Cricket 1912

360 CRICKET : A WEEKLY RECORD OF THE GAME. J u l y 27, 1912. B u t what is extraordinary is the manner in which the boys won their games, getting rid o f their opponents for an aver­ age of about 8 per wicket, and themselves averaging well over 30 per wicket. T he captain, Easterbrook, has played innings of 106, 60, 41, 39*, 35, 30*, 20 and 0—average 55. Blackley has run up 90, 85*, 67*, 49, and 39, and, w ith four small scores, averages 50. Cornwall, with 79, 56, 44, 42, and 30 as hig chief efforts, stands at 34 per innings, and Wooldridge w ith 66*, 41*, and 32, at 31. For boys of preparatory school age these are really wonderful figures. M a n y of the minor counties, depending as they do mainly upon amateurs, do not start their fixture-list until well into July. Two of them, to whom the fates have not been too kind in recentTyears, made rare good starts. Cornwall, beating Devon and Monmouth in succession, did a double feat scarcely to be equalled in Cornubian history. Buckinghamshire, with 505 and an innings win v. Bedfordshire, opened finely. These two counties— I believe they have never met—have had curiously similar records over the last five years. Leaving out of account first innings wins and losses, and dealing only with outright decisions, Bucks won 8 matches and lost 25 from 1907 to 1911 inclusive, Cornwall won 8, lost 26. B u ck s ought not to lose many matches this season, though they may find their bowling a bit weak when E. H. D. Sewell does not come off—and he cannot be expected to take a dozen wickets every time. Of those who played in the first match Lowndes, Sewell, Le Gros, Franklin, Frith, Field, and B . H. G. Shaw (tho calling of whom “ Bernard Shaw,” though doubtless correct, looks like someone’s little joke) will play in every game, it is expected ; M. Wright will turn out in the remaining seven ; E. A. Shaw is booked for four more ; and N. D. C. Ross will come in for the last six. Like Herts, Bucks do not depend upon gates. The two clubs are kept alive b y generous sub­ scribers, and perhaps cricket in leafy Bucks and pleasant Herts is none the less enjoyable for that fact. There are some big grounds— one may instance Lord’s—which would be better places of a few of their “ patrons ” ceased to patronise them. The dead set made at Charles Fry by a few sweet specimens in the Gentlemen v. Players match at headquarters was nothing short of scandalous. i ** --------------- A t the meeting of the Cricketers’ Fund Friendly Society -—when George Hirst was elected on the committee of management, and a capital selection, too—Lord Harris had something to say about appeals against bad light. In his time of active first-class cricket such appeals were practically unknown. Robert Henderson could tell the story of the “ gaslight match ” at the Oval, when the gas standards were alight all round the ground before the game ended, Surrey v. Yorkshire, I think it was. Now we read such things as : “ Kent successfully appealed against the bad light.” As though it were rather a clever thing to do ! O tempora ! O mores ! T h e death of Andrew Lang removes one of the very, few real poets of the game. There has been plenty of doggerel written— such utterly unreadable stuff as the Rev. James Love’s concoction and “ Surry Triumphant ” —much decent verse—but very little real poetry. Andrew Lang’s “ Ballade of Cricket,” some of the late E. E. Bowen’s Harrow songs, some of tho work of Messrs. E. Y. Lucas, Harold Begbie, E. B. V. Christian, and Alfred Cochrane— the list is not exhaustive, of course— is poetry. Some of the rest is utterly null and void. T h e many friends of William Newham, the old Sussex batsman, will be grieved to hear of the death of his father. I missed the familiar form of the genial “ Dicky ” in the pavilion at Hove on Monday,' but did not learn till later the cause of his absence. Is Syd Gregory too fond of short runs ? It is all very well with a partner who understands one perfectly— Graham and Gregory seldom made a mistake, and Hobbs and Rhodes can do all sorts of cheeky things with impunity — but in most cases a stolen single is not worth the risk of a good man’s wicket. Kelleway’s dismissal at South­ ampton may not have been S. E. G.’s fa u lt; at the time of writing I don’t know ; but anyway it spoiled all the chance the Australians had of saving the game, and was an unlncky ending to a good and plucky partnership. A fter all, Philip Mead may force his way into the England eleven before the last test is played. It is evident that he can score jilenty of runs against the Australian bowling. __________________ Current Cricket. T h e L o r d ’ s M atch b e t w e e n G en tl e m e n a n d P l a y e r s . E n g l a n d ’ s T e s t S id e . B y H am ish S t u a r t . No match of the present season has produced quite such a keen struggle for runs, or has placed bat and ball (with its ten allies) in such strong antagonism, as the match between the Gentlemen and the Players at L ord’s. (I detest, b y the way, having to use the time-honoured title of the match, because it appears to me to be a survival of a form of snobbishness of the worst possible early V ic­ torian type, and snobbishness in any form is opposed to the traditions and the whole spirit of the most noble of all games of ball). For the keen antagonism of bat and ball, which is, of course, tho very life of cricket, the lively character of the pitch and the excellence of the bowling and fielding were responsible. Runs had to be made ; they did not merely come ; and even if a man could stay there he had to make his runs. This was true even of the opening stage of the game, during which Hobbs scored at a pace and with an apparent ease (but not without running many risks and having something to thank fortune for) which were in singular contrast with the difficulty which later batsmen experienced, not merely in the matter of making scoring strokes but in staying in at all. But Hobbs is like A. C. MacLaren at his best. When he cares to run risks and to give full play to his wonderfully accurate and wonderfully quick judgment of length—this is one of the chief secrets of success in batting, because such judg­ ment eliminates the blind spot for the batsman who has such judgment—and his stroke-making ability, he can get runs with an ease that makes good bowling look simple and b y methods that are apt, by their demoralising effect upon the bowler, to convert good bowling into its opposite. Whether Hobbs’s batting will benefit in the end b y this new game, or rather b y the habitual adoption of daring forcing methods, is a question apart. Hobbs’s new game tends towards recklessness ; while it exhilarates the spec­ tator it is apt to intoxicate the batsman, so that Hobbs may yet have occasion to say with the Homeric hero, who found that a fall was apt to produce a broken n e ck : “ The evil doom of some god overcame me, and hitting out of measure. ’ ’ The Homeric hero, was not, of course, a cricketer, and did not quite say “ hitting out of measure.” but the moral of the two tales is the same. Hitting is the strong wine of cricket, and England’s “ first wicket ” batsman must take moderate draughts of the joy-cup of the game. H e a r n e ’ s S u sta in e d S uccess . Another personal feature of the match was the con­ firmation which it afforded that J. W . Hearne has been blessed to an extraordinary degree with “ the cricket,” or if the phrase be preferred, the “ big game,” temperament. Hearne seems framed to face crises, and fairly revels in facing those situations, which are supposed to excuse failure by reason of their demoralising effect. He seems always to come off when he goes in during a collapse. I have my own views (too lengthy and too complex for statement here) as to the different effect of crises upon different tempera­ ments, but so long as Hearne can get runs in big games when runs are most wanted, no one need inquire too seriously into the psychological reasons, if any, of his success. If he lacks imagination, so far as cricket is concerned, and has