Cricket 1900

1 1 4 CRICKET : A WEEKLY RECORD OF THE GAME. M a t 1 0 , 1 9 0 0 . so many of them play a perfect game. There is hardly one out of ten of the best batsmen who uses the whole of his bat. This, of course, comes from the splendid wickets. Very few men nowadays seem to know how to manage their feet pro­ perly; but there is not much occasion for them to bother themselves as long as the wickets keep perfect; in a wet season they would find out their mistake. I am rather inclined to think that modem batsmen do not stand as still as those of my time; they judge the flight of the ball the instant it leaves the bowler’s hand, and so often have to alter their plans at the last moment. One of the drawbacks which a young batsman has now to contend with is the fear that if he makes a duck or two he will be left out of the team. Consequently, when he goes to the wicket he carries too much weight, and so cannot do himself justice. I think that when a young ’un is given a trial it ought to be a good one, for it stands to reason that, with so many ways of learning beforehand about his capabilities, he must be pretty good if he is chosen to play.” “ How do you like umpiring in big matches ? ” “ As soon as I get fairly started I like it very much. But umpiring—like bat­ ting—wants a lot of practice, and the more frequently a man stands as umpire, the better he becomes. If you leave off for three or four weeks you get out of the swing, and are rather fidgety until you feel at home again. I believe I am right in saying that the M.C.C. have recog­ nised this, and that the reason why the list of umpires is somewhat curtailed this year is that every man should be in con­ stant practice, and thus be able to watch the ball and the wicket better, and to give a decision with promptitude and certainty. This is the more necessary because first-class cricket is pretty keen now, and no chance of an appeal is ever missed; but I am strongly of opinion that no first-class cricketer ought to con­ descend to appeal for the only reason that he may possibly catch the umpire unawares. I believe that every first-class cricketer does his duty, and that he de­ cides each question absolutely according to what he honestly believes to be righ t; as a matter of fact he has no time to do otherwise. I still feel convinced that a superannuation scheme, such as I sug­ gested to the committee of the M.C.C. two years ago, would be better than the present system of benefit matches; which is particularly hard on some umpires who, when they are put off the list, have nothing to fall back upon, and are it ft to starve in their old age.” “ You were a batsman when you first began to play ? ” “ My first engagement was at Gran­ tham in 1862, when I was a batsman only. In the follow ing year I was chosen to play in the colts’ match, still as a batsman, and took seven wickets. At that time I bowled much faster than afterwards. The change came about 1867 or 1868, for I found that on the fast wickets a medium pace was likely to meet with the best results. I was generally called a slow bowler, but I fancy that I was faster than a good many people thought.” “ You are not a believer in a man being both a batsman and a bowler ? ” “ Not if he is a professional. If he is an amateur he can do as he likes—he doesn’t have to bowl except in matches. But a professional, who has also to bowl a good deal at the nets, cannot, in my opinion, succeed both as a batsman and a bowler—for long. He may, like Loh- mann, do well with both bat and ball for a time, but 1 am absolutely convinced that if Lohmann had gone in for bowling entirely he would have lasted very much longer. People refer to players like Noble to prove that a man can do both things with equal skill; it is all very well while you are quite young, but it cannot l»st.” “ How would you account for this ? ” “ Well, after a long innings you lose the delicate touch of the fingers on the ball, and although you may still bowl straight, it is quite a long time before you get back the touch. I always say that when there is no necessity to make runs a bowler should not make them, but that if the batsmen on your side do not come off with success the tail should do its very best to distinguish itself. Again, when your side has the last innings of the match, your bowlers may make as many runs as they please, Morley and I often used to get out on purpose without attracting the least attention - it is astonishingly easy to get out when you want to do so—and we listened with becoming gravity, I hope, to the frequent expressions of sympathy which were offered to us for our hard luck. I was a good deal disgusted when I first saw men knock down their wickets in order that there might be time to get the other side out—this was in the days when you could not declare your innings. I felt that it was letting the public behind the scenes. ‘ Here,’ I thought to myself, ‘ I have been getting out purposely for years without attracting any attention, and now we have come down to this ! ’ ” “ What sort of batsmen used to play you best ? ” “ The men who played correct cricket and did not get excited. If a man was eager for a hit, I generally felt pretty sure of getting him in the course of an over or two. Naturally, there were a few hitters who were exceptions to every rule, Mr. C. I. Thornton among the first of them. If a man like him happened to get you on a smallish ground he some­ times rather let you have it, and Mr. Thornton must have made a lot of very big hits off me. Fortunately, he very seldom hit a ball straight back to the bowler. I remember once bowling an over to him which ended in an unexpected manner—there were four balls to the over at that time. He could do nothing with the first three balls, but the fourth he hit into the pavilion. I suppose that in the excitement of watching this big hit the umpire forgot to call ‘ over.’ So I had another ball and clean bowled Mr. Thorn­ ton, who very promptly appealed on the ground that it was the fifth ball of the over. I said, ‘ It’s a little too late Mr. Thornton; if you had hit a six you wouldn’t have asked to have it disallowed because it was off the fifth b a ll! ’ He laughed, and admitted that it might have made a difference.” “ How was it that, after you had been so long absent from first-class matches, you began to play for Sussex ? ” “ I played for Notts for 4 years after I was engaged by Lord Sheffield. After I ceased to play for them I naturally felt bound by my agree­ ment with Lord Sheffield, who always had the greatest dislike to imported players representing a county. So, al­ though he was willing to assist Sussex to the best of his ability, he would not be a party to allowing me, an imported player, to take my place in the Sussex team. But there came a time when Sussex was so badly off in the matter of bowlers that at the request of Mr. Murdoch his lord­ ship allowed me to play.” “ One of your first matches for Sussex was against your old county ? ” “ Yes. I must confess that I was pleased when I took seven of their wickets for about 34 runs, for I never thought that I was too old to be left out of the Notts team years before that. But at that time the committee were anxious to bring on some of the young ones, and I believe that they had an idea that I did not want to play any longer, which was entirely wrong. At any rate they left me out, and the only time that I played afterwaids was in Selby’s benefit match. Once, however, they tele­ graphed to me on the Wednesday before a match which was to begin next morning, but as I had been engaged by Lord Sheffield, and had made arrange­ ments for going to Hastings and other towns to coach Sussex players, I had to reply that I could not play in any match unless I had a week’s notice, for, of course, I could not break all arrange­ ments in a moment, and, betides, it would not have been acting fairly to Lord Sheffield if I had done so. They never asked me again, and I never bothered about it.” * Everybody knows that Alfred Shaw accompanied Lord Sheffield in various tours abroad, and that he has in this way visited Constantinople, Sebastopol, Spitz- bergen and Egypt, where he went up the Nile. “ At Spitzbergen,” he said, “ we played cricket with a quilted ball ou board ship by the light of the sun at midnight. Nets were placed round the ship. We began at half-past eleven and continued until half- past twelve, when I had bowled out everybody on board, including all the ladies. Lord Sheffield himself went in first.” For twenty years Alfred Shaw and Arthur Shrewsbury have been partners in a cricket outfitting business at Queen’s * W iih reference to this explanation, it is well known that the Notts’ players all recognised that a fatal mis­ take had been made when Shaw was left out of the Notts team. Apart from his bowling, he was a good captain, and his plare was taken by an inexperienced man, with results which were not altogether satisfac­ tory. When, years afterwards, bhaw made his re­ appearance in first class cricket, he was one of the two or three mofet succeesful bowlers o f the jear— for a county which was desperately weak in bowling. This affords pretty positive proof that he would have been worth playing for JSotts for jears alter he was left out of the team.