Cricket 1910

146 CRICKET : A WEEKLY RECORD OF THE GAME M ay 26, 1910. of greatness, and therein lies South Africa’s hope.” “ But South Africa never possessed such a pair of bowlers as Faulkner and Vogler before ? ” “ No, and neither did England nor Aus­ tralia—for matting and fast wickets. One wondered whether there were any other bowl­ ers at all in South Africa after the first three Test matches. The two bowled England out for the Transvaal and then did the same in the first three Test matches. In those four matches 77 English wickets fell, two of them being for run out decisions, and of the 75 wickets thus falling to the bowler, Faulkner and Vogler were responsible for 60 , the former taking .29 and the latter 36. Bowling honours were somewhat divided in the two Capetown Tests, but the fact remains that South Africa depended almost entirely 011 two bowlersfor the first three Tests. When the South Africans won the rubber four years ago the attack was more or less evenly divided by four bowlers, Snooke, Schwarz, Faulkner and Sinclair taking respectively 24, 18, 14 and 21 wickets in Test matches. Yogler then took only 9, and for twenty-two and a-quarter runs each.” “ Do you consider South Africa well off for howlers at the present time? ” “ I do not. Faulkner and Vogler are in a class by themselves, and there is not a fast bovv'er in the country for Test matches. II. A. Thompson is the fastest, I should think, but he did not bowl against the M.C.C. at all, and he could not bear the strain of a Test match nor of an important fixture for he has leg trouble. Le Boux is not dangerous, Lundie wants more expe­ rience, but Kotze is confident that he could get into form and would be able to bowl as well as ever he did. In the last Tournament at Capetown, Kotz 6 left his farm for a fort­ night and gave ample proof that he retained his ability. More than anyone else, he helped to give the Western Province the Currie Cup. During the tour one came across some good bowling, for Penny at Kimberley, Norton and Hartigan at East London, Yates at Queens­ town, Tuckett at Durban and Lieut. Wyatt at Bloemfontein all had excellent figures, while Samnelson bowled an excellent googlie in the Natal matches and in the last Test. Isolated successes, however, do not make Test match players, but they encourage not only the performers themselves, but bowlers who, in club cricket, feel that they can do better than their friends.” “ Do you think that it was the superior bowling of Faulkner and Yogler that pre­ vented Fane, Denton and Woolley from get­ ting a start in the first two Test matches ? ” “ I do. Hobbs and Bhodes had started so we’l for England a,s to make the two star bowlers quite ordinary, and it only wanted the next three on the side to make a bit of a stand and the South African attack would have been tired out. From a physical point of view the feats of Faulkner and Yogler were little short of wonderful, and for accu­ racy of pitch and variety of method I have never seen two hard wicket bowlers so clever.” “ I suppose you took especial notice of the South African batting after having seen so much of the English and Australian methods last summer in England ? ” “ Batting is looked upon by some as being the art of making runs. To my mind it is quite possible to come across a man who scores heavily with consistency and yet his ‘ batting’ may be deficient. Now I found, and by comparison with English and Austra­ lian cricketers, that some of the South Africans are wanting in skill as batsmen. They are difficult men to dislodge, but they have a very limited repertoire of strokes, and, once their favourite hit is guarded, play becomes even mure teJious. Of course, such wonder­ ful exhibitions as Hobbs gave made South Africans realise that the batting of their own men was almost elementary. The cramped style of some of the South Africans and the limited nature of their strokes, have been put down to the googlie bowling, but, having seen Hobbs deal with the best googlie bowling in the world in the manner he did, the South African cricket authorities are coming to the conclusion that great batting coaches are wanted in the country.” “ Who is the best South African batsman?” “ That is a very easy question to answer. Gordon White possesses more strokes than any other cricketer in the country and he exhibits grace in the making of them. The old Maritzburgian gets his run's all round the wicket and in that respect he stands alone on the South African side.” “ Mr. Faulkner is a great cricketer ?” “ If I were choosing a World’s Eleven, I should choose Faulkner before any other player as I consider him the greatest match- winning power living. As a bowler, as a most consistent scorer of runs and as a short- slip, his abilities are nothing short of extra­ ordinary. He has, strange to say, not a stroke between point and the wicket-keeper, and I sometimes felt his leg-play was wanting in certainty, but his play in front of the wicket is vastly superior to what it was in England three yea’ s ago.” “ Mr. Sinclair was a disappointment against the M C.C. Do you think that he will return to form ?” “ In my opinion Sinclair, whose height and reach used to be of so much advantage to him, has taken upon himself a crouching attitude and has resigned his quick-footed methods. His eye seems as true as ever it was and it would be surprising were he to go out of representative cricket. Since 189S-6, when he was not twenty years of age, and first played for South Africa against Eng­ land (as represented by Lord Hawke’s first team) until the third Test match of the series just completed, he was never omitted. He is still a fine bowler of the orthodox school and covers a lot of ground at mid-off. And he is still the people’s ‘ Jimmy.’ ” “ The South Africans were represented by a new wicket-keeper. Is he as good as Halliwell or Sherwell ? ” “ To follow those-two was a very big undertaking, but Campbell, I think the only player in the South African team who claims with Nourse the distinction of being home-born, did exceedingly well. He under­ stands the 1 wrong ’un ’ and it will always be necessary for Johannesburg to supply the wicket-keeper of the team because the scientific googlie bowlers are there. Camp­ bell learned his cricket in Pietermaritzburg, Natal, and kept wicket forthe Standard C.C., but like all good cricketers he has improved since Johannesburg became his home. I shall never forget his catch which dismissed Hobbs in that dramatic fourth Test match. It was positively wonderful.” “ How did the Colonial fielding compare with English work in the field ? ” “ Taking the fielding all round, the Colonial effort was better, and when it came to catching the South African cricketers made fewer mistakes than the visitors. In three matches during the tour the English­ men were positively bad—in the first match against the Transvaal, the second Test and finally at Pretoria, where happy memories do not exist in connection with the third match against the Transvaal.” “ Cabled reports and South African news­ paper accounts of the matches were forced to criticise the umpiring and scoring in some of the matches ? ” “ Yes; there was a big outcry against umpiring in a few of the matches, and the whole fact of the matter rests with the scarcity of good umpires in South Africa. There are some most capable men who give their services for Test and other games, but for two matches in the Transvaal there was some difficulty in obtaining the services of a second umpire. Mr. Frank Grey did excel­ lent work at times, and he was to have umpired in the second and third Transvaal matches. At the last moment, however, he was unable to spare the time, and it was with some difficulty that Mr. Harris, chair­ man of the local Umpires’ Association, was pressed into service. The professional umpires, Atfield, who is first-class, and Douglas Smith, the old Somerset cricketer, as well as Frank Smith, late of Surrey, gave satisfaction as far as one could judge, but there were some eight or ten decisions by others which did not please everybody. These mistakes were not always in favour of the same side, but mistakes shook confi­ dence naturally. On one of the minor grounds an umpire gave ‘ no-ball’ because the bowler knocked down a bail while delivering the ball. At other times five and seven, and, in one case, eight balls were given in an over. The most curious case of umpiring, though, was during the first Natal match, at Durban, where there was such an epidemic of leg -before decisions. The Iiev. Cyril Bobinson was keeping wicket for the Colony, and he did not hesitate to dis­ agree with some of the decisions. It would appear that one of the umpires, the one who was at fault, scarcely understood the law governing lbw. He was one of the finest cricketers in Natal at one time, but for a a long period had been out of tip-top cricket, and maybe had very little practice as the “ man in the white coat.” “ And the scoring ? ” “ Well, the fault was usually that local scorers did not know the visiting men suffici­ ently well, and at leastone very curious state of affairs was recorded. It was while Hobbs and Bhodes were batting. An error was so palp­ able that the English and Eastern Province captains agreed to take the scores as kept by two pressmen. Most grounds are not able to have an up-to-date scoring board, and con­ sequently mistakes cannot be detected until a wicket falls, or until there is an interval. A mistake at Capetown was distinctly an injustice to Faulkner, who it will be remem­ bered was caught at slip by Woolley when 99. A single, many runs previously, had been given to Sinclair instead of to him.” “ And what do you consider might be done to minimise faults in umpiring and scoring ? ” “ I do not think that some mistakes in umpiring can possibly be avoided. The South Africans were undoubtedly the victims at Leeds, during their last tour in England, but I think that visiting teams to South Africa should carry an umpire for one end, just as the Australians did when they visited South Africa in 1902, and an official scorer attached to the team is very necessary. I have even known, certainly not in the most important matches, that the English score- book was not available at the commencement of the day’s play. In 1907 the South