Cricket 1905

252 CRICKET: A WEEKLY RECORD OF THE GAME. J uly 6, 1905. Tuesday’s game at the Oval was certainly no exception. As is generally the case, the battiDg was most in evidence, and besides O’ Connor, F. P. Knox, J. P. Wilson, S. Livesay, E. Selby, and our old friend “ Round the Corner Smith,” were all seen to advantage. Only twice in six summers has the game been brought to a definite conclusion, so that, perhaps, another year two days may be devoted to a fixture which has always been for Charity’s sake. R e fe r e n c e was made in last week’s “ Gossip” to the first day’s play in the return match between Madras and The World at Ootacamund. It will be re­ membered that C. T. Studd, the old Cambridge Blue, was not out 94. On the following day (May 31st) Studd brought his score to 220. Ab he also took seven wickets in the match for 105 runs, he accomplished afineall-round performance. On the other side, Dr. M. E. Pavri made 60 and 45. The score of the Madras innings is appended:— O. T. Studd, b Davies-Cooke ....... 220 W. \V. Phillips, b Pavri ............... 34 O. Hemsley, c Gresson, b Kavanagii.. 55 Capt. Copeland, c Joy, b P avri.......16 B.a Ramulu, c Byars, b Sprott........54 J. J. Tait, b Joy .............................. 9 Ma.j. Hay, c Joy, b Davies-Cooke ... 0 CoL Sclialch, not out ........................ 2 Extras...... 22 Total (7 wkts) *412 F. R. Hemmingway, Captain Milner and Major Berger did not bat. * Innings declared closed. B y scoring 144 not out for England against Australia at Leeds on Monday, the Hon. F. S. Jackson has brought his total of hundreds in Test matches to four —all of them played in England. No other man has made more than two hundreds in test matches in England, but A. C. Maclaren has made five in all, including four in Australia. Jackson’s record of hundreds in Test matches is as follow s:— 1893 ... At the Oval, August 14,15 and 16 ... 103 1899 ... At the Oval, August 14,15 and 16 ... 118 1902 ... At Manchester, July 24, 25 and 26 ... 128 1905 ... At Leeds, July 3, 4 and 5 .............. . 144* * Signifies not out. O n Monday Jackson went in when three men were out for 57, while the fourth wicket fell at 64, and he then kept up his wicket to the end, scoring 144 out of 237. In the match at Manchester in 1902, when he made his 128, he went in when four wickets were down for 30, and Trumble was bowling for all he was worth. The fifth wicket fell at 44, and then Braund and Jackson added 141 for the sixth wicket. Jackson was last man out, his runs being made out of 232. T h e re was obviously something in the wicket at Leeds on Monday, or in the bowling, or in the over-anxiety of the batsmen, to account for the downfall of several of the wickets. For Hayward and Tyldesley played on, Denton mis­ timed the ball off which he was caught, and Bosanquet was bowled off bis pads. Little accidents such as these are not so much the result of “ hard lines ” —a favourite excuse—but of the ball just beating the bat, to the credit of the bowler or through the fault of the bats­ man. O f the Australian total of 191 in the first innings of the Test match at Leeds no fewer than 150 came from Duff, Armstrong and Hopkins; there were seven extras and the remaining eight men therefore accounted for 34 runs between them. In the first innings of England the three highest scorers made 211 out of 301, the remaining eight men accountiog for 75, with 15 extras. Taking the two totals, 492 runs were scored, 361 of them by six men, 109 by sixteen men, and 22 by extras. Thus sixteen of the best players produced by England and Australia combined aver­ aged less than seven runs eachon a wicket which by no stretch of imagination could be called bad. Time has brought about some remark- ablechanges in connection with Australian cricket. Not so many years ago the phrase, “ playing for keeps,” was in­ vented by a genius—whose name seems to have been lost—to express what every­ body thought about Australian batting. One remembers Noble’s two maddening innings of 60 not out and 89, which together lasted for eight hours and a half, in the Test match at Manchester in 1899 ; the terribly slow scoring by the Australians against English touring teams; Alec Bannerman’s stonewalling; one remembers that in England spectators sometimes used to leave the ground when the Australians were batting. But Trumper changed all that, and at the present time the Australian batting is often brilliant rather than safe. Y e t it seems strange to find F. A. Iredale, one of the Australians of the slow scoring days, writing with cold contempt about the unwillingness of Englishmen to take risks. He says in the Sportsman :— “ What could have been finer thanthe way our men played the game as we only recog­ nise it in Australia? To-day the fact that we were losing did not stop our rate of scoring— no playing for averages, every ball that could be hit was hit, and pretty hard, too, at times....................It is no use saying you cannot hit Armstrong’s bowling. It can be hit, and no one better than the batsmen know it. It can be hit in the air, but when the batsman won’t do this, then he takes refuge in the vain endeavour to get behind the ball every time.” A t the same time, what Iredale says is quite true. The bowling of Armstrong or any other bowler can be hit if batsmen know how to do it. But the mischief is that present-day batsmen have not been accustomed to dealing with balls which are wide of the wicket to leg, and it takes time to learn how to make new strokes. George Parr would doubtless have knocked off Armstrong in a few overs, but he would also without doubt have made a muddle of the “ off theory ” until he became aocustomed to it. B u t it is not only in batting that Australian methods have changed so vastly. The methods of bowling have been entirely remodelled. It is impossible to imagine W. L. Murdoch allowing Boyle or Spofforth, or Turner, to bowl for about five hours with the special object of keeping down the runs, under any conceivable circumstances, much less when the opposing side had only a lead of 106 on the first innings ; it is impossible to imagine these bowlers doing such a thing, for their tempera­ ments would have compelled them to go for wickets. It was sometimes necessary for them—as well as Trumble, Ferris, Palmer and other great bowlers— to endeavour to keep down the runs, but they were never “ passive resisters.” B u t although the present Australian team has perhaps naturally been blamed for playing for a draw (or apparently playing for it) quite early in each of the three Test matches, their side of the question is worthy of consideration. At Nottingham they had very little chance of winning after Maclaren and Hayward had mastered their bowling in the second innings; at Lord’s they may not un­ reasonably have thought that, bar rain, the wicket would be much better on the second da y ; and at Leeds their chances of winning were small when England went in a second time. Fortune might give them the upper hand in the last two matches, and hence the best thing was to try to avoid defeat until their chance came. T h e teams for the Oxford and Cam­ bridge match which begins to-day at Lord’s are as follows :— OXFORD. *W. H. B. Evans (Malvern and Oriel), *K. M. Carlisle (Harrow and Magdalen), *G. T. Branston (Charterhouse and Hertford), G. N. Foster (Malvern and Worcester), *J. E. Raphael (Merchant Taylors’ School and St. John’s), E. L. Wright (Winchester and New College), N. R. Udal (Winchester and New College), *R. C. W. Bum (Winchester and Oriel), *W. S. Bird (Malvern and New College), *E. G. Martin (Eton and New College), and A. N. Other. CAMBRIDGE. *E. W. Mann (Harrow and Trinity), *M. W. Payne (Wellington and Trinity). *R. P. Keigwin (Clifton and Peterhouse), *0. H. Eyre (Harrow and Pembroke), *H. C. McDonell (Winchester and Corpus)/ P. R. May (Private and Pembroke), *G. G. Napier (Marlborough and Pembroke), R. A. Young (Repton and King’s), L. G. Colbeck (Marlborough and King’s), A. F. Morcom (Repton and Clare), and A. N. Other. The eleventh place in the Cambridge team rests between F. J. V. Hopley, H. Mainprice, and O. C. Page. * An old Blue. In the match between Lancashire and Somerset at Old Trafford, W. Brearley took four wickets with successive balls, two at the end of the first innings of Somerset on Monday, and two at the beginning of the second innings on Tuesday. His victims were Cranfield, Bucknall, H. Martyn and Hardy. Brear­ ley had a wonderful record for the match,