Cricket 1899

THE FINEST BAT THE WORLD PRODUCES. S e p t . 14 1899. CRICKET ; A WEEKLY RECORD OF TJ1E GAME. 407 BUSSEY’S BUSSEY’S MODERN CRICKET. From the Field. A t Lord’s, on May 23, three weeks after the beginning of the season, a county match was begun and finished, only 165 runs being made during the day. Before the season had ended the weather had changed so completely that the promise of May was forgotten, and complaints were heard on all sides of the virtual impossibility of finishing a match between two strong batting sides. Radical changes in the laws of cricket were de­ manded with even greater earnestness than in 1898, and all the old plans for placing the ball on even terms with the bat were brought out again, not only by their original inventors, but by a vast number of unwitting plagiarists, who were laudably anxious that the world should not lose the benefit of their inspirations. By way of practical com­ mentary a change in the weather came on at the end of August, and once again placed batsmen at the bowlers’ mercy, giving; a demonstration which would have been more convincing if it had not gone a little too far by curtailing or breaking off the matches, and thus adding other drawn games to those caused by the fine weather. As me­ teorologists have registered a quite extraordinary numbers of hours of bright sunshine, and there have been consider­ able spells of drought, the present summer, following others of a similar kind, may safely be regarded as excep­ tional ; but it is none the less sufficiently clear that, under normal conditions, there ia a regrettable tendency towards drawn matches. Oat of 150 arranged between the first-class counties no fewer than sixty have been left unfinished ; and even these figures, which bear much the same ratio to each other as those of last year, hardly represent the hopelessness of deciding a game that prevailed during a part of August. The chief cause is universally admitted to be the improve­ ment of the wickets, but there are unmistakable signs that the art of bowling has relatively, if not absolutely, declined. There is nowadays much more encouragement for joun g professionals to aspire to fame as batsmen than as bowlers. The path to proficiency is easier, the work lighter and the rewards greater, since a score of fifty or one hundred impresses the imagination more than the generally more useful exploit of cap­ turing half a dozen wickets at the cost of fifteen or twenty runs each. Drawn games are undoubtedly abstracting much of the interest from cricket, and it is quite certain that the game would never have gained its great hold on Englishmen if it had always been played as nowadays exhibited by the Australian and Notts elevens when they have won the toss and the ground is in perfect condition. Undoubtedly the best hope of remedy by any methods short of revolution lies in the encouragement of bowling. Of the great variety of schemes proposed by reformers not one could safely be adopted without an exhaustive series of experiments. Some of them seem quite unlikely even to effect their purpose. The running out of boundary hits, for example, while designed to tire the batsman, is much better calculated to wear out the fielding side. Other plans involving complex systems of scoring are open to the objection that they are quite revolutionary and unattractive. To alter the character of cricket would only be to create a schism, for a large section of cricketers, in spite even of the M .C .C ., would adhere to the game of their ancestors in preference to counting points for maiden overs or deciding results by the rate of the scoring. There is a good deal of influential suppoit for the suggested change of the l.b.w . law, but it might easily ruin club cricket, and would certainly impose a most invidious task on the u npires. To increase the siza of the wicket or diminish the b it might either be futile or have too drastic effects on particular occasions. The problem is how to make run getting less easy on perfect wickets by patient play without making it almost imp issible whenever there is anything in the pitch to help the bowler. This limitation is generally ignored in the new devices for reform, and it appears to be insufficiently appreciated by those who would modify the rules about the follow-on and the declaring of an innings closed. To leave this point for the present, attention may be called to the increasing emulation which is gradually shaping the course of county cricket. The dogma that it is right and proper to make the winning of the match the sole aim of the - player may be questioned as a universal principle of action ; but much less acceptable is the idea that the first thing to be considered is the avoidance of defeat, with a view to the retention of points or percentages in an altogether factitious system of book-keeping. There is most sport when most risk is taken. The tn jo j- ment of the game is now often made quite subservient to its result. When the captain of a side in hopeless case at the end of the second day feels compelled to decline his opponent’s request to prolong the play for a few minutes in order that the position may be hastened, his action has a quite melancholy significance. The season, however, which has just concluded has not been at all uninterest­ ing. It is satisfactory to find the counties that have played the liveliest cricket near the top of the list for the championship. T A K E R S OF 100 W IC K E T S IN AN A U S T R A L IA N TOU R . 18:8. 1890. F. R. Spofforth... ...H08 |C. T. B. Turner .. 215 1882. J. J. Feirfs ... ... 215 F. R. Spofforth .. ... 188 i 1893$. H. F. Royle ... ... 144 C. T. B. Turner .. 160 G. E. Palmer ... ... i s 8 ; G. Giffen .............. ... 148 T .W . Garrett ... ... 128 |H. Trumble ... . ... 123 1881. 189(5. F. R. Spofforth . ... 216 ; H. Trumble ... 148 G. E. Palmer ... ... 132 E. Jones .......... . 121 1886. X G. Giffea .......... ... 117 G. Giffen ........ ... 162 T. R. McKibbin ,.. 101 T. W . Garrett . ... 1*9 1899. G. E. Palmer ... ... 110 H. Trumble ... 142 1888. E. Jones ........ ... 135 C. T. B. Turner ... ... 314 W. P. Howell ... ... 117 J. J. Ferris: ..... ... 220 +Eleven aside matches only. J One match v. odds included.