Loving cricket as he did _Punch_ was yet fully alive to the English tendency to think that success with the bat or ball qualified a man for anything, and made good capital out of a letter in _The Times_ in 1899, in which the writer, "LL.B. and M.A., London," had written of the late Sir Michael Foster, then a candidate for the representation of the University in Parliament: "Michael Foster was a capital cricketer. He kept wicket for the first eleven.... No better candidate could possibly be found." I have elsewhere noted his reference to the clergyman who in the same year had declared that what his village really needed in a curate was "a good fast bowler with a break from the off." Towards the new type of cricketing journalist which emerged about the close of the century _Punch_ was not exactly benevolent; the duplication of functions was remunerative, but could not conduce to impartial reporting when the writer was also a performer. In the last ten years of this period _Punch's_ references to cricket are much less frequent, but we may note his excellent Latin joke in 1906 on the discomfiture of the Players at Lord's--_urgentur ... longa Nocte_, i.e. by long Knox, the famous amateur fast bowler. The triumph of Warwickshire--champion county in 1911--is commemorated in the cartoon, "Two Gentlemen of Warwickshire," with the ingenious legend:-- MR. F. R. FOSTER (Captain of the Warwickshire XI): "Tell Kent from me she hath lost." (II Henry VI, iv, 10.) WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE: "Warwick, thou art worthy!" (III Henry VI, iv, 6.) [Sidenote: _Lord's and Ladies_] Cricket was increasingly played by girls, but both at the beginning and the end of the period the female spectator left much to be desired. After the Oxford and Cambridge match in 1896 _Punch_ wrote some verses on the attraction of "Lord's" for ladies, which end on a note of severe remonstrance:-- If, Phyllis, you your place _must_ take Between me and the wicket, Don't chatter, and for goodness' sake Sit still and watch the cricket. In 1912 appeared the picture, "At the Eton and Harrow Match." Here an "important lady" addresses deep square-leg, standing near the boundary, "Would you kindly move away? It's quite impossible for my daughter to see my nephew, who is batting." [Illustration: FIRST OFFICER (to very young Subaltern, who is packing his kit for South Africa): "What on earth do you want with all those polo sticks?" SUBALTERN: "Well, I thought we should get our fighting done by luncheon-time, and then we should have the afternoons to ourselves and could get a game of polo!"]