Cricket 1911

330 CRICKET: A WEEKLY RECORD OF THE GAME. J u l y 15 ,1911 . he was chosen for England in 1909, though they did make the mistake of leaving him out at the last moment.” “ Is there any chance that he will play again ? ” “ I hope so. We all hope so. But no one can say for certain. He is having the best medical advice, and it will be a glad day for us if he does get back his full health and turn out again. Then we have lost Frank Crawford, too. That hits us hard. He was our fastest run-getter, and simply invaluable in the slips. He made difficult catches look quite easy there. By the way, when we had Frank and Reggie Crawford and Harry Whitehead, all at their best, in the slips, I don’t think many sides were better served there; and, with Jayes or George Gill bowling, those three made a fine haul of catches.” “ Is Reggie Crawford likely to play for you this season ? ” “ He cannot always spare the time. He has played once, you know—against the M.C.C. at Lord’s, and very well he bowled then. Talking of the men we have lost, and the bad luck we have had, there is Astill. He promised great things a couple of years or so ago, but he had done so little this year that he had to be dropped for a time. Probably he will come again ; he is still quite young and very keen.” “ How about the new men ? ” “ I suppose Shipman is the one in whom the general public takes the most interest. He is our match-winner in Jayes’s absence— though'he hasn’t won any matches for us this year yet. They talk of his breakbacks; but, in my experience, it is the swinging ball with which he gets most of his wickets. Though a fast bowler, he is not among the very fastest. He is short of just that yard or two of extra pace that makes Brearley, for instance, so deadly. Then we have Mounteney, who] fills to some extent Frank Crawford’s place. He is essentially a hitter, and his success so far has made him a great favourite at Leicester. It was he who spoiled Aston Villa’s chance of the League Championship, you know, when at centre forward for Preston North End he twice went through on his own and scored. The crowd delights in the man who does that sort of thing.” “ Lord—Brown—Mr. J o y ce ?” “ Lord is very promising indeed, though he has not been making many runs in the last few matches. He is more steady, more orthodox, than Mounteney. Brown improves fast, in batting as well as bowling. He may not make a great bowler—I doubt whether he has quite enough spin and pace from the pitch for that—but he is already a good one, and will be better, for he tries hard. Mr. Joyce is really good all round. He has been fit for county cricket for years past, and would have played before but that the invitations given him didn’t happen to fit in with the periods when he had time to spare. That he is playing now is largely due to special pressure by Shields, who is a personal friend of his, and wouldn’t take ‘ No ’ for an answer.” “ Mr. Shields has had a somewhat depressing experience in his first year of captaincy ? ” “ Yes, but he takes it very cheerfully. I can’t say that he is satisfied—no captain can be that when his team never wins a match — but he is just as keen and good-tempered as ever. So was Sir Arthur Hazlerigg, who didn’t get quite the credit he deserved from the public at large for his pluek in accepting the captaincy and the way he stuck to his guns through bad times.” “ What do you think of the Saturday start, Mr. Wood ? ” “ I haven’t any doubt at all about it as far as my own county is concerned. It is a splendid thing for us, and if only it became general would put the Leicestershire Club on a much firmer footing. But so far there is little support for it outside the Midlands. Yorkshire, Lancashire, and the southern teams don’t seem to care for it.” “ The county championship—do you fancy the notion of two- day matches and a full programme for each county? ” “ Yes, most certainly. I believe it would mean brighter play, for one reason because many really good amateurs who cannot spare ihe time for three-day matches could, and would, manage to play in two-day ones. Then the championship is obviously defective while one county plays thirty matches and another sixteen or eighteen. No, I should have no objection to the scheme on account of the fact that it would mean, as a rule, a decision on the first innings. That would give what I may call the little sides, such as ourselves, a chance. We have often given a stronger team a nasty shock in the first half of a match, and then have lost our advantage in the end. People say that we— I mean the weaker sides in general— fail to push an advantage home. But they— the critics—fail to give us the credit due for getting ahead. If we can’t keep there when we have got there, is it surprising? We are up against a side, in the main, composed of better cricketers than ourselves, and it is only natural that they should be able to wear us down.” W hich set the interviewer wondering—as he has often done before—why a cricket-match should be a two-innings affair ? No one has ever answered that question quite satisfactorily for him yet. But there is no space to argue the point here. “ Will you tell me something about your own performances, Mr. W o o d ?” But here the old Wellingburian, ready enough to talk about other men’s doings, was not easily to be drawn. He remembered little about his first century for the county, except that it was against Warwickshire—was not quite sure even of the year. No, he did not recall anything much about an innings of 156 at W or­ cester in 1901, which the interviewer happened to have seen ; but he did remember making 225 on the Severnside ground in 1906— that had stuck in his mind because it was his highest score. He was not asked whether he remembered the Bradford match of 1911; when he forgets that, one fancies, his memory will not be worth m uch! It is to be hoped the general public, which is apt to prefer fireworks to the more sedate type of batting, of which the Leicestershire amateur is so able an exponent, will not soon forget it. Up to date Mr. Cecil Wood has made 30 centuries in first-class cricket, and has scored (to July 8th, 1911), 18,872 runs in 583 completed innings—average over 32. But these are my figures, not his. “ No two first-class batsmen ever struck me as being quite alike,'1he said, in response to a remark as to what some critic had written of the monotony of modern batting. “ It hardly seems to me possible even to compare any two of them. A man has his own way of standing at the crease, his own way of making strokes. They compare Alletson and Jessop; but there is no advantage in attempting such parallels. Their one likeness is that they are both fast scorers. Alletson is undoubtedly a very long hitter; but too much is likely to be expected of him after his big innings here. Then they talk of David Denton’s luck. I have a theory about that, and it extends to several other batsmen who are credited with being particularly lucky. The fact of the matter is that Denton— and the other men— hit the ball so hard that it is very difficult to hold the catches they offer. Even when the chance comes to a place in the field where one ordinarily expects catches to be simple, there always seems a spin on it. One of our men missed David at point in the Bradford match two or three weeks ago. He wasn’t merely making excuses; I believe him, from past experience, when he says that the ball spun so much that he could not hold it. Some of Denton’s strokes seem to make the leather fairly fizz in your hands, and that means it takes some holding.” “ You have had more than one long day’s outing, Mr. Wood. Which of them all do you remember best ? ” ‘ •That’s easy; The Nottingham match in 1903. John Gunn made nearly 300, his uncle and Mr. Dixon both took centuries; and I fielded third man very deep, on both sides of the ground. Trent Bridge is a big ground, too. Yes, I remember that day 1” “ Your most exciting match ? ” “ Well, one of them was the Worcester game in 1900— I think that was the year. It was anybody’s game right to the finish.” “ And then Worcester won by ten runs. I remember it, too. I cycled twenty miles to see that finish, and felt that it was worth while, short as the period of play was. W ilson did the business at tbe end, bowling both Woodcock and Whiteside.” “ Yes. Wilson was a bowler all by himself at his best. I don’t mean better than everybody else, but quite different. The way he used to hit the sticks was wonderful.” “ The most remarkable game you ever played in ? ” “ That was in the same season. We ran up 609 for eight against Sussex at Leicester, and declared; they replied with 686 for eight! But the match at Worcester in 1906, when I made my top score, was almost as remarkable. They made 380; we scored 701 for four, and declared; then they made 344 for two wickets. We might have gone on for a week, as they do in Australia.” “ Speaking of Australia, don’t you think the test matches next year should be played out ? ” “ Well, it seems rather a farce to bring together here the finest cricketers of the three great cricket countries, and not to make sure of even one finished game in the contests between them. In any ease, county cricket next year will have to take a back seat, and it seeme to me that 1912 would be a capital time for trying any experi­ ments thought advisable in the championship.” J. N. P entelow . ANSWERS TO CORRESPONDENTS. “ H.C.P.” — In the circumstances you mention the batsman would be run out. “ T ouchstone .” —34.