Cricket 1900

A p r i l 1 0, 1 9 0 0 . CRICKET : A WEEKLY RECORD OF THE GAME. 11 the difficulty of the matter, they tackle it early, getting it out of the way long before the Christmas holidays. Your Englishman does not want that to inter­ fere with the festivities of the season. He desires then comfortably to tell cricket stories of the glorious past, while he thinks over the good time he will have when the springtime comes again. Here we leave these troubles till the season is almost with us, generally taking it up as a Lenten task, looked at I fear, in the light of a penance. When we get real wealthy and progressive, we will send a man over to the M.C.C. meeting and find out how they do it. The way that it is done here in this land of committees is that a sub­ committee is appointed, and then one member of that committee is told to do it. Sometimes he does, and sometimes he doesn’t. We had a man one time who thought it was easy. He was at once appointed to go ahead and do it. In his youth he had studied recurring series, indeterminate numbers, differential cal­ culus, and the fourth dimension; so, armed with these, he attacked the problem. Digits and letters represented the clubs and dates, and he worked along splendidly till he came to count up the games, when he found that he had four hundred and thirty-five matches to be played during the season. The difficulty of providing grounds for these games was formidable; it was the unknown quantity, and, as it steadily refused to become acquainted, this Napoleon of the schedule retired discom­ fited. That trouble of the ground has met many men. I myself have made up a schedule, and had it printed, too, when, to my undoing, I found four matches were to be played on one and the same ground at one time. This was absurd. It could not be. We tried playing two matches on one ground for one season, but it was risky. One after­ noon a drive from the big hitter in one match nearly killed the umpire of the other game. I said nearly killed. That was not exactly so, but the ball hit the umpire’s head. There were some smart young fellows (I think they were bowlers) who said you could not hurt an umpire by hitting his head; and again there were others who had no doubt suffered from l.b.w. decisions who thought that it would be a good thing for cricket in this city if several umpires were killed. Of course, the ideal schedule is one where you always play on ihe home ground, meeting the easy clubs first and gradually working up to the hard matches; and if two matches must be played on the same day, have them both easy, so that you can readily divide j our strength and win both. This is all velvet for one club, but how about the others ? With two clubs, each with three teams in the field, two clubs, each with two teams, and three clubs, each with one team, and two distinct series of matches to be arranged, the problem is not an easy one to solve. There will surely be plenty of opportunity for the critics to find fault, and I have no doubt they will make most of it. A REVOLUTION IN THE GAME. Anything more revolutionary than the experiments which the committee of the Marylebone Cricket Club propose to make in club matches this season has never vexed the souls of cricketers since the institution of the game. For a long time there has been an animateddiscussion as to the desirability of putting an end to high scoring and drawn games, and various schemes have been suggested which have met with the approval of cricketers here and there. But the committee of the M.C.C. propose to make a more drastic change in the game than even the most violent enthu­ siasts have ventured to suggest. In their report which will be issued to the members next month the committee state that:— It has been decided to enclose the ground with netting during club matches, as an experiment, and to dispense as far as possible with boundary hits. If the hall hit the net two runs shall be added to the batsman’ s score in addition to those actually run. Hits over the net are to be regarded as boundaries, and boundaries are to count three. Every cricketer must feel the greatest respect for the earnest efforts which have lately been made by the M.C.C. with the object of improving the game, and it is in no spirit of carping criticism that we point out what a fatal mistake would be made if these new proposals were carried out in their entirety. Let us admit for the sake of argument that something ought to be done to shorten the game. But these new proposals would not shorten the game by a single minute; they could only have the effect of making scores smaller, and as long as a game is finished, it does not matter a twopence whether a side makes four hundred or two hundred and fifty. But would it even make the scores smaller ? We are inclined to think that it would rather tend to increase them when the batsmen who play a poking sort of game were at the wickets. With such a scheme iu operation a man like Mr. Stoddart or Mr. Woods or Mr. Fry would be out of place on a cricket field, while the type of player who is so ably represented by Clement Hill, M. A. Noble, and Darling would be everywhere in clover. As for big hitters like Lyons, Mr. de Trafford, Mr. Jessop, Mr. W . J. Ford, Mr. C. I. Thornton, beloved of spectators and players alike, they would soon be non­ existent ; while promising young players who can hit, like Mr. Y. F. S. Crawford, would speedily turn their energies in another direction. For obviously the harder a man hits the fewer runs he will make. When a man like Mr. Fry or Mr. Stoddart hits a ball hard it reaches the boundary long before there is time for a run to be made, while he who taps the ball in such a way that it just trickles to the boundary can accumulate two or three runs before it does so. He is to be rewarded by an additional couple of runs, so that a hit which used to realise a four, which was in doubt up to the last despairing effort of the fieldsman, will count as five or possibly six, while a really hard hit will count as only two. The hard hit on these modern grounds would, if there were room enough, go on for about half a mile; the tap would never go much farther than the boundary. It is monotonous enough even now, when batsman after batsman plays an innings without ever lifting a ball out of the ground, but there are happily still a few men who are willing to attempt a big hit over the ropes. But will anybody risk such a hit if it only counts as three ? There is always a spice of danger about it, but, at least, a hit along the ground would not count at present for more runs than one which was lifted. But if a hit along the ground would pay far better, who would be fool enough to risk hitting the ball in the air ? The new scheme— if it ever comes into operation, which Heaven forbid—will infallibly lead to a school of sniggling batsmen, whose efforts would be painful to watch and monotonous to a degree. A really great batsman, such as Dr. W . G. Grace, K. S. Ranjitsinhji, F. S. Jackson, Abel, Shrews­ bury, or Hayward, would readily adapt himself to the altered conditions. He would never of deliberation make a very hard hit of the kind which thrills a spec­ tator ; he would rather steer the ball in such a way that he would get as many runs as possible before he could add the two additional runs to his total. Doubt­ less, such a man would get a great deal of enjoyment in manoeuvring to hit the ball at the angle which offered the best possibilities for obtaining runs, but this would, after all, be poor consolation to cricketers who were watching the game. In these days, when the expenses of counties are so great, it is incumbent on county committees to do all that is possible to offer attractions to their visitors; can they be expected deliberately to discourage men who hit— the very men whom the crowd go to see ? And would the men who now make the hits which equally delight spectators and players continue on their old course when they were fined so heavily for doing so ? The proposal as it stands is impossible. Many cricketers would be disposed to welcome a scheme which would provide that all hits, except those which pitched over a boundary, should be run out. This could be done by means of a net as in the proposed M.C.C. scheme, and even cricketers who hate to see a lot of tinker­ ing with the rules would admit that in such a case all batsmen would fare alike. The experiment would most certainly be worth trying. If the M.C.C. would alter their proposal by omitting all reference to the two extra runs, and by providing that every hit should be run out, with the exception of hits over a boundary— and there is hardly a cricketer living who would not like to see such hits encouraged by allowing sufficient runs for them to induce men to make them — the ex­ periment would be deeply interesting. It might even be a great success.