CRICKET.

Auckland Star, Volume XL, Issue 205, 28 August 1909, Page 14

CRICKET.

jMr. E. Roper, of the I/ancaehire County Cricket Club Committee, and a player of ample experience, has laid his finger on the "cause" of the decadence of the English batting. To "The Daily Dispatch" represent»tive he remarked:— "English batting is suffering very badly. We are troubled by this cureed leg play. But pad-play, which was never contemplated until Arthur Shrewsbury made It popular, and this insane desire to force bails to the leg side of the wicket for scoring purposes have be«n, and are, the curses of our batting. Things have got to such a state sow that we have sacrificed everything for leg strokes, and when an English batsman gets a halfvolley on the off-side he cannot hit it. At Leeds there were plenty of halfvolleys in tho Test match, but Englishmen could not hit them! Macartney should have been hit, but the Englishmen either would not or could not hit, and Noble drew liis men in. There were no fieldere .on .|>he /boundary. To use a golf phrase, the batsmen now take up a 'stance' to force balls to leg. They are out of balance to play balls to the off, and the balls escape the drastic treatment they ueei to get. Where arc our off-sido iiatamen to-day ? We have Reggie Spooner, and it is a delight to see him play, because he is so clever to the off. We want batemen who can play to the off. We ar e all being trained and tutored wrong, and, to the shameful neglect of off-side play, we are sacrificing everything to.leg-side work. Can you find men to-day like the Steels, Captain Greig, and Ephraim Lockwood? This pad-play to a ball that has taken break from the bowler's hand is dotestable. It is "both unfair and discouraging to bowlers, who do not reap the reward of their ekill. The pad* were never intended to keep the 'ball out of the wicket. The bat was wade for that purpose, and some men might as well go out for their innings and leave their bat in the pavilion. Let us get back to true cricket, and play the ball with the 'bat, and lot us cultivate off-side play and cease to force so much to leg. 1 agree, we all agree, that we want new men; we want young men for Tests. Where are they?"

An English exchange on the Test Matches says England has to meet a wily foe led by an accomplished general who knows every strategical device Noble never makes a change or moves a man without a definite object. "What would eleven youths do against him? They would assuredly be out-generalled. Buys the "Athletic News":—Reginald Erskine Foster, most famous of the Worcestershire brotherhood, has recently accomplished a, performance which read* more like fiction than what really happened in a good-clnss club match. The game was between H. W. de Zoete's XI. and Witham, on the latter' 3 groundWitham declared with eight wickets down for 342, leaving their opponents only an hour and a half in which to bat. Everything, of course, seemed to favour a draw, but the first few batsmen hit out, and when the fourth wicket fell, twenty minutes from the start, 60 had been made. It wae at this point that F(wter went in. He took the measure of tho howling from the start, and gave an exhibition of hard hitting such as even ho had never before approached. In 75 minutes he actually made 262 not out, and whilst he waa in only 18 other runs were made! He hit six 6's, and thirty - four 4's, and made 00 runs from eighteen consecutive ball? he received.

The " Daily Dispatch" has juet published an interview with A- C. MacLaren in which he very aptly says: — " When people told mc last Christmas that the Australian team would have a bad time this summer, I challenged their sweeping assertion, and asked why. I ventured then to point out that the men who were imperial cricketers were all growing old at the same time, and there were none to take their places. "Destructive criticism is easy, and not always just. What we want is some constructive criticism from the men who understand team-building. We hear that •So-and-So ought not to play, but we do not s ay who is to take the man's place— that is, having regard to the proper location of each man to a post in the field. " 1 sincerely hope that the Selection Committee will not make too many changes in the next team to play at Manchester. We have few Test-match players- We have pot the younger player of the highest class, and the older cricketer is becoming slower in all his movements. "We have a bad batting side; in fact, it ig the worst batting team that England has had for many years. I did not want to be the captain. My cricket career is coming to a. close, and I realised that these Tests would not do my reputation as a leader any good. However, I have had to play in spite of my personal wishes. We must make the

best of the situation, but it is not wise to make sweeping alterations unless we have better young men, .Where are theyl"