because we cannot help praying. Evolution is undergoing the test of
the last stage of a scientific process—in this instance that of fitness
to explain the facts of man’s nature. It may not escape the test by
denying the facts.
 Pardon the seeming digression, but the reasonableness of our
faith is the ground of interest. Interest vanishes with the genuineness
of our supposed treasure. We do not like to handle counterfeit coin;
we do not value antiquities and sacred relics of modern manufacture,
or mementos that no longer represent cherished memories. Much
that stimulates the higher life would perish did we doubt the truth of
our nature; the glory of the world would depart were the soul lost out
of it.

Some interests have sacred claims above others; there is a

hierarchy amongst our impulses. Analyze the fact as we may, duty
still remains. Moral laws and their practical application are
progressively revealed by the relations of men in society. We may
believe the laws are there in the nature of things, but that our
discovery of them is gradual, as is the discovery of the unchanging
laws of physics. The moral problem is the old one of the struggle
between light and darkness, between good and evil, between duty
and pleasure—the problem of responsibility, character, and destiny.
In its modern form it is the problem of utility, that is, of life and
happiness. But utilitarianism includes, and ever must include, the
happiness that comes from the exercise of the higher spiritual
functions, from the sense of duty performed, and from belief in divine
approbation.
Interests chosen and pursued reveal the character. Men do not
gather grapes of thorns nor figs of thistles. “A good tree can not bring
forth evil fruit; neither can a corrupt tree bring forth good fruit.” The
outward act is but the visible expression of the inner life.
There is something more than a pleasing myth in the Greek
conception of choosing the lot of life. Every responsible act of free
will is gradually fixing our destiny. The conduct of life is not a series
of skirmishes with fate; it is fate itself, and a thing largely of our own
creation. We are constructing the future out of the present. For the
goal that we may finally reach we are even now running the race, the
direction is already chosen, and, if we find ourselves on the wrong
road, time is already lost.
Times change, science brings in new conceptions, superstitions
vanish, beliefs are modified, new conditions and duties arise. But as
the scenes shift and new actors come on the stage, the themes are
still human history, comedy, and tragedy. The argument of the play is
still the triumph of heroism and the reward of virtue. The spectators
still smile at innocent pleasures, weep with misfortune, and applaud
sentiment and worth, and the orchestra still plays the triumph or the
dirge as the curtain falls on the final scene. The ideals of the saints,
the courage of heroes, the sufferings of martyrs still teach their
lesson. Reverence for God, justice, benevolence, the ethical worth of
the individual are still dominant ideas.
If our ideals are less severe, they are more practical; if our
heroism is less phenomenal, it takes on new forms or is reserved for
imperative need; if we shrink from martyrdom, it may be because
martyrdom is sometimes folly; if we worship with less zeal, we are
more conscious of the rational grounds of worship. Our justice and
benevolence have become more useful and practical, and reach all
men. The problems of physical comfort and material progress, of
practical charity, of political justice, of social purity, of the rights of all
classes of men, of education, of peace and good will, of the true
grounds of religious faith are at the front, and claim our interest and
devotion. Romance is not dead. The modern hero has his
opportunity, an opportunity open as never before to all kinds and
conditions of men. Every educated young man has an unlimited field,
a free lance, and a cause worthy of his valor. Let him go forth, as an
ideal knight of old, pure in heart and life, with consecrated sword, to
aid misfortune, to defend the people, and fight bravely for truth and
right.

I have seen young men going about, dallying with this or that
pleasure, physically lazy, mentally indolent, morally indifferent,
burdened with ennui, aimless, making no struggle. Will power must
be awakened, life given to the mechanism, or it will go to rust and
decay. While there is hope there is life. When interest is gone, the
mind and spirit are dead, and the body is dying. What a hopeless
lump of clay is he who, standing in this infinitely glorious world of
ours and having eyes sees not, having ears hears not, and having a
heart understands not.
What shall men do who have not come to a consciousness of their
better impulses, to whom the number and worth of human
possibilities are unknown, who have hidden, silent chords, awaiting
the touch that will set them vibrating? Plainly by studying the highest
types of men, the completeness of whose inner life is revealed in
their deeds and thoughts. By contact with a better than himself one
comes to know his better self. Under the influence of great
companionship, whether in life or literature, new conceptions may
appear in the vacant soul.
A popular work of fiction lately published shows incidentally how
great conceptions may grow in a foreign and incongenial soil. It
treats of the times of Nero and the early struggles of the Christians in
Rome. Amidst that folly, profligacy, debauchery, strife, and cruelty,
the Christian purity, humility, brotherly love, and faith in God are
made to stand forth in world-wide contrast. Through a series of
dramatic events, possessing for him a powerful interest, a Roman
patrician comes to receive the Christian ideas, and, under the
nurture of interest, they gradually wax strong and become the
dominant impulses of his being. A fellow patrician, maintaining a
persistent attitude of indifference to the new truths, lives and dies, to
the last a degenerate Roman and a Stoic.
A remote interest whose attainment is doubtful may come to
wholly possess the mind. A young man, misunderstood and
underestimated by friends, suffering years of unrequited effort,
persevering in silent determination, standing for the right, making
friends with all classes, seizing strongly the given opportunity,
defying popularity, and thereby winning it, may gradually rise to
prominence through long years of focusing of effort.
 Man’s free will makes him responsible for his interests. Aristotle’s
dictum comes down to us in an unbroken line of royal descent: Learn
to find interest in right things. Repugnance to the sternest demands
of duty may be converted into liking, and, in the process, character is
made. If you have a need for mathematics, science, history, poetry,
or philanthropy, cultivate it, and interest will come as a benediction
upon the effort. I sometimes think the gods love those who in youth
are compelled to walk in hard paths. Rudyard Kipling has a trace of
imperialism which is not the least valuable feature of his unique
writings. In a late story he describes the transformation of a son of
wealth who is already far on the road to folly—one of those nervous,
high-strung lads who in the face of hardship hides behind his mother,
and is a particular nuisance to all sensitive people. Crossing the
ocean in a palatial steamer, he chances to roll off into the Atlantic
and is conveniently hauled aboard a fishing schooner, out for a three
months’ trip. He has literally tumbled into a new life, where he is duly
whipped into a proper frame of mind and made to earn his passage
and a small wage, by sharing the hardships of the fishermen. In time
he is returned to his parents, together with a bonus of newly
acquired common sense and love for useful work. Hardship did for
him what all his father’s wealth could not buy.
It is in the time of need that men seek ultimate reality. A scientific
writer, after speaking of our interest in the friendship and
appreciation of men, refers to our need of friendship and
appreciation in our time of stern trial, when we stand alone in the
performance of duty. Then we have an intuitive consciousness of a
Being supremely just and appreciative, who recognizes worth at its
exact value, and will duly reward. We feel that in Him we live and
move and have our being. The finite conditions of life drive us to the
thought of an infinite One, who possesses in their fullness the ideals
imperfectly realized in us. When the world swings from under our
feet we need a hold on heaven. In these modern days we need the
spirit of the hero who places honor above life, the spirit that places
character above material advantage. Without it we are like Falstaff,
going about asking “What is honor?” and complaining because it
“hath no skill in surgery.” Balzac, describing one of his human types,
paints a striking picture. A miser is on his death bed. As the supreme
moment approaches, and a golden crucifix is held before his face, he
fixes his glazing eyes upon it with a look of miserly greed, and, with a
final effort of his palsied hand, attempts to grasp it. He takes with him
to the other world in his soul the gold, not the Christ crucified.

There are people who demand a series of ever varied, thrilling,

fully satisfying emotional experiences. For them “the higher life
consists in a sort of enthusiastic fickleness. The genius must wander
like a humming-bird in the garden of divine emotions.” When they do
not save themselves by devotion to scholarly work or by refuge in
the church, they frequently end in pessimism, madness, or suicide.
They exalt the Ego, do not lose self in the pursuit of proper objects of
utility. Nordau has done the world one service in branding them as
degenerates, living in abnormal excitement, instead of employing the
calm, strong, balanced use of their powers. Their fate is fittingly
suggested by a choice sentence from a well-known writer, describing
Byron’s “Don Juan”: “It is a mountain stream, plunging down dreadful
chasms, singing through grand forests, and losing itself in a lifeless
gray alkali desert.” Goethe’s Faust sets forth—be it noted, under the
guidance of the devil—to find complete enjoyment, and tries the
whole round of experience. Everything palls upon him, until he at last
finds permanent satisfaction in earnest practical labor for the welfare
of his fellow-men. In the words of Faust:

“He only earns his freedom and existence

Who daily conquers them anew.”

Labor! It is the secret of happiness. We are born bundles of self-

activity, in infancy ever developing our powers by ceaseless
movement, with eager curiosity ever reaching out toward knowledge
of external things, ever laboring and constructing in imitation of the
great, working world. Unless our energies are wasted by folly and
our hearts are chilled by custom, it is the natural condition, even as
children, older and wiser, but still as children, ever to extend with
enthusiasm the boundary of knowledge, and in reality to join in the
labor which was the play-work of our childhood. And when our effort
overcomes, creates, develops power, aids humanity, we are
conscious of the joy of true living. In our work self must be put in the
background. “He that loseth his life shall find it.” The great Goethe,
once weighed down with a mighty sorrow, forgot his grief in the study
of a new and difficult science.
It is a mistake to suppose that interest and happiness may not
attach to duty. Duty is not a dead, barren plant that no more will put
forth green leaves and blossom. Philanthropists do not need our
sympathy. A man of learning, culture, and ability, capable of enjoying
keenly the amenities of civilization, and of winning worldly success,
goes on a mission to the interior of Darkest Africa. Amid hardships
and dangers, he offers his life to help an alien race in its suffering,
ignorance, and savagery. He makes this devotion his supreme
interest, and who shall say that his satisfaction will not be as great as
that of the most favored son of wealth amid the luxuries of
civilization? “He that goeth forth and weepeth, bearing precious
seed, shall doubtless come again with rejoicing, bringing his sheaves
with him.”
One great purpose of education is to increase and strengthen our
interests. It shows the many fields of labor and gives us power to
work therein; it reveals the laws and beauties of the natural world; it
introduces us to many lands and peoples, and acquaints us with the
problems and means of progress; it opens to us the treasury of
man’s best thoughts; it gives us philosophical and poetic insight.

Sydney Smith, indulging one of his quaint conceits, says: “If you
choose to represent the various parts in life by holes upon a table, of
different shapes—some circular, some triangular, some square,
some oblong—and the persons acting these parts by bits of wood of
similar shapes, we shall generally find that the triangular person has
got into the square hole, the oblong into the triangular, and a square
person has squeezed himself into the round hole.” This fancy has
some truth, but more of nonsense. “Men at some time are masters of
their fates.” Create your place in life and fill it, or adapt yourself to the
best place you can find. The choice of occupation is important, but
filling well the profession chosen is more important. Turn your
knowledge and power to the performance of to-day’s duty.
Lowell in his “Vision of Sir Launfal” imparts one of the sweetest
lessons man may learn. Sir Launfal is to set forth on the morrow in
search of the Holy Grail, the cup used by our Saviour at the last
supper, and in his sleep there comes to him a true vision. As in his
dream he rides forth with pride of heart, at his castle gate a leper
begs alms, and in scorn he tosses him a piece of gold. Years of
fruitless search pass, and as he returns old, broken, poor, and
homeless, he again meets the leper at the castle gate, and in
Christ’s name he offers a cup of water. And lo! the leper stands forth
as the Son of God, and proclaims the Holy Grail is found in the
wooden cup shared with communion of heart. The morn came and
Sir Launfal hung up his idle armor. He had found the object of his
quest in the humble duty at hand.
A poet of our day quaintly but not irreverently writes of the future
life, “When the Master of all Good Workmen shall set us to work
anew.” There we shall work for the joy of it; there we shall know
things in their reality; there we shall enjoy the perfect appreciation of
the Master, and know the blessedness of labor performed in His
service. Thus the lesson is good for this world as well as the next.

“And only the Master shall praise us, and only the Master shall blame;
And no one shall work for money, and no one shall work for fame;
But each for the joy of the working, and each, in his separate star,
Shall draw the Thing as he sees It for the God of Things as They Are.”
 THE ETHICAL AND ÆSTHETIC ELEMENTS IN
EDUCATION.
A historic sentiment is associated with the laurel tree, sacred to
Apollo; with the laurel wreath which crowned the victor in the Pythian
games, was the emblem of the poet, rested upon the heads of
victorious generals, later indicated academic honors, and has
become a figure of speech and a gem in poetic literature. The
Baccalaureate Day—the day when victors in the endeavor to reach
the graduate’s goal figuratively are crowned with the fruited laurel—
we would preserve. We would preserve it for its history, its
significance, its associations, its sentiments, its memories, its
promise, and its religious suggestion. We would preserve it, not only
to celebrate scholastic honors already won, but as a fitting occasion
to consider some of those deeper lessons whose meaning will
appear through experience in the School of Life.

Higher education ever enlarges the borders of science and leads

forth into new fields. It transmutes superstition into knowledge. It is
the spirit of civilization and the leader of progress. It stands at the
summit of human development, represents the aggregate of human
knowledge, is the goal for intellectual endeavor, and it points the way
for the discovery and progress of the future.
There was a time when many scholars turned the pages of
literature, in which were preserved the deeds, investigations, and
thoughts of men, solely that they might develop and enjoy their own
powers; when they devoted themselves to Truth for its own sake;
when they stood isolated, as in a world of their own, considering
naught but their own welfare and, perhaps, their relation to their
Maker. Men dwelt in caves, in remote deserts, or within gloomy walls
to dwarf the bodily and worldly impulses and to rise to a serene
contemplation of God and His truths, disregarding the appeal of
ignorant or suffering humanity and the duty of adding works to faith.
Our relations to our fellow-men give rise to nearly the entire Ethical
Code. Society cares for us, educates us, develops us, and it has
claims upon us, not on purely selfish or utilitarian grounds, but under
a higher ethical idea, whose sanction is the perfection and will of
God. The law of God requires effort for humanity, government
enjoins it, charity demands it. The Associationist, the Utilitarian, and
the Evolutionist teach it.
An honorable character and a useful life are full of influence. And
there are hundreds of ways, in some of which, without burdensome
effort, one may be a blessing to others. Ignorance may be awakened
to its condition, vice may be shamed, sorrow may be assuaged, fear
may be changed into hope, sloth may be aroused to action, doubt
may be converted into faith.
Go forth and join in the labor you are fitted for. If you have a truth,
utter it; if you have had superior privileges, impart to others; if you
have an insight into principles of conduct, stand for them; if you have
a trained eye and a deft hand, use your skill. Externalize the powers
of your being; find outward expression for your inward thought.
Thank God for a courageous man, a true Anglo-Saxon man, a
man whose convictions are deeply rooted, and who guards them as
his very life. Heroes, philanthropists, and martyrs are his exemplars.
He has a work to do, and he enters upon it as his fathers battled for
the right. The sensualist, the dreamer, and the fatalist lie supine, are
lulled by the summer breeze, and gaze upon the drifting panorama
of clouds with playful imagination. The man of duty marches forth
and takes the fixed stars for his guide.
The educated young man of to-day has every reason to thank the
stars under which he was born. Behind him is the teaching of the
civilized world—the poetry and art of Greece, the laws and
institutions of Rome, the growth of Christianity, the Mediæval
commingling of forces and evolution of rare products, the
Renaissance, the religious and political emancipation, invention,
science, art, poetry, and philosophy. Behind him is the history of the
Anglo-Saxon race, its courage and deeds of valor, its profound
earnestness, its stern ideals. Behind him is Puritan New England
and liberty. Around him lies the new land of promise with its natural
blessings of air, sun, mountains, and plains, with its mineral wealth
and industrial possibility, with its people of pride, energy, intelligence,
and high enthusiasm. Before him lie the development of a great and
unique civilization, a wonder of material progress, a rare growth of
poetic power and free spirit under new and fostering conditions.
Before the youth of this State is the possibility of success in any
pursuit, of rise to influence, of contributing to the formative period of
a new commonwealth. There is every inducement to be a
courageous, energetic, and ideal man. Those who have made our
history, most of them, are still living, but their work is nearly
accomplished, and you will take up the responsibility. May our great
system of public instruction contribute to fill the State in coming
decades with noble men and women who are not afraid of ideals.

Man may deceive others, but is shamed at the tribunal of his own
better judgment. A celebrated lecturer describes what he calls the
“Laughter of the Soul at Itself,” “a laughter that it rarely hears more
than once without hearing it forever.” He says: “You would call me a
partisan if I were to describe an internal burst of laughter of
conscience at the soul. Therefore let Shakespeare, let Richter, let
Victor Hugo, let cool secular history put before us the facts of human
nature.” We may refer to one illustration: Jean Valjean, one of Hugo’s
characters, an escaped and reformed convict, was about to see an
innocent man condemned for his own act, through mistaken identity.
He tried to make himself believe self-preservation was justifiable,
and as the mental struggle between Self and Duty went on he
seemed to hear a voice: “Make yourself a mask if you please; but,
although man sees your mask, God will see your face; although your
neighbors see your life, God will see your conscience.” And again
came the internal burst of laughter. The author proceeds: “Valjean
finally confessed his identity; and the court and audience, when he
uttered the words, ‘I am Jean Valjean,’ ‘felt dazzled in their hearts,
and that a great light was shining before them.’”

Science does away with superstition and many an error, it makes

known the laws of nature, it applies them to practical ends, it is the
handmaid of civilization, it emphasizes the welfare of humanity, it
shows the working of the mechanism within the field of
demonstrative knowledge, the finite, knowable land of the real.
Science exceeds its purpose only whenever it proclaims that there is
no field of spiritual knowledge, glimpses of which may be seen by
souls that dwell upon the heights. Some would measure the earth
with a carpenter’s rule, forgetting Him “Who hath measured the
waters in the hollow of His hand, and meted out Heaven with the
span, and comprehended the dust of the earth in a measure, and
weighed the mountains in scales, and the hills in a balance.”
Carlyle says: “Religion in most countries is no longer what it was,
and should be—a thousand-voiced psalm from the heart of man to
the invisible Father, the fountain of all goodness, beauty, truth, and
revealed in every revelation of these; but for the most part a wise,
prudential feeling, grounded on mere calculation, a matter, as all
others now are, of expediency and utility; whereby some smaller
quantum of earthly enjoyment may be exchanged for a larger
quantum of celestial enjoyment.” But again and more truly he says:
“Religion cannot pass away. The burning of a little straw may hide
the stars of the sky, but the stars are there and will reappear.”
Once a pupil asked to be excused from exercises in which choice
extracts from the Bible were sometimes read, simply because they
were from the Bible; but he listened with pleasure to good thoughts
from other books, though these books contained many a palpable
error. Aside from the view which makes the Bible the Sacred Book of
the Christian believer, he had not thought of its value to a large
portion of the human race. He had not regarded it in the light of
history and philosophy. The ideals for which the Hebrew race has
stood, the wonderful prophecies of great and far-seeing men, the
grand poems of faith and promise, the words of condensed wisdom,
the maxims for right living, the Beatitudes, the teaching of the
Parables, the spirit of adoration, the moral code, the allegorical
wisdom never had been contemplated apart from the religious view,
against which he had imbibed a prejudice.
Permit me to speak from the standpoint of history and philosophy.
The Christian religion is a chief source of our peculiar civilization, of
the character of our institutions, of the growth of altruism, of the
equality of man, of the supreme worth of the inner motive, of charity,
of liberty. It has given the world the highest examples of pure and
devoted lives.
I have a friend who is struck with the tale of how Buddha, wearing
a Brahman’s form, when “drought withered all the land,” encountered
a starving tigress with her cubs, and, in the unbounded pity of his
heart, offered himself a sacrifice to their hunger. He says: “Here is a
beautiful religion for me.” And yet he is not touched by the story of a
Saviour who carried the burden of the pains and sorrows of many
and died that they might live.
Disregard no good, wherever found. The human race must have
its ideals. Thousands have felt what a famous man has expressed,
that, were there no religion, men would of necessity invent it and
worship a false idea. The religion of Mohammed is better than the
idolatry of the Arab; the idolatry of the Arab was better than nothing.
The races—each at its own stage—have been improved by their
religions. The Scandinavian conception of Walhalla; the Ancient
Oracle at Dodona, where the priests in gloomy groves caught the
responses of Zeus from the whisperings of the sacred oaks; the
ancestor worship of the Chinese, the system of symbolism in Egypt
—all represented the struggle toward ideal life and the notion of
retributive justice. With bowed head and reverential heart I would
stand in the presence of any sincere devotion, the uplifting of the
soul in prayer to the God of its faith; how much more in the presence
of that worship which the best intelligence of the best races has
accepted. And how often one misinterprets the real meaning of an
alien religion. The “Light of Asia” gives a meaning to Nirvana never
heard from the pulpit:

“Foregoing self, the Universe grows ‘I’;

If any teach Nirvana is to cease,
Say unto such they lie.”

Let young men learn as a common-sense proposition that, though

creeds may change, though there may be frequent readjustments of
theological beliefs, the religious sentiment is an essential fact of our
nature, and has a meaning the depth of which they have not
sounded.

The love of Art is necessary to the complete man. Whatever may

be said of the cold, intellectual spirit, one attains a high standard of
humanity only when he possesses a heart warmed and ennobled by
a vivid conception of the Beautiful found in the rainbow, the color of
the leaf, and the sparkle of the rill, works framed in nature and hung
in God’s great art gallery—the universe. Man sees the real spirit
shining through material forms, and architecture, sculpture, painting,
music, and poetry follow. Noble thought and action, right and truth,
all perfect things partake of the essence of Beauty. Art adds to
nature; it casts a halo:

“The light that never was on sea or land,

The consecration and the Poet’s dream.”

I have often dwelt upon the lines of Wordsworth:

“To me the meanest flower that blows can give

Thoughts that do often lie too deep for tears.”

I have often wished to hear a sermon arguing from this thought the
existence of God and the immortality of the soul. The peculiar nature
of the soul, that transmutes sensation into divine emotion—a
sweetness, longing, and reverence that are not of earth—is it not
suggestive of all that is claimed by religious faith? Wordsworth rightly
ascribed a dwarfed nature to him who sees only meaningless form
and dull color in the flower:

“A primrose by a river’s brim

A yellow primrose was to him,
And it was nothing more.”

That education is inadequate which ignores the value of man’s

æsthetic nature and neglects its growth.
 PROGRESS AS REALIZATION.

“For now we see through a glass, darkly.”

“Yet I doubt not through the ages one increasing purpose runs,
And the thoughts of men are widened with the process of the suns.”

In the process of development nature goes from potentiality to

higher and higher actuality; what is in its being as tendency becomes
real. We may not suppose the movement that of spontaneous
energy toward accidental results, but rather the progressive
realization of what is in the entire rational scheme of the universe.
From the nebular mass sprang worlds and suns greater and less,
substance and form in infinite variety, plant life in progressive orders,
animal life in ascending types. Conscious existence gradually
became responsive to the multitude of nature’s impressions. The
broken rays of light displayed their rainbow hues to the growing
power and delicacy of the eye; sound revealed its keys, qualities,
and harmonies to the increasing susceptibility of the ear. Mind, as it
developed, realized in its consciousness new laws and ever greater
wonders of the outer world. On the objective side the laws were, the
tinted sky and the murmuring stream were, before mind became
cognizant of them in their perfection and beauty. Any serious
contemplation of the great law of development, in its full meaning,
should inspire hope and purpose in life. It suggests, not only sublime
fulfilment for the world, but large possibility for the individual man.
The natural world, plants, animals, the human race, institutions,
science, art, religion, all animate individual beings, man as an
individual, have their history of development, which suggests its
lesson.
Nature is aspiration. From chaos to the world of this geologic age,
from protoplasm to man, from savagery to civilization, from
ignorance to culture, from symbolism to developed art, from egoism
to altruism, from germ to fruit, from infancy to maturity, from
realization to higher realization, has been the process. And this plan
seems the only one adapted to satisfy the nature and thought of
rational being. A world perfected, all possibilities realized, no chance
for higher attainment—these are conditions of monotony and death.
The old Heraclitus was right when he proclaimed the principle of the
world to be a becoming.

The child’s history, in a way, is an epitome of the history of the

race. At first he is deaf and blind to the world of objects. Note how
the possibilities of his being become realities, how knowledge grows
in variety and definiteness, until the external world stands revealed,
each object in its place, each event in its order, until notions of time,
space, cause, and right rise into consciousness. The child is father of
the man in the sense that the man can become only what he was
implicitly in childhood.
There is a tale of Greek mythology that Minerva sprang full-grown
from the head of Jove—a perfect being. We would rather
contemplate a being with possibilities not completely revealed. A
philosopher said that if Truth were a bird which he had caught and
held in his hand he would let it escape for the pleasure of renewed
pursuit. There are the wonders of nature and of physical evolution;
but transcendently great are the wonders of mind, and the view of its
possibilities of endless development—a thing that we believe will live
on, when the sun, moon, and stars shall be darkened.

The educated young man of to-day is the heir of the ages. All that
science, art, literature, philosophy, civilization have achieved is his.
All that thought has realized through ages of slow progress, all that
has been learned through the mistakes made in the dim light of the
dawn of human history, all that has been wrought out through
devotion, struggle, and suffering, he may realize by the process of
individual education. The law of progress still holds for the race and
for him. He is a free factor, with a duty to help realize still more of the
promise of human existence.
“Know thyself” was a wonderful maxim of the ancient philosopher,
and it leads to knowledge. “Know thy powers” is a better maxim for
practice, and it is a fault that men regard their limitations and not
their capabilities. We look with contempt upon a lower stage of our
own growth. Not for the world would we lose a little from our highest
attainment. The view is relative, and we have but to advance our
position and life is subject to new interpretation.
This is a period of the fading out of old ideals as they merge into
higher ones not yet clearly defined. The reverence for nature, for its
symbolism, the sanctions of religion, the transcendental belief, the
poetic insight have somewhat fallen away, and the world is partly
barren because not yet rehabilitated. Ideals are regarded as fit for
schoolgirl essays, for weakly sentimentality, for dreamers, for those
who do not understand the meaning of the new science and the new
civilization. Ideals! The transcendent importance of ideals is just
appearing. Not an invention could be made, not a temple could be
built, not a scheme for the improvement of government and society
could be constructed, not a poem or a painting could be executed,
not an instance of progress could occur without ideals. The world
may be conceived as an ideal, the development of all things is
toward ideals. We are at a stage of that development; the
progression is infinite, ever toward perfection, toward God, the
Supreme Good. Lamartine said wisely: “The ideal is only truth at a
distance.”
Do circumstances forbid the possibility of higher development?
Then let the individual, in a chosen vocation, however humble, lose
himself in obedience and devotion to it, and thus, as a hero, live to
his own well-being and the welfare of others. Thereby he will find
blessedness. Carlyle’s “Everlasting Yea” shows this passage: “The
Situation that has not its Duty, its Ideal, was never yet occupied by
man. Yes, here, in this poor, miserable, hampered, despicable
actual, wherein thou even now standest, here or nowhere is thy
Ideal; work it out therefrom; and working, believe, live, be free. Fool!
the Ideal is in thyself, the impediment, too, is in thyself; thy Condition
is but the stuff thou art to shape that same Ideal out of; what matters
whether such stuff be of this sort or that, so the Form thou give it be
heroic, be poetic? O thou that pinest in the imprisonment of the
Actual and criest bitterly to the gods for a kingdom wherein to rule
and create, know this of a truth: the thing thou seekest is already
with thee, here or nowhere, couldst thou only see!”
Here is a striking story, related as true: A young man had met with
misfortune, accident, and disease, and was suffering from a third
paralytic stroke. He had lost the use of his voice, of his limbs, and of
one arm. A friend visited him one day and asked how he was. He
reached for his tablet and wrote: “All right, and bigger than anything
that can happen to me.” By energy of will, by slowly increasing
physical and mental exercise, he reconquered the use of his body
and mind—gradually compelled the dormant nerve centres to awake
and resume their functions. Later he wrote: “The great lesson it
taught me is that man is meant to be, and ought to be, stronger and
more than anything that can happen to him. Circumstances, fate,
luck are all outside, and, if we cannot always change them, we can
always beat them. If I couldn’t have what I wanted, I decided to want
what I had, and that simple philosophy saved me.”
A healthy philosophy, speculative or common sense, a healthy
ethics, theoretical or practical, are indispensable to youth. Away with
unfree will, and pessimism, and pleasure philosophy, and the notion
of a perfected world and a goal attained. Substitute therefor vigorous
freedom, cheerful faith and hope, right and duty, and belief in
development. Most of the great poets and artists, most of the
successful business men have struggled with difficulties, and have
wrought out of their conditions their success. Burns did not permit
poverty, obscurity, lack of funds, lack of patronage, lack of time to
destroy or weaken the impulse of his genius. Shakespeare (if this
poet-king be not indeed dethroned by logic) with but imperfect
implements of his craft wrought heroically, and realized the highest