CRICKET CHANGES

Dominion, Volume 28, Issue 58, 1 December 1934, Page 22

CRICKET CHANGES

Batsmen and Their

Methods

PROBLEM OF FAST BOWLING

We are on the eve of another of those mysterious M.C’.C. meetings, which are always alleged to be called to give a wise and final verdict on the question of fast leg-theory bowling, alias “bodyline” (wrote “Watchman” in the Lon-

don “Observer” recently). In the meantime there has been an unofficial experiment with a pitch marked by lines and cross-lines, like a Hore-Belisha safety path. There have also been

rumours of more powers for umpires and other innovations which seem to be exactly calculated to make cricket ridiculous or to load to more and more controversy.

Changes in law are always dangerous. It is not easy to foresee all the consequences, but it is very easy to spoil a great game by short-sighted meddlesomeness. The changes in the past have always been introduced with a view to bringing something Into cricket. Any further restriction of a bowler’s liberties would take something out of it. The introduction of the third stump, the increase in the length of the bowling crease, the enlargement of the wicket, all added to the scope of attack, and, as a consequence, batsmen had to broaden their methods, because their difficulties were increased. But to forbid a bowler to make use of certain resources always open to him in the past would be to create still larger scores, and scores are too high for comfort already. Conservatism in Cricket. East leg-theory has been condemned by some who have found it uncomfortable when they’ played it. because it was strange to them, by others who have only watciied it from a circumscribed view,- and by many more who have never seen it all. In this respect the situation has something in common with that which arose when round-arm bowling was first introduced one hundred and twelve years ago. There was a frightful rumpus. Impulsive objectors cried aloud that it would kill cricket. In what he described as “A protest against the Modern Innovation of Throwing” John Nyren, a great player and a great authority on the game, declared: “If the present system be persisted in a few years longer the elegant and scientific game of cricket will decline into a mere exhibition of rough, coarse horse-play.” But Nyren was wrong. The “new bowling” made wider the borders of a bowler’s attack and gave him an opportunity to increase his skill. It forced batsmen to evolve new strokes. And the good work was carried farther some 40 years later, when the bowler was permitted to raise his arm higher than his shoulder If fast leg-theory be allowed to continue history will probably repeat itself. The bogey will be laid. Batsmen will learn their lesson and work out their own salvation. Is There Too Much Coaching? The Australian cricketers, gagged by the terms of tin agreement, almost afraid to pass an opinion on the weather lest their words should be considered an interview, opened out a little when the tour was over, and one. of them went so far as to say that lie thought a handicap to English batting was too much couching at the public schools. It is true, I think, that for a number of years there has been a tendency to coach the individuality out of a young player and to guide him along stereotyped paths: but in this respect the young professional seems to have suffered as much as the young amateur. The Australian remarked that he himself and most of his eontemporaries started tb plrty on a backyard pitch with a home-made bat and a kerosene tin for a wicket. Well, lit this country also most boys begin their cricket in a garden or a yard with primitive implements. But if they develop and play for a chib, older and more experienced people are certain to give them advice. 'That is inevitable, no matter whether they go to a public school or a council school. And if a youth becomes good enough to be engaged on the ground staff of a county he is sure to be well stuffed by coaches. I have seen' many professionals induced—or “ordered” in some eases would be a truer word—to stifle their natural instincts and to change their methods, sometimes with disastrous results. But no matter where the coaching has been done, in England or in Australia, on a school ground or on ti club ground, it hits produced a race l of batsmen who play back to nearly everything, and "cover up” regardless of pace or length. They get into such a position that any fast rising ball, even If it pitch on a level with the off-stump, becomes a physical danger to them. " Faulty Footwork. Tn this connection I cannot do better titan quote the words of G. W. Beldam. who used to score many runs and take many wickets for Middlesex-, and who studied cricket as an exact science. He says: “The great batsmen of the past allowed the ball, just after it left the bowler's bund, to be the cause of their feet moving; the ball in the air wirelessed the type of shot to be played. The great batsmen of the present start their footwork before the bail has left the bowler's hand, by moving the right foot across toward the off-stump. No wonder it Is then that a fast ball catches them off their balance while they tire moving into the line of a straight, ball. . . .

If a batsman is continually hit and terrified of fast bowling, it is due entirely to the lack of lirtnuess of She right foot or body balance. Cramming the leg side with six or seven men will not ca use a batsman to be bit: it may stop ail desire to score or to flick them off the eyebrows, but it will be just as easy for him who can do this to dodge the ball as the boxer dodges the glove by moving his betid, having watched tiie ball off the pitch. It a bowler is a swerver. his line of direction is on tiie body, and if the batsman is v!T Ills baltiiiee through moving into a line between wicket and wicket, the swerving bail is bound to get him I Ami with a fast and accurate bowler the batsman is asking for trouble, and it Is not the bowler who is causing it.” The justice of these remarks will bo evident to everyone who has watched, without prejudice, tt number of matches from a seat directly behind Ibe wicket Bid. iinfortilnntel.v. few people are able (o be in such a position. They cannot see that it is Ibe batsmauM method Unit lias brought him trouble. So they jump to the conclusion that tbo bowler is a brutal ruffian. And there are some batsmen, possibly with the

object of unsettling the bowler, who do not hesitate to go through a pantomime of pain, even when the ball has bit them on a well-padded glove or on some other part of the anatomy protected with equal care. These are reasons why so many people, with the facts obscured from them, imagine that any fust ball pitched short is a crime against cricket.