Cricket 1905

C R IC K E T , A W E E K LY RECO RD OP T H E GAM E. JU L Y 13 , 1905. “ Together joined in Cricket’s manly toil.”— Byron. N o 6 9 6 . V O L . X X I V . THURSDAY, JULY 13, 1905. p r i c e 2 a. THE NEW ARMSTRONG. Three years ago, when "Warwick Arm­ strong first came to England, he was regarded as a useful cricketer, whose bowling sometimes gave amusement to the crowd by reason of the desperate efforts of batsmen to hit it, and occa­ sionally upset a whole side. At the present time he is recognised as the great representative of a style of bowling which has been tried in a tentative manner by many other men, not always with success. It is no new thing for a bowler to keep almost entirely to the leg side, for in bygone days there were bowlers who did the same thing, and Braund and many other men have made modern cricketers familiar with the method. In the days of round arm bowling almost every man who was of any class had a break or bias from the leg, and it is a mistake to sup­ pose that round arm bowl­ ing kept very low ; as a matter of fact it often rose much higher than overhand bowling, possibly because of inequalities in the wickets. But until a year or two ago leg break bowlers laid them­ selves out to get wickets, and a captain did not dream of relying on it to keep runs down for hours. Mr. A. O. Jones has perhaps something to answer for, inasmuch as it was he who first brought leg break bowling promi­ nently into notice as a weapon of defence to the fielding side. It was the policy of Notts in a match against Lancashire to keep the runs down as much aspossible for about a couple of hours, and Mr. Jones set himself to bowl wide of the leg stump to Mr. Maclaren and Tyldesley, who, by declining to hit him, enabled Notts to bring about a drawn game. It was pretty certain that the lesson taught oy Mr. Jones and the two batsmen would not be altogether lost, but the method did not largely appeal to English cricketers, who have strong ideas as to the way in which the game should be played. It was not until the test matches began this year that the method originated by Mr. Jones was regarded by Englishmen as anything more than an interesting and exotic idea which would never oome into serious use in first-class cricket. But the Australians had evidently studied its possibilities, and as soon as they saw in the first test match that they were not likely to be victorious, Armstrong was turned adrift “ to do his durndest ” to keep the runs down by j bowling off the wicket. Ably, indeed, has he aoted his new rifle since then. Possessing wonderful com­ mand over the ball, he has bowled for hours—in the third test match he bowled during the second innings of England for more than five hours without a break, always with the object of keeping the runs down. Whatever may be thought of the policy which tempts a captain to keep down the runs in this way, there can be no two opinions as to the clever­ ness of the bowler who can carry out his instructions with so much success. As a mere feat of endurance the work of a bowler in such a case is truly remarkable, especially as it is of great importance that he should be able to keep a splendid length all the time. For although modern batsmen, accustomed to years of battling with the “ off theory,” have not had opportunities of learning how to hit a good length ball to leg, they can easily deal with short-pitched or over­ pitched balls. The question of the mo­ ment is how batsmen can learn to compete with this “ on theory,” which is puzzling them so much. The answer seems to be that they must do as was done by their predecessors, who used to hit good length leg-bails hard along the ground with a certainty which would have made it useless for any bowler opposed to them to make a deliberate practice of bowling wide of the wicket. It was difficult for a round- arm bowler to be very accu­ rate in his pitch, and few men could help bowling wide of the leg stump occasionally —in dub matches there were numerous opportunities of hitting to leg. The result was that every good batsman learned how to sweep the ball round without lifting it in the air, and it would require twenty men on the on side to keep down the runs if modern batsmen would imitate their methods. Cricketers in these days do not seem to study Pycroft’s famous book, “ The