Cricket 1901

6 CRICKET : A WEEKLY RECORD OF THE GAME. J an . 31, 1901. her that she would have failed under any conditions. Fortune, by the way, when she does interpose, is only one player out of twenty-three, and I suspect that she often favours the men with big hearts and safe and eager fingers. These, too, I take it, are as much a part of cricket as the strong arm of the batsman. One or two schemes are advanced in which the fallacy that drawn games are at present an advantage is accepted, and the reform consists solely in dragging these unfinished games into the calcula­ tion. But Yorkshire are to be thanked for knocking that flam on the h ead; no county that played for drawn games this year could have touched the record of an unbeaten eleven with sixteen wins to its credit. Some, confounding the draw with the tie game (which is usually called a draw in other sports), are for counting every draw a half-point each way. But this is obviously unfair. One can only assume that the unfinished games, if played out, would have yielded points in the same proportion as the finished. A t any rate, Yorkshire and Hampshire could not have the same expectation of deriving equal spoils from the play out. And, if this is so, why interfere with the figures as they stand, which already signify the value of the finished games, and, there­ fore, the probable issues of the rest ? Others would decide every draw on its merits, allotting points, and half and quarter points even, according to the state of the game. I do not envy the adjudicators their task. For example : I was at Leyton this year when the July drought broke up. Essex had jnst com ­ pleted a fine innings of about 550 on a hard and true pitch. Then came a terrific downpour, which left both ends of the wicket under water, and Kent, with nothing but a draw to play for, to my mind did excellently next day by getting all out only once. Essex men said that Essex had hard lines in not winning (for Kent were all behind on paper), bui Kent men said that if Kent had won the toss on Thursday Essex would have lost. What would the arbiters have decided f Would they have been guided by the mere length of the scores, or would they have qualified them by the recommenda­ tions of the umpires, or what ? And how many of the cricket public would they satisfy with the net findings of a season p Poor pundits ! Not enough to line the road from Lord’s to St. John’s Wood station I ’ll warrant. Add these half and quarter points to the present table, with or without a rectification for uuequal programmes, too, and you will have a charming recipe for staggering cricket humanity. Several other gentlemen pin their faith to varieties of the “ figure of m erit” system, all of which depend for their efficacy on an analysis of the batting and bow ling averages at the end of the year. But this, to me, always seems the least satisfactory solution of all. It ignores, or rather slurs over by seeming to remedy, the defect of uuequal programmes; it withdraws the solitary inducement (the winning of matches-) for bright play, and it would dispel the charm of sportsman­ ship that still clings fondly to the good old game. That charm, I mean, which prompts men to be content with beating without overwhelming their opponents, enables prentice hands to take a turn at the bowling, sends in the tail men to make the winning knock, and bids a captain to forego his dawdling privileges when the other side have morally earned a win. Figures of merit serve their purpose as an interesting commentary on the season’s play only so long as they have not been its object. As it is, the “ out ” side already do their best to get in, but the opponents do not try their utmost to remain in. To remain in is to draw, and the championship is decided by the greatest proportion of wins. The figure of merit, without increasing the ability to attack, therefore, would add an incen­ tive to defence. It would never do to make the keeping up of ends the be-all and end-all of county cricket. Figures of merit, besides, are not always to be swallowed without quali­ fying. Qualification means complication, as one of the most able of their exponents admits with regret; and, on this account perhaps, he declares for the bare differ­ ence between “ f o r ” and “ against” wicket averages, without any regard to proportion. Now, a county enjoying a good home pitch, on which it scores an average innings of, say, 400 in the half of its fixtures played at home, even if it allowed its visitors to score 300 per innings, would still have a margin in its favour which would put every county whose home pitches were not worth more than 250 completely out of the running. Yet I do not see why the groundman, any more than the stone-walling b its- man, should earn the chief honours of the cricket field. How widely figures of merit differ will be evident from the follow ing com ­ parison of those of three counties in 1890 Differential. Proportional. Yorkshire ...................10'3 ............. 1'61 S u rrey .......................... 7*4 ........... 1'30 Middlesex ................... 2"Z .......... 1'09 The figures are in nothing like the same ratio. The former column shows the bare excess of runs per wicket scored by the county over its opponents, the latter (which I prefer) shows the proportion its scores have borne to its opponents’ . Thus to every hundred runs scored against Yorkshire, the Tykes replied with 161 for the same loss in wickets. But all these amendments, as Mr. Lacy owns with regard to his ingenious “ better or worse ” system, are too abstruse for the man in the seat. Now I come to the three projects that were at first reserved for a con­ sideration. Theoretically, the leading one has much to recommend it. Strictly speaking, there are certainly not a dozen first-class county teams in England at the present time, and none but a first-class county has any claim to be considered in connection with the championship Several counties, therefore, that ought never to have been admitted, perhaps, m ight fairly be excluded. But the operation for want of any rule governing it would be an ungracious one, liable to misconstruction; would not remedy the grievance of those who look to be con­ sidered in the future, and would effect only a temporary relief in the case of those left in the competition. N o sooner would one batch of counties be excluded than others, or perhaps the same, would be presenting their credentials for ad­ mission, or re-inclusion, and either in­ justice must be done or the present state of confusion be reintroduced. For, if there are only ten capable X I .’s in one season, there may be twenty in the next — some day, forty, let us hope ! This passing in and out of candidates, besides giving the M .C.C. committee who dis­ pensed their certificates an unenviable time, would play up Old Harry with the arrangement of fixtures and, after all, not rectify the faults of the system which is at present supposed to exist. It would simply be a repetition of the hateful old tentative device which has made men dread the very mention of the champion­ ship and champions themselves first movers for its abolition. The second expedient is equally sound in theory. The old classification of first, second and third-class counties m ight be restored, with a top and bottom replace­ ment scheme, as in—if I may quote the dire parallel—the Football League. Every county could then find places on its card for the rest of its class, and the scoring of points be fair and intelligible. But this course is not likely to commend itself to the senators of cricket. Any relegation of a county to another group, however termed, with less important fixtures, is felt as an in dign ity; and there is a well understood reluctance to “ degrade,” however temporarily,counties where the game flourishes, which mayhap kept it flourishing in the past, and were champions or ever points and decimals were dreamt of, and which are tolerably certain in the future to keep unearthing talent and emerging triumphantly from their spells of misfortune. As well might astronomers degrade the sun, on days when he is obscured by fog, and class him as a star of invisible magnitude. We know that the days of Sussex and Notts and Hants, for instance, are coming round again with as much certainty as, when the days are at their dingiest and shortest, we know that the summer solstice will return. The last suggestion is that which seems to me to offer the greatest prospect of stability, finality and all-round satisfac­ tion : a sectional competition on lines similar to those adopted in the Rugby Footbull County Competition. Tnose who treasure a file of Bat, Ball and Wheel will find, in the issue for January 5th, 1899, a hypothetical competition under these conditions which the writer was permitted to foreshadow. Some day, 1 imagine, it will come about. Such a settlement would provide the most in­ teresting local rivalry (with corresponding bumper “ gates” ), the least unnecessary travelling and, especially in the leading divisions, the slightest interference with present fixtures. Thus, in the subjoined scheme, the only new engagements necessitated, besides those with the pro