Cricket 1905

Nov. 30, 1905. CRICKET; A WEEKLY RECORD OF THE GAME. 463 CR ICK ET AN D TH E CLOCK. B y H. P.-T. Of all the abominations accessory to cricket —nobody of course could be so profane as to describe anything of the game butan accessory as such—the Clock has become the Arch- diabolus: the very bogey of bogeys. His crabbing influence may be detected at the root of nearly every evil that nowadays limits the interest, the enjoyment and the popularity of the game. Goose play, lax fielding, fright- less bowling, topheavy scoring—the piling up of a preponderating lead in a game that is bound, to be unfinished—the stale fizzle-out; the closure and the follow-on in all their incongruous developments; all these and many more mischiefs are clearly traceable to the subserviency of Cricket to the Clock. Ohe would imagine that the King of Summer Games, depending, as to a large extent it does, upon the personal presence of the Lord of Summer himself—the Sun—would acknow­ ledge no other overlord. Yet it submits in open day to be ruled and domineered over by an upstart flunkey—the Clock—who derives all his value from the Sun but, unlike his glorious sovereign, confers not a whit of life- quickening light and geniality upon the play- lield nor contributes any particle to the joy or profit of the game. Ail very well in his place is the Clock, to regulate such provinces as the Observatory and the Booking-oflice ; to stand umpire even in such sporting arenas as the Race-track and Boxing-rmg. But iOr pastimes that flourish in the open air, when tne King himself rides triumphantly in the heavens—away with the minion !—or at any rate let him be relegated only to such duties as the summoning of dilatory batsmen and the acting as cockshy for Albert lrotts to shoot at. But, as it is, he is allowed to be, not a servant, but the meddlesome master and very marsport of Cricket. He it is that decides who shall play a. d when, that allots and measures out the individual honours of the game, that settles which party shall be victors, and oftimes determines whether any shall win at all, that even on occasion compels a side to throw away its advantage iu order to stand the mere chance of gathering the fruits of superior play. Take up, anywhere, the report of a cricket match and, more than likely, you will find it brimming over with appeals to the Clock’s undisputed authority. Splashaway or Lin- gershire made his or their runs at the rate of so many per minute or hour—generally quite regardlebs of the opportunities that those minutes and hours attorded. A batsman who makes anything of a score is pretty certain to have it parcelled out by minute measure and appraised accordingly. At one time he took so long to get so many, quickening up or slowing down at other stages to other specified lates, and usually without any respect to the varying rapidity of the attack, the frequency of its changes, its diverse quality, or the number of balls he stoodwatching hispartner deal with. Sometimes we W ill find an eleven blamed fortediousplay—asthe Clockadjudges it — even when reference to the bowling analysis shows that it meted out a goodly degree of punishment to the number of deliveries it received. And then again: Jj'lustershire, with only two and a quarter hours before it, had no time to get tiie runs and contented itself with playing for safety ; or, there being no time to get the required runs or outstanding wickets, stumps were prematurely drawn (to enable both sides to catch their trains and toe the line betimes in their next indeterminate “ fixtures” ). Or, undersimilar conditions, Sickenham,although hundreds on, prepared to stay in idly flogging the hearts out of weary bowlers until the Clock crawled round to the signal for desist­ ing, Allusions like these can be multiplied from any cricket journal or annual. Still, it is not against the Clock as it affects the reporter but as it prej udices the game itself that the real grievance lies. The Clock lies like a log across the spirit of cricket and hinders it from freely asserting itself. Yet this obstruction could be easily removed by the recognition of one single simple principle in the laws of cricket, to w it: Limit the play not by hours but by overs; not by time but by the use that is made of it in actually pro­ gressing with the game. To distribute cricket by the hour is like measuring a ban­ ker’s wealth by the yards around his strong room, or estimating aprofessor’s erudition by the area of his mortar-board. The adoption of this primary tenet would involve the introduction of another (but not unfamiliar) reform in the dividing of matches into what are sometimes called “ compart­ ments.” A scheme of this description, tested in the spring of 1904, was foredoomed to failure, since it was based on the time-limit system, so that there is no reason to suppose that its fate would be entailed by any scheme founded on the over-limit. The recognition of these two principles, the bowling-limit and apportionments, whilst scarcely disturbing the laws, would automati­ cally effect to many improvements in their operation that play would be revolutionised, and, the writer is convinced, the attractive­ ness and popu’arity of cricket enhanced con­ siderably. For instance, the advantage of winning the toss would be minimised, the hazard of going in first or not would be reduced, the wicket conditions to both parties would be more equal, the closure would become unnecessary, the follow-on as obsolete, “ grousing ” at tea and other intervals would cease when it was known that they did not incur a curtailment of play, and the drawn match after a three days’ struggle would become impossible. How easily all this could be accomplished will be presently shown. Supposing that the counties were agreed to test the scheme for a season in the Champion­ ship—so as not to tamper with the Laws before the alteration was fully tried and internationally approved—they might recom­ mend for provisional acceptance in their own competition the following alterations :— Delete (1) The last two, clock-born, Laws (53 and 54) of Cricket, the many times botched and never satisfactory regulations which pro­ vide for the follow-on and closure ; and (2) The reference to Law 53 in Law 1. Add to Law 2 “ except in the case[s] pro­ vided in Law[s 1 d and] 45.” Substitute “ portion or play” for “ innings” in Law 9 ; and provide these new clauses to Law 1:— “ IB. Play [in County Championship matches in l&Ox] shall be divided into Portions in which the two sides shall bat alternately. A Portion to consist of 60 overs, excepting (a) when a first innings is completed in less overs, in which case the innings shall consti­ tute a Portion; (b) when, one side having been dismissed twice, the other may continue batting till all out or till 360 overs have been bowled in the match, whichever happen first; and (c) when neither side being all out twice, each shall complete 180 overs in its third Portion. “ 1 C. On each day of a match 120 overs shall be bowled if possible, but if that number be impossible on any day, play may be extended on the subsequent day or days, so long as the average rate of 120 overs a day be not exceeded. “ I D. When each side shallhave received 180 overs, and the game be not otherwise decided, the side which has scored most runs in proportion to the wickets it has lost shall be awarded a win. “ IE. The first innings of a match must be played out before the second is commenced; and, should a batsman from any cause retire or fail to bat, the wicket so sacrificed shall be deemed lost in awarding a win.” Some explicatory comments on each of these proposals follow, and, if this were the place to unloose them, massy cohorts of statistics stand prepared to charge home every point. But, asthis is not the proper field for manoeuvring such cavalry, only a few con­ spicuous instances will be cited - all derived from actual occurrences in the County Cham­ pionship in 1903, 1904 and 1905, to exemplify the blemishes of clock-dominated cricket. These remarks will incidentally illustrate what an astonishing number of wrongs the amended Laws would rectify : what a number of unsightly puckers in the modem game would be thereby straightened out. To begin with the preamble indicting Mr. Clock. Wisden for 1904 reports five matches in which (1) 1^6sex, with ten wickets in hand, wanted 22 runs to beat Derby ; (2) Sussex, with one wicket to lose, wanted 77 runs to escape from Leicester; (3) Yorkshire, with two wickets to lose, wanted 51 runs to avoid an innings’ defeat from Kent; (4) Essex, with two wickets to go, required 49 runs to escape from Yorkshire, who had declared, and (5) Lancashire, with three wickets out­ standing, needed 91 runs to save their bacon from Sussex, who had declared. In each of these cases (to quote no more) hours of pos­ sible play time remained and nothing like the limit of overs had been reached, yet the Clock, and he alone, was allowed to intervene and rob the practical victors of their half- grasped spoils. Now for the amendments seriatim : Clause 1 B limits the game to 360 overs. Why that number was selected may be won­ dered and few (if any) readers probably could tell whether it is in excess or not of the total ordinarily delivered in a three-day match at present. As a matter of fact it is, as the average game calls for considerably less than 300 overs being sent down ; but a large pro­ portion of these games, it must be remem­ bered, do not occupy the full three days. All too often the allotted hours prove unusable, and now and again when the opportunity serves, a match can be speedily dispatched. Thus, in 1905, Surrey beat Northamptonshire at the Oval in 104 overs and one ball, Kent beat Surrey at Beckenham in 119.2, Leices­ tershire beat Northamptonshire at Leicester in 125.4, Middlesex beat Somersetshire at Lord’s in 130-5, and Leicestershire beat Derbyshire at Chesterfield in 131*2. But that 360 overs is not an extravagant quantity of cricket to exact in three days is evident from the fact that, of 476 matches played in the Championship in 1903-4-5, 50 of them exceeded that allotment, two— Gloucestershire v. Kent, at Bristol, 1904, and Warwick v. Somerset, at Birmingham, 1905, —even running to 420 overs. On the other hand, that 360 overs is a quite sufficient number, is plain from the circumstance that, of the 50 matches already referred to as out­ lasting that limit, only 11 were brought to a conclusion, and 8 of these were won by such ample margins as to show that there was no necessity for the games to have been any­ thing like so prolonged. In the 39 drawn