Cricket 1910

2 7 0 CRICKET A WEEKLY RECORD OF THE GAME. J u l y 1 4 , 1 9 1 0 . G EN T LEM EN v . PLA YER S . B y H amish S tuart . A more interesting and instructive match than the “ Oval game ” between the Gentlemen and Players could not be imagined, unless one makes a close finish a condition precedent to the description of a match as interesting. Several writers nevertheless described the play as du ll! They must either have been referring to the weather, for the sun declined to shine on the match and a dome of grey hung with depressing persistence over the ground from the first ball on Thursday to the last on Saturday, or have been suffering from that surfeit of cricket which so often compcls pessimistic phrasing by the journalist, doomed by his vocation, willy nilly, to watch cricket day after day from May until the September leaf is waxing sere. The cricket, in view of the “ class” of the sides, was bound under any circumstances to be interesting. Undtr the conditions obtaining it was thrilling intellectually for those with any knowledge of the game, even if there was little play of what is supposed to be tbe popular variety. The wicket has been so variously described, that, if all the different descrip­ tions were accurate, it was the queerest pitch ever seen at the Oval The truth is that the wicket was difficult from the first ball to the last, though the degree of difficulty varied. On the first day it is best described as a slow and difficult pitch. The ball turned all the time, but turned slowly, yet it always required watching, especially as the pitch was treacherous in a special sense. It was of slightly unequal pace, and was assuredly of indeterminate rise. Every now and then a ball pitching on a drier spot than the rest of the pitch came along extra fast, while some balls kept very low and others jumped up at unexpected angles. On the Friday the wicket was a little faster, and pro tanto a little more difficult, while by the afternoon of that day and on Saturday the surface had practically been worn off, thanks to the vicious “ biting ” of the ball and other causes. It speaks volumes for the batting, that on such a pitch against such fine bowliDg the match should have run well into the third day and have produced 779 runs for 40 wickets, especially when regard is had to the fact that the light was never really good, that very few catches were missed, and that several exceptionally good catches were made. There is no necessity here to enter into the details of the game, which has been so fully described, I will therefore content myself with generalisations dealing with its salient features. In the first place then, the match illustrated that constant antagonism of bat and ball, with its ally, the field, to a degree attained by no other match of the season. Nearly every run had to be made, those accruing from the inevitable snicks and mis-hits,.of course, excepled. It was a fight for runs all through. This fact, the slow state of the outfield, and the highly tactical and intelligent way in which the field was placed and altered by both captains, not to mention the judgment which both displayed in making the most of their bowling, accounts for the low rate of scoring. On such a pitch against accurate and frequently very “ heady” bowling, there were only two courses open to the batsman. He was forced to play either a waiting or a hitting game. The former is, of Course, the more difficult game, whether one regards the matter from the psychological or the materialistic point of view. The waiting game necessitates inexhaustible patience and the most obslinately recusant restraint. It also entails for its successful playing a greater variety of defensive strokes and a quicker judgment of length and of the character of the ball from the bowler’s action than all save the very gifted few possess. Then it also renders resolute hitting of the right ball in the right way absolutely im­ perative, while one is inclined to include in the qualifications ability to make special strokes, such as the “ very late ” wrist drive off any­ thing just short of a length, which Spooner and Tyldesley can make with such ease, accuracy, and effortless grace. Hobbs and Spooner adopted this game in their first innings, and the only real difference in their methods lay in their scoring strokes, Hobbs getting most of his runs on the leg side or to the on, whereas Spooner’s strength lay in off-side play. Rhodes at first played the same game, but he changed his methods to suit a loss of length in the bowling, and hit resolutely, though to my mind the feature of his batting was the way in which he timed Le Couteur, getting him very fine and late to leg. Sharp playi d no sort of game at all for a few overs, for he could not time Burns, and seemed to regard every ball from Le Couteur as invested with the most deeply concealed guile. Subsequently, however, he drove with great power. The “ pull,” if a profitable, was a somewhat “ unsafe” shot on the pitch owing to the possibility of a ball keeping low, yet Hobbs ran the risk. The alternative game of hitting by getting to the pitch of the ball or otherwise was attended, of course, by considerable risk, but Burns, Tufnell and the two Fosters in the second innings adopted the plan with consider­ able success, though the only really scientific forcing play seen in the match came from those two masters of the whole art of batting, Tyldesley and Hobbs. It was to their stand in the second innings and the fine bowling of Smith that the Players owed their success. Hobbs and Tyldesley as soon as they brgan to force runs off good balls demoralised tbe bowling. Loss of length and some quick scoring were the inevitable consequences. Smith’s bowling in tbe first innings and at the start of the second innings of the match was worth some travel to see. He varied his pace with consummate skill and bowled his slow, hanging ball in highly deceptive fashion, while his practice of delivering the ball well behind the bowling crease made his flight all the more puzzling. He made the ball a very live thing off the pitch, whereas the finger spin of most of the other bowlers seemed affected by the cold. Burns’ success seemed due to his flight and pace, but F. R. Foster, particularly in the second innings, showed that he has the qualities which make for greatness. He owed something to the wicket, however, when he bowled Hayward and Rhodes with almost unplayable balls, even if the batsmen coull have anticipated their final character. Rhodes might have done so, for he just stopped a similar ball—it probably came back a little slower —in the over in which he was bowled. How the match would have gone had the amateurs won the to s can only be matter for conjee ure. One thinks, however, that the result would have been the same, while in all probability a plumb pitch would have made the amateur bowling look weak. A plumb pitch and a sunlit sky would have made the cricket more enjoyable, but such conditions would have robbed it of much of its interest. As it was, the play was so interesting and instructive that we forgot the absence of “ July’s pride ” and recked nothing of the cold and cheerless weather. The ‘ Lord’s match ’ (more’s the pity!) was a poor, disappointing game which hardly calls for detailed comment—at least by an optimist. But even the optimist cannot ignore facts that are forced npon his observation. For that reason one need not hesitate to describe the batting as bad, though, of course, Feveral men (Hobbs, Rhodes, Hartley, Thompson and Hirst) played good innings. At the same time there was no great innings such as Hayward played in 1907, when he carried his bat right through and made 14G out of a total of 278, in a somewhat similar match in point of low scoring to the game which came to such an abrupt end on Tuesday after little more than a day and a half of play. Such a masterly innings would redeem any match. Instead we saw much bad batting. The statement is not based on the fact that 13 “ blobs ” figured on the score-sheet, but on the sad truth that we saw men play back to half-volleys from slow bowlers and so forth. , On this aspect of the failure, let the veil be drawn. Possibly the occasion affected the batting; it is, at least, charitable to think so, though the fact is not a hopeful augury for the future of England in international cricket. There was nothing in the wicket to excuse the double failure of the Amateurs and the break-down of the Players’ batting after a good start. The Players made a good re­ covery from their collapse, the Gentlemen failed to do so. The wicket was easy from first to last. On Monday it was an easy-paced pitch and the ball could not be made to turn even a little with any regularity. The only difficulty, or rather the only dan­ ger, which the wicket presented was this: an occasional ball kept very low—was practically a “ creeper,” while a still more occasional ball from Fielder got up quietly. The far­ mer danger was not easily avoided, but the rising ball so rarely came in and so invariably went away that it was easily left alone. On Tuesday the wicket was a fast Lord’s pitch, a pitch, that is to say, on which a real fast bowler of class maymeet with supreme success and on which a “ shooter” is an ever present possibility. Here again one must state the truth. The fine bowling and fielding were the sole redeeming features of a poor game. The bowling was doubtless made to look better than it was by the poor batting, while, of course, the bowlers were “ inspired,” for in bowling nothing succeeds like success. Still, every ball that claimed a “ good wicket ” was not value for the same, while in the second innings of the Amateurs Hartley clearly proved that the bowling to which the other batsmen gave an appearance of extreme deadliness and concealed guile could not only be played, but made to pay the usual toll in runs. Hartley, it is true, rarely made any­ thing like a forcing stroke except very occa­ sionally by a sort of hook shot, but he stayed there and punished everything loose, until a “ creeper ” from Thompson happened to come his way. For the r<st, the less said the better. Happily we can find our Lethe for the Lord’s match by remembering only the great game at the Oval and the fine cricket, the splendid antagonism of the mighty opposites, which that memorable match produced. A. P. Day played an innings of 114 for Blackheatli v. Butterflies on Saturday,