THE TEST MATCH.

Dominion, Volume 1, Issue 89, 8 January 1908, Page 6

THE TEST MATCH.

Australia will be a very ungrateful and unimaginative country if it feels at all gloomy, or oven seriously disappointed, at ■ tli.e result of the second Test Match. Defeat after sucli a fine contest is almost as good as victory: victory itself could-hardly have been better. Yet this, is not to decry the splendid achievement of the Englishmen. Throughout yesterday, while the cable messages were reporting a steady continuance, of the even progress _of rungetting, 1 it was never possible, until the final message came to hand, to say with any confidence which way the match would go. That is exactly how all Test Matches should work out, and it is possible to hope that the remaining games of. the series will be as excitingly even as the two matches already played. Although Australia's first-innings score, of 266 was not a very large one, as Test Match performances go, it was still sufficiently substantial to allow the Australians to go to bed on Thursday undisturbed by the heavy scoring of the Englishmen in their first venture. As matters have turned out, the failure of the home team to reach: 300 in their first innings has made the difference between "two legs in " and "all square." The task set the Englishmen-by the, fine recovery of the Australians was a difficult one. There were, it is true, no more than 282 runs to make, but they had to be got on a wicket which, though wearing well, had ;seen over 1000 runs already, and there was also that 1 important factor, the nervous strain, which finds out so mnny good batsmen at r ,times: of _ crisis, ' -They, faced the position admirably. Exces-. sive caution, -and snail-like, content-; ineut to make many runs in' a long' time, would have perhaps left them in the end helpless on a crumbling wicket. They had to steer a middle course, and they did so with a steadiness. and persistence that lifted the game to the very highest level of modern cricket. Uphill play is always tlio most trying, and a successful uphill fight is, therefore, the greatest victory. Runaway matches and overwhelming victories are more to the taste of the lover of sensation in cricket, but it is in such matches as that which the Englishmen so deservedly won yesterday that the finest flavour of the game is found. The series promises to be highly exciting, and should. the Engtour continue along the lines it has kept so far, it will become historic, and, wherever the " ashes" may be at the end of it, it will give Australian cricket and Australian interest in cricket a tremendous' fillip. .