Cricket 1912

J une 29, 1912. CEICKET: A WEEKLY EECOED OF THE GAME. 279 The Triangular Tests. T hird M atch : E ngland v . A ustralia at L ord ’ s — Im p r e s s io n s fr o m D a y t o D a y . B y H am ish S t u a r t . A S hort F irst D ay . “ Glorious uncertainty ” is no monopoly, proverbial or otherwise, of cricket. The English weather, though we have the finest climate in the world, can be just as glorious, and also just as uncertain, as the greatest of games. We all hoped for a fast wicket aud three fine days for the third of the tests. Saturday was all sunshine and the kingdom of summer seemed established, but Sunday was a day of high winds and towards the evening of gathered clouds. With Monday came some glints of deceptive sunshine, and then the deluge —an hour before the game should have begun. It was no scanty tide that came, but full flooded tropical rain—the sort of rain that made Noah turn mariner. We had only three hours’ play, divided into three periods, one very brief—only 1 1 balls were bowled—and two of goodly duration, for play proceeded from ten minutes past two until five minutes past three, and again from half-past four until the usual drawing time. But if the rain thus curtailed play it made it all the more interesting. In the three hours England scored 2 1 1 for 4 wickets. Only two men batted well. These two were Hobbs and llhodes, and of the two Hobbs batted the better. Indeed his innings of 107 must be ranked with the historic efforts in tests, for the pitch, without being exceptionally difficult, was never easy. It was ever a pitch on which nothing could be taken for granted; the ball was always turning, and its pace and rise from the pitch varied. It was the sort of wicket on which daring and resolute methods, getting to the pitch of the ball, and so forth, paid if conjoined with reasonable watchfulness, but on which scraping was bound to be fatal. Yet three men scraped and three such men— Spooner, F ry aud W arner! If one cannot praise great batsmen for a particular per­ formance, it is distasteful to indulge in dispraise. Homer nods. There were three Homers—cricketwise—who nodded at Lord’s on Monday. The nodding of two—Warner and Spooner—was brief; one nodded to the end of the day. It was singular and was assuredly most disappointing that this great trio should have done so badly after Hobbs and Rhodes had given their side such a splendid start in scoring 1 12 for the first wicket in 90 minutes, by very fine batting against excellent and varied bowling, backed up by as good fielding both in point of accuracy, quickness and straightness of return and intelligent anticipation of the stroke as one would desire to see. Yet the truth must be told. T hat great batsman Spooner—and I use the qualification “ great ” in the historic, and not the casual, sense— has surely never before played such an inglorious innings. His powers seemed temporarily paralysed. He might have been caught at mid-on ; he might also have been caught and bowled; a ball beat him and just went over the middle stum p; he seemed out leg befoie, but was given in ; and then he was caught at forward short leg—and all this while scoring a sin gle! Clearly an inexplic­ able case of broken-winged genius, and as clearly one for the veil of reticence. F ry made two good strokes, one an on-drive worthy of him self and the other a hit to leg. F or the rest he scraped about and made the bowling look far better than it was He had two narrow escapes of being bowled by Em ery. Warner never looked like making runs—more’s the p ity ! But he was out to a really remarkable “ yorker” that swung a bit and then dropped in the last of its flight. Turning to the two men who did really well, Hobbs has rarely played a finer innings. He was quite content to wait for runs, but he always batted with the utmost confidence, and, except during an early over from Matthews, never had any difficulty in dealing with the bowling. There were only two bad strokes in his innings. He made a high m is-hit off Kelleway that went to the boundary. He had then made 86. The other bad stroke was when he was 99. He then nearly turned a ball from Macartney into his wicket. The stroke yielded a single and gave Hobbs his first hundred in a test match in England. Hobbs made his 107 out of 197 in a little over 2 f hours, and was out to a remarkable ball that broke from leg very quickly and almost at right angles to its flight. That is, of course, an exaggeration, but the ball hit all three stumps. Hobbs played it with a straight bat, and no one could possibly have anticipated such a break. Em ery, for all the work he gets on, can rarely before have bowled such a ball. Hobbs got his runs by a great variety of strokes. H is late cutting and off driving were specially good. He was very quick on his feet, and he showed remarkable quickness of perception in judging the exact character of a ball. Rhodes, though playing a very fine innings, never impressed one with the same sense of safety as Hobbs. He was more than once beaten, and made several fortuitous strokes. His off-side play varied, but when it was good it was very good, while he timed the ball well on the leg side. Like Hobbs he was always confident aud never irresolute, though an occasional ball, by doing the unexpected, might make him appear so. Hobbs hit 15 fours, and Rhodes had 8 boundary strokes. At one time Rhodes made 33 while Hobbs was making 5, and a little later Hobbs made 26 while Rhodes was making two. A curious feature of their partnership was furnished by the fact that there were no extras in the 1 1 2 runs, of which Hobbs made 53. The first extras came from the ball that beat without bowling F ry. It went for four byes. I shall refer to the Australian bowling later on. There must have been 17,000 persons present, for 14,402 paid for admission. A D reary S econd D ay . Tuesday was indeed a dreary, irritating day. The weather kept fine until just before the time for resuming (11 o’clock), then down came the rain. Then it cleared and some 20 minutes’ play, during which 30 runs were added by F ry and Woolley, was possible. Then came sunshine and shower, but chiefly shower, for the rest of the day, and at twenty minutes to six, with the sun shining strongly and the rain clearly over for the day, all hope of further play was of necessity abandoned. The wicket, and indeed the whole ground except the small portion covered by the pitch protectors, was too sodden for play. It was a dreary day for the spectators—some 3,000 strong —who waited hour after hour hoping against hope that play would be possible. On the whole, however, they bore their disappointment with the equanimity of real enthusiasm. During the brief period play was in progress F ry batted better than on the previous evening, but he was never quite him self, was more than once beaten by Em ery, and made at least one fortuitous stroke, a hit past point to the boundary. On the other hand he made one admirable stroke, on the leg side. Woolley was not at all aggressive, and would only have made four during the 20 minutes’ play if Em ery’s last ball before the rain came had not been just the sort of ball to yield the four on the leg side which it produced. There has not been such a weary and dreary day in a test match since the third day of the first test at Birm ingham in 1902. The fact that it cleared up now aud then made the experience most tantalising. A steady downpour would have precluded all hope of play, whereas the fine intervals merely flattered hope. T he C oncluding S tage . Wednesday proved gloriously fine, and the big crowd saw an interest­ ing day's play, in spite of the fact that a draw was always assured after lunch, and indeed as soon as it was evident that the wicket had recovered and that our bowlers—or rather Barnes and Foster—were not going to add to their list of triumphs over Colonial batsmen. Fry, instead of declaring at once with the score at 241 for 4, decided to have another half-hour’s batting, and, of course, ordered a forcing game. The thirty minutes was extended to 40 minutes and in this time 69 run3 were scored for the loss of three more wickets. The batsmen all ran risks. Hearne played specially well, and F ry set his men a good sacrificial example by getting run out in attempting a second run at his own call. The wickets did not matter, but the runs did, and with 310 on the board England were safe from defeat and had some 5 | hours left for actual play—I am deducting intervals — so that there was sufficient time to get A ustralia out twice—if it could be done. There was never much prospect of anything sensa­ tional happening. The wicket rolled out well and was a nice easy­ paced pitch. Jennings and Kelleway made 27 off Barnes and Foster before Jennings was caught at the wicket after batting for 45 minutes. Then came a long stand by Kelleway and Macartney, who put on 146 for the second wicket in 2^ hours, and so made a draw assured. Brilliautly as Macartney batted, Australia owed even more to K elle­ way, whose magnificent defensive cricket recalled Noble at his best. Noble played a sim ilar defensive innings at Manchester in 1899. Noble was batting for well over 5£ hours for 89, and at one time did not score for 35 minutes. Kelleway was equally patient, and his longest non-scoring period was sim ilar. T h is was at the start, his first scoring stroke being a three to leg 35 minutes after the innings began. In all, Kelleway was batting for 4 hours 35 minutes for his 61 out of 233, and his innings was one of the best, greatest, and most useful efforts of the kind in the history of test cricket. Macartney played the best innings of the match, though, of course, the wicket was easier when he was batting than when Hobbs was making his 107. The day’s play amply justified all that one has written as to England’s bowling. The truth is, that though England are strong enough in batting to make defeat highly improbable in three days, under normal conditions, they are not strong enough in bowling to win against Australia under such conditions, once Barnes and Foster are collared, or at least fail to be effective. Barnes was decidedly expensive—for Barnes ; and Foster, though bowling well, owed his immunity from punishment largely to the restraint which Kelleway showed. Foster’s first 1 7 overs (14 maidens) yielded only