Cricket 1899

410 CRICKET : A WEEKLY RECORD OF THE GAME. S ept . 14, 1899. T H E F IR S T -C L A S S S E A S O N OF 1899. It is pretty certain that nine cricketers out of ten would, if asked to name the half dozen men of the year, begin promptly with Ranjiteinbji, Albert Trott, and Major Poore, and would then hesitate as to whom they should include in the remaining three places. Townsend, H ay­ ward, Abel, Trumble, or Jones (the Australian) might be mentioned, and, possibly, Fry, Rhodes, and Noble, but he would be a bold man who would place them without misgivings. Lockwood, Clement H ill, and Kortright might all have been included but for accidents. It has incontestably been a batsman’s year, although several bowlers have distin­ guished themselves, notably Albert Trott, Rhodes, Trumble, Mold, Bradley, and Jones. But there has been no really great bowler this year like Richardson or Lohmann, for Trott cm hardly be con­ sidered their equal because of his re­ markable want of success whenever he met the Australians. It is almost a question whether Major Poore does not deserve the first place among the bats­ men— it was not his fault that he could only play in twenty-one innings, or that he was only able to play once against the Australians, when he made scores of 29 and 71. He was almost invariably success­ ful, and it cannotbeurged againsthim that Hampshire played only good weak teams, since they numbered Yorkshire, Sussex, Lancashire, Surrey, Essex, Gloucester­ shire and the Australians among their opponents. On the other hand, Ranjit­ sinhji has been in marvellous form throughout the season, and his consistency has been marked. In the middle of the season Hayward was, without much doubt, the best batsman in the world, while nobody can dispute that Abel was as likely to make a hundred as any man at any time. Townsend shares with Trott the honour of beingthebest all-round man of the year ; his batting is not particularly atti active, but he is one of the most diffi­ cult men in the world to shift. For a time Fry seemed likely to outrival Ranjitsinhji, but he had his unlucky periods. More men than usual have greatly increased their reputation, and exclusive of those alreadymentioned, themost prominent are C. M . Wells, F. L . Fane, A . O. Jones, W . G . Quaife, V . F . S. Crawford (who was fxceedingly unfortunate in meeting with an accident when he was giving great promise of being one of the best men in the Surrey team), S. H . Day, A . J. L . Hill, L . G. Wright, P. Perrin, T. S. Fishwick, A . J. Turner, and Diver; and among the bowlers Bradley, Paish, and Young. Of the men who came to the front either unheard of before the season began, or very little known, the most prominent were C. A. Bernard, the three Fosters, Arnold, R. H . Spooner, H . C. Pretty, Vine, and A . Collins, of the batsmen; and Wilson, of the bowlers. Victor Trumper, who made such a fine first appearance in the Austra­ lia n ti-arn, can hardly be included iu this category, as he had already gained a great reputation in Australia. The same may be said of Noble and Howell. Trumble and Noble have greatly ad­ vanced their position as all-round men, but the other members of the team came to England with Ruch great reputations that one can hardly say that they have increased them. They were an all-round team in which no one stood out very prominently through the whole season, although for a time Noble was head and shoulders above the others, A few famous cricketers have hardly done themselves justice this year, notably A . C. MacLaren, and Dr. W . G . Grace. In considering the doings of the chief batsmen of the year, one cannot help being reminded of the brilliant batting performances on certain occasions of certain other men among whom may be mentioned Jessop, F . H . B. Champain, Arthur Shrewsbury, F . S. Jackson, J. T. Brown, Captain Wynyard, S. M . J. Woods, Tyldesley, C. J. Burnup, Brockwell, Wainwright; and the bowling performances of Woodcock, Mead, Young, Briggs, Lockwood, Wass, and, at the be­ ginning of the season, Hearne and Roche. As the season has been extremely dry since May, all sorts of proposals have been made with the object of limiting the number of runs made during a match, and of preventing drawn games—any one of which, if carried out, would tend to make first - class cricket more or less of a farce in a wet season, and would ruin club cricket. No one has yet sug­ gested that an absolutely certain way of preventing big scores would be to go over a wicket carefully with a harrow before a match! But the suggestion is eminently practical and inexpensive. On the whole, there would not seem to be so very much difference between English and Australian bowling. Whenever there was a flawless wicket, batsmen made runs with equal ease against either, and it is a question whether the better judgment of the Australian captain was not chiefly responsible for the breakdown of certain teams when the Australian batsmen themselves managed to make runs. If there was anything whatever in a wicket which could help some bowler or other Darling was bound to find it out; English captains did not always manage to follow his example. For a time it seemed that Jones would go down to tame as another Spofforth, but although he often did great things, he cannot be said to have rivalled the great perform­ ances of his famous predecessor. It is one of the curiosities of the season that Bradley, who bowled con­ sistently well from first to last, and took more wickets than Jones at a smaller cost, entirely escaped notice (except from the opponents of Kent) until late in the season. It was almost a calamity that Clement Hill could only bat for about half the season, and that Kortright could not bowl at all. It would have been very interesting to see what the Australians would do with the latter, for their play against fast bowling was not their strongest point, and they had not to meet any good bowlers who had the pace cf Kortright. If Hill had played throughout the season, or if Kortright had bowled, the history of the year might have been very different. One of the most notice­ able points in the season’s cricket was the great revival of slow scoring on the true wickets. It became quite the fashion to put the blame for this on the Australians, who, having been accustomed to play matches to a finish, had drifted into a style which seemed to them to produce the best results; but by degrees it was realised that many of our players were beginning to compete with them in this respect on their own ground, and, more­ over, to go one better. This, and the excellence of the wickets, brought about an inordinate number of games which were not only drawn but did not approach completion. It may, however, well be left to the common sense of cricketers to set this right in ensuing seasons. The big hitter of the Thornton and Bonner type seems to have almost died out, and the number of men who venture to lift the ball more than two or three times in the course of a long innings may almost be counted on the lingers of two hands. The best Australian bats almost invariably kept the ball on the ground, and very seldom hit very hard. Records innumer­ able have been made during the season, among the most important being Abel’s sequence for five years of over 2,000 runs, Ranjitsinhji’s three thousand, Darling’s 1,941 (a record for Australian batsmen in England), Howell’s ten wickets in an innings against Surrey, Major Poore’s average for twenty-one innings, and heaps of others. A few well-known players drifted out of first-class cricket, or only played in a match or two, among them being L . C. H . and R . C. N . Palairet, A . E . Stoddart, Holland, V . T. H ill, F. Marchant, L . de Montezuma, F . W . Milligan, Baldwin, B. D . Bannon, E . I. M . Barrett, S. H . Evershed, Guttridge, W . N . Roe, C. W . Wright, and Walter Wright. More matches than ever were played and more runs scored. W .A .B . AN ENGLISH TEAM IN HOLLAND. Below will he found the scores of the most recent tour of Englishmen in Holland. The combination was composed of old University men, and was very fairly strong in all depart­ ments of the game. In the result they heat The Hague, Amsterdam, and South Holland, hut lost to All Holland. The team, we understand, was much impressed with the sportsmanlike spirit in which the Dutchmen play the game. There is, for example, a most refreshing absence of appeals, either for catches at the wicket or l.b.w. The Dutch­ men play with the utmost keenness, hut with the most delightful abhorrence of anything savouring sharp practices, and might, in this respect, set many English teams an example. Their cricket is unequal; the out-cricket is far better than the batting. Of their batsmen, Feith and Bourlier appeared far the best, while of their bowlers, who are many and varied, the best is, of course, Posthuma. This bowler has been a terror to English batsmen. He bowls fastish-medium, left hand, and even on the matting wickets he turns the ball both ways. The ball which has proved exceptionally fatal to English bats, is one which comes a couple of feet with his arm, howled at a pace considerably above that which we usually associate with a ball