Cricket 1900

258 CRICKET : A WEEKLY RECORD OF THE GAME. J uly 12, 1900. of the Surrey matches (I think it was against Essex) in which he took ten wickets in the first innings, and seven in the second, cleanbowlingabout thirteen of them. It certainly simplifies matters if you knock the middle stump out of the ground, instead of having your field drop catches. Nowadays it is the catching which plays the dickens with matches. We have a pretty good fielding side, but we miss catches badly sometimes. Once, although it was in a match in which we beat Surrey in the end, there were six catches missed off Tyler in eighteen balls, and the batsman didn’t sample the worst fields either. Despite this, Tyler took six wickets for about seventy.” “ Didn’t you once play a long partner­ ship with Tyler in a Surrey match for the last wicket ? ” “ We put on about 130 together, but it was, I think, for the ninth wicket. He scored at a tremendous rate, hitting everything in the direction of third man or point, but the ball generally went over the heads of the fieldsmen. Any ball just outside the off stump went terrifically hard towards the boundary. In another match at the Oval he made fifty while Sammy Woods was looking on with admiration and scaring ten.” “ You have often been in with Mr. Woods when you have both scored quickly ? ” “ When he gets going, there isn’t much chance for anybody else to make runs very quickly—one is too much out of breath. I suppose that Woods played the most wonderful innings against Sussex that I ever saw. Sussex had made over 500 at Brighton, and we had lost four or five wickets for about 30 runs. Sammy came in and made 215 in two hours and ten minutes. I was in with him for a long time, but I hadn’t breath enough to be able to score fast myself. We ran to third man and even short slip, until I said to him, ‘ Let’s stop this and score some fours.’ But he replied, ‘ Can’t you see we’ve got ’em settled; they don’ t know what they’re doing.’ And he continued to make me run for all sorts of little hits.” Speakiog of Mr. Wood’s famous slow ball of a few years ago, Mr. Hill said, “ At one lime it was impossible to tell when it was coming, and I ’ve seen even the very best of batsmen finishing their stroke before the ball pitched, even after they had made 100. Iu one of the Yoikshire matches Woods was bowling at a tremendous pace. A professional came in. The first ball was a short one and rose right above his head. Sammy came up with a rush to deliver the next ball, a full pitch, and the batsman, fancy­ ing that it was coming straight for his head, fell down flat on the ground, and it was the funniest thing in the world to see the ball slowly dropping over him and pitching about half way up the middle stump.” On the subject of fielding Mr. Hill is an authority. For some years he was one of the longest throwers in Eugland. “ But,” he said, “ I don’t think that this was of any use to me. I threw too hard if it was from a short distance, and although I fielded in the country a great deal I was never anywhere near running a man out. In fact I believe that if you have not got the ball in your hand before the batsman starts for a run it is absolutely impossible to run him out from the boundary, by the very hardest and best-judged of throws. Indeed, the men who are most successful are men who cannot throw more than about ninety yards. One often sees the ball thrown in with immense force from cover point and the long field when there has not been the remotest chance of running a man out, and the wicket-keeper’s or bowler’s hands are injured in the most unnecessary manner. I consider that M. R. Jardine was the finest fielder I ever saw ; he had the gift of seeing where the stroke was to be made; he started before it was made, and he .never used one hand where he could use two. His throw-in was perfect. I remember an amusing experience (it seems amusing now, but we didn’t appreciate it then) which some of the Somersetshire men had when fielding at Lord’s in one of the Whit Monday matches. Lionel Palairet was the first of us to go through the ordeal, having to field deep extra cover for Tyler, in front of where the mound is now placed. It is always a difficult place for a man who does not play at Lord’s very often, beciuse the ball co nes down the slope with such unexpected force at the last moment that one is apt to misjudge its pace entirely; it is the drop in the last ten yards which does it. Palairet, splendid field as he is, mis­ judged the pace of two or three and was hooted by the crowd; he asked me to change places with him. I made up my mind that I would stop the things, and when the first hit came I put my two boots firmly together and my two hands just above them, and the ball went through my legs ! Of course the crowd, which was unmanageable all day, let me have it considerably, and after a few more experiences Sammy Woods came and pitched into Palairet and me. We explained how things were, and suggested that he had better go down there himself. He went. After he had missed a cjuple he sent me back again, and the crowd threw ginger beer bottles at me..” Like many other famous batsmen Mr. Hill was originally a bowler, who was supposed to have an excellent chance of getting his Blue at the University. “ I was right hand medium,” he said, “ and in 1888 and 1889 was at the head of the bowling averages at Winchester. I had previously been to school at Cornish’s, at Clevedon, in Somersetshire. We had a pretty good eleven then, including Lionel Palairet, Eustace Crawley, and R. P. Grayson, who afterwards played a good deal for Cheshire. At Winchester I was an ordinary school bowler; that is to say, I had a moderately good length and a certain amount of spin, which seems to be common to all boys. In after years most of them lose this spin, as well as their easy natural swing; their muscles get stiffer, and they put on weight.” “ You still bowl occasionaly in first- class matches ? ” “ Yery occasionally. The best thing I ever did was to get rid of three Notts mea for one run— Charles Wright, caught in the country; Gunn, caught and bowled; and Dixon, bowled. I was very proud of that, but I wasn’t allowed tobowl any more that season. My last exper­ ience as a bowler was against Rinji. I was put on when he had made over a hun­ dred, and if I had bowled to him much longer he would have made two or three hundred. He is the most trying chap to bowl to, especially when he is well set, for when you flatter yourself that you have given him a ball which it will take him all his time to play he will hit it to square leg for four, quite irrespective of where it pitches. If he chose to give up correct cricket he would be the most wonderful hitter ever seen; he can hit any ball to any part of the field; he does not in the least mind whether it is a long hop, or a length ball, or a full pitch. When he gets tired of hooking and pulling and cutting, he begins to drive as straight and hard as anybody. The worst of it is that it’s of very little use to hope that he will make a mistake, as you do with other batsmen; you have to waituntil he is tired, and fortunately forbowlers hedoesn’tseem to take much trouble after he has once passed the hundred. In the season when he made his ten hundreds, he only twice appeared to try to make as many as he could; once in the match at Manchester for England against Australia, and again when he went in to try to win the Sussex match against Oxford—if there had been one more over he would have had the bowling and Sussex only wanted eight to win, which he would probably have got without much difficulty. If he had the physique of C. B. Fry it would not be long before he beat MacLaren’s record.” W. A. B e t t e s w o r t ii . ADD1SCOMBE v. WANDERERS.—Played at Addiscombe on July 4. A ddiscom be . First innings. Second innings. P. Allen, c Colman, b Crawford ........................ . 2 b Craw ford......... 0 E. Wiltshire, c and b Craw ford .............................. . 5 cot out................... 0 R. L. Turner, c sub., b Crawford ........... ... . . 0 c L'ncoln,b Chris­ tian ................... 0 C. Kerward, b Thompson. . 3 c Christian, b Barker ........... 32 A.Wiltshire.c & b Crawford 0 b Crawford........... 0 F. Hill, b Cranford ... . . 2 cOolman,b Barker 3 D. M. Roberts, b Crawford 0 c Colman,b Chris­ tian ................... 22 H. Y . Brown, b Crawford . 2 b Barker ........... 0 F. Newcomb, c Barker, b T h om pson........................ .. 23 b Barker ........... 6 F.Perrin,cFisher,bCrawford 0 c Crawford, b Christian......... 0 R. Darvill, not out ... . . 6 b Christian........... 0 E xtras........................ . 7 Extras ........... 14 Total ................. . 50 T o ta l........... 87 W anderebs . P.P Lincoln, c Perrin, F.W.Christian.b Allen 2 b Kenward ...........32 A. H. Behrend, lbw, b K. E. M. Barker, c Newcom b................... 16 Allen, b Kenward... 9 W . Biewster, c E. E. H. Fischer, c Hill, Wiltshire, b Turner 5 b Perr n ................. 1) F.P. Linn, b Newcomb 0 R. T. Crawford, lbw,b N. Y. Norman, absent 0 Brown ..................4 3 E xtras................. 8 Thompson, c Darvill, — b Kenward ...........48 Total ...........217 S. Colman, not out ... 44