Cricket 1894

194 ■SEICKEiC§ A WEEKLY EECORD OF THE GAMBa JUNE 14, 1894 jears of age who play iu glasses, three or over in “ pince nez ” or “ nosers.” It is doubtful whether the best cricket is possible to men thus handicapped. Anyhow, the only player I can recall who figured in county cricket in “ specs ” was Henderson, an amateur of fair bowling ability, who, some ten years since, was in the Middlesex team ; but he was scarcely a front-rank man. Early defective sight is one of the symptons cf the deteriora1 ion of the race, Darwin notwithstanding. A Dalston man wants my help in drawing up “A Cricket Common-place Book for 1894.” I am afraid I cannot render him the service expected. I have bad no experience of such luxuries. Beyond a book for each of the couities, and an occasional note of any out- of the-way incident in the game, and the. still less frequent use of scissors and paste, I do nothing. The annuals ara my common­ place book. I find that ore can carry a lot in the memory if he will only exercise it. Every man mu6t follow his own method in such matters. First of all, know well what you want to do, andwhy ; the rest wilt follow. But don’t waste valuable time in doing im­ perfectly that which the newspapers and guides do with remarkable accuracy. I suppose there must be a fascination in keeping scores and analysis wbil t a match is in progress. It is a mark of early enthusiasm in cricket. I have some old cards much decotated in this way, which have still a certain, sentimental value. My own lad would conclude be was wanting in loyalty to his county did he not take his scoring-book to every match. He seemed considerably humiliated last week at Dewsbury when Humphreys told him he had failed to note oue ball in the analysis. As one gets older, one likes cricket to be made as comfortable as possible; hence the pencil is discarded. But will the game itself ever cease to attract us? I often say this to myself at the close of a hard day in tbe open— for to watch a game critically and sympathetically, is hard work, very. And why should we go and spend hours in watching ? Analyse the game, and there’s really nothing in it. “ Only hitting a ball! ” Well, I have given up pulling things to pieces; I am contented to enjoy the game, without caring to ascertain why. I daresay, if we took our mother’s face to pieces, we bhould find nothing in it. The old question again— “ If a batsman runs one short, doss he not also run two sh oit?” This from Manchester. I fancy I answered this before, but no harm will be done by referring to it again, as my explan­ ation of the mystery I do not lemember to have seen in print. Yes, a batsman does run two short, and is penalized accordingly. For a completed run both ba'smen are necessary. ]f one of them fails to do his part, his share of the run—that is, one-half— is knocked oil. That ia, in a two-run hit, he runs two shoit, or two half-runs, i.e . one whole run ; consequently, umpire calls “ One short.” Suppose it was a three hit : one batsman runs two short runs, that means he runs all three short— i e. three half runs—or cne and a half runs; but as no record is made cf half-runs, he is mulcted two runs short. Suppose both batsmen ran two short in a hit for three, each umpirewould call two short— or four in all. As a matter of fact, this is wrong. Tbe deficit of each batsman is (see la t paragraph) only one and a half tuns, or the two together, three runs. It is evident that a stroke cannot be penalized beyond its full value, when all the conditions are fulfilled. But here’s a puzzling item in this last case. In a three- bit, the batsmen change ends, of course, and neither is run out; that is to say, they each stood in their crease when the ball was de­ livered, and by tbe time the ball is le- turncd, they have got ea'cly into crease agaiD, only, at the other wicket in each case. Then surely they have scored between them one run. And yet, in tbis three-hit, they each run two short, and so no run is credited to them. Where is the way out of the dilemma? Can an}body enlighten me? Before leaving questions, may I take this opportunityiqf stating that I cannot unJer- take to correspond p ivately on cricket, m t even where a stamped envelope is enslosed I don’t feel comfortable in collaring a stamp; one tries hard to be honest. I will try and answer in these columns any question that appears to ba likely to interest cricket readers generally. Bradford we will not refer to. It is a painful subject, not calculated to make a sensitive nature like mine over amiabe dur­ ing the early days of last week. It repre­ sents a dead loss of at least £400 to the county funds. One deiived no satisfaction from the fact that on two days there was no ciicket at Nottingham, or that not a tall was bowled at Birmingham. But such calamities have happened before. Never a ball was delivered iu the following county matches:—Middlesex v. Kent, at Lord’s, in 1883 ; Lancashire v. Kent, at Liverpool, in 1888. Kent se.m fated to be the victims of the weather. And I have a hazy recol­ lection of another match of the kind. Was it Surrey v. Middlesex? And, unless my memory be all at Eea, this was played later on in the season when each county had a vacant date. I shall be obliged for a con­ firmation (with date) of this surmise. But last week established a record; at any ra'.e, I do not remember two first-class matches being killed outright on the same days, as happened at Bradford and at Edgbaston. Dewsbury was different; weather, cold but fine, though ground was dead, but not as much as might have been expected from the previous floods. Dewsbury isn’t exactly a high-class town; indeed, most of the County amateurs who ^1*y there prefer to spend the night at Leeds, some eight miles distant. Middlesex have never figured ther?, and never will; they draw the line at Biadford, so they informed me last year. But Dews­ bury, like many another second or third-rate Yorkshire town, boasts a cricket enclosure in every way adapted for a match of chief im­ portance. Of course, the pavilion is none too ample, and it’s not safe, perhaps, to reckon on getting a sit-down lunch on the grouud. But tbe wickets are A l, and the boundaries ample enough for most hitters. I am not sure that it is sound policy for Yorkshire too play on so many different grounds—viz., Shetfield, Leeds, Bradford, Huddersfield, Halifax, and Dewsbury—and there are one or two more that are occasionally honoured with a county match. For, in the first place, their cricketers are almost as strange to the conditions ef so many grounds as are their opponent*. It is an accepted fact in tport. that to play at home confers a big advantage. Of course, everywhere in Yorkshire the home team plays before friends and supporters, and that counts for something. I often wish all tbe matches could be played on one, or at most two, grounds. In a vast county, possess­ ing many large towns, this may be imprac­ ticable to-day. The Sheffield monopoly is at an end. But you will never bave a heavy county membership list, so long as the members of the local clubs can enjoy all the privileges of a county member when a match is played on their enclosure. But to the match against Sussex. Yorkshire won the toss for the first time this season. Will this fortune fall to Surrey to-day ? A match of modest scoring throughout, Sellers (41) testi­ fying to his appreciation of first-class ciicket by playing the highest and best innings in the match, though Moorhouse’s double not out were capital efforts, Of the Sussex bats­ men, Bean alone reached double figures in either innings. An awful show. What's the matter with Murdoch ? He cannot get tuns. Newham is alone in his glory. Sussex have a tail; from the way in which some of their ba'smen shaped, one would conclude they had come straight from a common or park into county cricket. Murdoch, Smith, Guttridge, and Kiilick, it will be seen, were out in the same way each time. Humphreys was a spectator, ground too heavy for lobs. It was most refreshing to see Alfred Shaw again in. flannels, though, as I told him, he ought to have been wearing his old colours. Be looks not a day older, and as for hi3 bowling, it is the same old thing exactly. It brought back many a great fight to see him and Peate together during tbe interval; timo was when they were the finest bowlers in the world. I never could understand why their counties dropped them. Why, even to-day Shaw can give a long start to any Notts bowl r ; and I am by no means certain that Peate is not still the best howler in Yorkshire, spite of his ample girth, and his defective sight, which requires the help of glasses. Shaw has now been bowling in three matches; in the only innings against Nottingham, and in both innings against Yorkshire, he bowled, unchanged, with all the old accuracy ; had the over still consisted of four balls, his average would have come out a run (or less) per over. Nineteen wickets has he taken at a cost of eleven runs a wicket. I may be mistaken, but I have never watched a bowler who seemed to me so thoroughly to disguise his break as Shaw does. With all other bowlers I can see the break; not so with him. He bowled Wainwright with a ball that came in a foot from leg; the batsmen knew nothing about it, and was surprised wben it pass' d between his legs into the wicket. 'Xhie3 daj s’ hard cricket on a firm ground may bo beyond Shaw's powers of endurance, though it hardly seems likely. He has a big job to coach the younger Sussex batsmen. He was out first ball in each ionings 1 What of that ? Fuller Pi'ch was, in the North v. South in itch, June, 1847; Tom Humphrey was, Surrey v. M.C.C., 1870; A. J. Webbe was, Middle'ex v. Surrey in 1892 ; not to mention a simiar a'cident to Wardall last year agiinst Surrey. Ilumanuni est errare, and when one is in good company, one need not apologise. Wain­ wright (thirteen for 38) bowled with w. nderful effect on Friday afternoon, though the attack was of the feeblest. Five wickets in seven balls—including the hat-trick. That takes a lot of beating. Said a Yorkshire enthusiast to me, “ I don’t believe any Yorkshire bowler ever had such an analysis.” Ignorance r 'n. Seven wickets for 20 runs. What it Peate's eight wickets for 5 runs at Holbeck in 1883, when Sui rey were knocke 1 ? There is no doubt that Waiawright gets more Etuff on the ball than almost any other bowler, though it is possible to break too much. Winess Cooper, of the 1884 Australian team,and his mighty leg break; it was quite harmless against our best batsmen. Talking of the hat-trick reminds me that Alfred Shaw brought it off ia both innings of Gloucester­ shire in 1884, whilst liohmann, who has done almost everything with the ball that is possible to mortal man, hai never once been credited with this feat in first-class cricket. Surrey have given the Light Blues some capital practice against first-class bowling. Did these teams ever before meet twice in the same week? And when did the Oval match precede that at Cambridge? In four innings Cambridge only once ran into the second hundred, Surrey in each of their two passing into the third hundred. Abel in both matches did wtll, considering the state of the ground, scoring 75 in two bands whilst Brcckwdl (51 not out) at the Oval