Cricket 1906

C R IC K E T : a w eek ly r e c o r d o f t h e g a m e . AUG. 9 , 1906, «e_“V)N«cr>—e©8— n w a ^_=>—4©;— ->W 1 [if Jilt “ Together joined in Cricket’ s manly toil.”— Byron. Xo. 730. V O L . X X V . THURSDAY, AUG. 9, 1906. p r i c e 2 a. CHATS ABOUT CRICKETERS. ARTHUR FIELDER. Just at the moment Kent cricket looms very large in the public eye. A fortnight or so ago Yorkshire and Surrey were dividing the attention of the man in the street with a very similar record in the County Championship. Since then Kent has decisively beaten Surrey, who had previously triumphed over Yorkshire. As a natural consequence the hopes of Kent cricketers have been con­ siderably revived. At the present time the North has certainly two dangerous rivals for the honours of the County Championship down South, in Kent and Surrey. Of the two it will be enough to say, perhaps, that Kent has none the worse of a comparison with its ancient foemen and withal good friends and neighbours of Surrey. Kent can at least claim that it has beaten the men from the Oval twice this season, and fairly and squarely, even if the margin in the first case was the barest possible—only one of a wicket, in fact. In the return at Blackheath last week the Kent eleven, after having the worst of the first day’s play, rallied so well as to have a sub­ stantial majority of tods at the finish. Inboth cases,particularly in the game at Blackheath, Fielder’s bowling has played, as indeed it has in all the matches of Kent during the last two or three seasons, a very considerable part. Aman of Kent, Fielder was born near Sevenoaks a little over twenty-eight years ago. When W. M. Bradley began to lose a good deal of the fire which made his fast bowling so invaluable to Kent cricket for several years a capable understudy came to be of importance. In Fielder the Kent executive were fortunate enough to find a trusty reserve to hand. How thoroughly he has come up to the high standard required the records of county cricket during the last four seasons will prove conclusively. His introduction to county cricket was opportune in the dearth, at the moment, of fast bowlers of any real capacity. Richardson and Lockwood, who had been the great examplars of the bowlers of extreme pace, had practically ceased to be factors of any potency on the cricket field. As a consequence, there was un­ doubtedly an opportunity for anyone with the requisite essentials and of real promise. Of the opportunity that came to him Fielder certainly took full advantage. Oddly enough, the cricket season of 1903 was a generally wet one, and this only made Fielder’s performance the more meritorious. At Catford, against Hamp­ shire, in the middle of July, he took nine wickets, six of them in the first innings at a cost of only 62 runs. A fortnight later he had an even better record, taking seven of the ten wickets in Worcestershire’s second innings for forty-five runs. Altogether the “ dem- nition total ” of his bowling for Kent that year was, to use Mr. Mantalini’s expressive phrase, a matter of sixty-one wickets at an average cost of eighteen runs. As a result of his effec­ tive bowling in 1903 for his county he was invited to accom­ pany the English Team which went to Australia in the winter. It was a very high compliment for a young cricketer practically in his first season. At the same time, with Hirst, A. E. Relf, as well as Rhodes, Arnold, Braund, and Mr. Bosanquet on the side bis chances in the more important matches were only few. Still, he took part in two of the Test games with one wicket as the outcome of the thirty-one overs he delivered. Though the wickets in 1904 were mostly hard, Fielder did a lot of very effective work. Kent that summer had an infinite variety of bowling with J. R. Mason, Blythe, Fielder, and Fairservice, not to mention Alec. Hearne and Humphreys. The season was a personal triumph for Blythe, though Fielder delivered six hundred overs for a matter of eighty-four wickets. Last summer Kent was curiously unsuccessful, though it had much the same array of dangerous bats­ men. Again Blythe was the mainstay of the attack, which was fortunate for Kent, as he ARTHUR FIBLDER. (Photo by Hawkins Co., Brighton.)