Cricket 1901

422 CRICKET : A WEEKLY RECORD OP THE GAME. S e p i . 1 9 , 1901. of before have come to the front this year. Among them may be mentioned G. W. Beldam, who by sheer persistency played himself into such form that he proved to be one of the most valuable men ever turned out by Middlesex; he would have doubtless had a much better record if he had not been obliged to stand out for some matches, on account of a damaged finger, when he was going strongest. H. G. Garnett was a tower of strength to the Lancashire eleven. He is the most brilliant left-hand bats­ man of the day. Iremonger is quite a man of the year, although he had become a recognised member of the Notts eleven long before. Great things may be expected of him in the future. Again King has this year forced himself into the front rank of batsmen, and baB gained bo much expei ience that he will probably advance further. C. J. B. Wood can perhaps hardly be alluded to as a batsman who has made his reputa­ tion this year, but he has come on so greatly that he is a far better man than ever before. Dr. Macdonald, the Queensland cricketer was practically new to first-class cricket in England this season, and very greatly he distinguished himself as the steadiest of the steady players. Braund made his first appear­ ance for Somerset this year, and. more than justified the expectations which had been formed of him. In the London County team he did well enough before he was qualified for Somerset, but for all that his reputation has chiefly been made this year. L. Walker, E. W. Dillon, Baker (theSurrey professional), Llewellyn, Vine, W. P. Robertson, and H. K. Long­ man have all distinguished themselves this year. Last, but not by any means least among the men of 1901, Captain Greig climbed high upon the ladder of fame, and it is very sad indeed to think that he may not be seen in England next summer. He has proved himself to be a brilliant batsman, who never knows what it is to lcse his nerve, while he is not in ca p a cita ted by a wicket which is in favour of the bowlers. _ Among the men who have increased their reputation as batsmen may be mentioned P. Mitchell (who was quite one of the great men of the season), Hirst, J. Douglas, S. H. Day, Killick Devey, H. D. G. Leveson-Gower and E. M. Dowson, while few of the well- known players have fallen off. The greatest disappointment of the year was A. C. MacLaren, but towards the end of the Lancashire matches he showed con- clusively enough that his falling off wa® only temporary. George Brann and W Newham returned to first-class cricket, and met with surprising success, the batting of the former being one of the features of the later part of the season. The famous old Doctor, the fifty-three year old W. G., has still held his own as a batsman, but with in­ creasing age he finds it m ore and more difficult to run between the wickets. If a special law could be passed that he might have a man to run for him he would have a fine average. While the country is littered with wonderfully good batsmen—and batsmen who are not merely good wicket bats­ men, there is a dearth of fine bowlers which is somewhat disheartening. Many of the leg-break bowlers have had their little day, but with the exception of Vine and Braund they owe their success almost entirely to novelty, and have taken many a wicket with a ball which did not break an inch, simply because the batsman has seen a break in his own imagination. Most of the leg-break bowlers are only of use on about one day out of ten, but on a day when they can get their pitch they are successful against timid batsmen. After all the leg-break bowling is not even new, for Harry Trott was an adept at it years age—on his day. Of men who are for ever trying to scheme out a batsman there are only too few, and the example set by the Australians, Lohmann, Alfred Shaw, etc., seems tohave been forgotten. Albert Trott is the one great tryer, and he is an Australian. Even Hirst and Khodes, magnificent bowlers as they are, can hardly be classed among those who scheme and scheme until they have attained their object; they rather rely on their pecularities and their pitch and spin. Rhodes is young enough to be able to do very great things, and he may in a year or two develop un­ suspected skill in manoeuvring. This is not to say that either Hirst or Rhodes is a purely mechanical bowler—very far from it. Tate has had a splendid year ; he is one of the few men whose bowling has an unknown quantity about it, which, on his day, makes for the downfall of batsmen. Wilson, the Worcestershire professional, is perhaps the best fast bowler of the day ; he also has little peculiarities which ren­ der him much more difficult than the ordinary fast bowler. In one way it is very satisfactory to see Mead so very high up in the list of bowling averages, more especially when he received so little help from other men in the Essex team, but it is disquieting to think that the younger generation of bowlers cannot deprive him of the position which he has held for so long. Bichardson is now the only great bowler in the Surrey eleven since Lockwood Btrained himself, and if it were not that he has his own vast reputation of other days to contend with, he would be universally considered as a splendid bowler. On several occasions Dr. Grace has greatly distinguished him­ self with the ball, even though he cannot field his own bowling in the way which he did cnce upon a time; he is still as likely to get a man out as most bowlers, which at his time of life is remarkable enough. Among those who have met with considerable success this season are Bird, Mr. Mason, Hargreave, Mr. E. E. Steel, Cranfield, Sharp, W. M. Bradley, Burrows and Llewellyn. But for a bowler like Lohmann, who looked upon a battman as a quarry to be hunted down by stratagem, we may have a long time to wait. The visit of the South African team may be regarded as a success. Their pro­ gramme was not well arranged, for the matches were a mixture of first ana second-class, while right in the middle of the tour the team had to go away to Ireland and the extreme north of England just when cricketers were beginning to wake up to the fact that its members were showing excellent cricket. Unfor­ tunately J. H. Sinclair, the best all­ round man in the team, did not show himself in his true form as a batsman until the tour was almost over, although he bowled splendidly. In M. Hathorn, W. A. Shalders, Murray Bisset (who made an excellent captain), E. A. Halli­ well and L. J. Tancred, the team possessed some most promising batsmen, in G. A. Rowe a really good bowler, and in E. A. Halliwell one of the very best wicket-keepers ever seen on acricket-field. The M.C.C. had promised to send a team to Australia in the autumn, but suddenly announced that they could not do so, whereupon A. C. MacLaren stepped into the breach. He found the greatest difficulty in getting men together, and long before his team was complete it was seen that it had no representative charac­ ter whatever. As an experiment it pro­ mised to provide some excitement, for nearly all its members were new to Aus­ tralia, while except in the matter of leg- break bowling it was on paper exceedingly weak in attack. Another team, with B. J. T. Bosanquet at its head, went to America at the beginning of September, but this team was composed of amateurs only, and was not so strong as that of MacLaren, although a match between the two teams would have been very inter­ esting. In the middle of the season there was considerable excitement over the no­ balling of Mold by Phillips at Old Traf­ ford. Mold was one of the bowlers condemned by the county captains in December, but at the beginning of the season the M.C.C. committee (although approving of “ the principle of the action taken by the captains” ) issued an edict that no notice was to be taken of the manifesto of the captains. The bowlers were to be allowed to bowl again, although by inference they were to be watched with the utmost care by the umpires. As a result of this edict the total bag (to use the words of the famous War Office telegram) for the season was one bowler, eighteen no-balls. After no-balling Mold Phillips issued a mani­ festo to the Press in which he made the statement that many balls which he passed were unfair, but that he was too late in deciding to be able to call instantly, an unfortunate admission which naturally raised the question whether he might.not be unable to decide quickly in a case of leg-before-wicket or a catch at the wicket. Phillips’ manifesto was followed by a manifesto from Mold and another from West, and it was pointed out that more B p ace was devoted in the newspaper to these three manifestoes than to matters of imptrial importance. As a direct result of all this agitation the throwing question stands exactly where it did a year ago. W . A . BETTE8WOKTH.