EDDIE PAYNTER

Greymouth Evening Star, 4 July 1933, Page 7

EDDIE PAYNTER

A LANCASHIRE BATSMAN. The other day I saw in a Manchester park a number of boys, fagged and dirty and happy, and they were beginning the cricket season. One of them gripped an old and hard bat (one of those which sting all over the body when you hit with the bottom of the blade); he got down on it in front of the primitive stumps, and after he had struck a tierce attitude he announced that he was “Eddie Paynter.” Not “Bradman,”’mark you; not “Hammond” or “Sutcliffe.” None of these recognised masters was good enough to express a boy’s hero worship; Eddie Paynter was the chosen, the elect, the anointed, writes Neville Cardus in the “Manchester Guardian.” Here, I thought, was the proof of immortality. '• A cricketer lives as long as he is emulated by boys. It was this way years ago when I myself was young, with other flames of-life and imagination. Where are they'all now?

—long lanky Smith, who bowled slow • if he had that afternoon been watching Johnny Briggs and fast and all over the place and absurdly beyond his strength if he had that afternoon seen Mold. And Jones, who was the best boy batsman 1 over saw, straight out' of a tale by Talbot Baines Reed,’ a hitter 'of winning sixes, generous, and the best companion. -Ami young Brown, who once carried A. (’. MacLarcn’s .bag down Warwick Road and was envied by the rest of us for months. And Thompson, who was fat tor his years, and- could never be trusted not to run the whole side out?, all' excepting himself, because his plan was to shout after he had made a stroke "Yes! —No!” and not budge an inch. We all played every summer evening after school, until it. was so dark that, you had Io crouch at the wicket, like. Jessop, so that you could see the ball up against, (he western sky.

Where are these • companions of youth’ now? Sentimentally I saw them, every one, in the park the other day when the urchin said he was ‘Eddie Paynter”! Years ago it was Johnny Tykleplcy: but only the symbol changes. The truth remains the same. Cricket' is a boy’s game at its best; with the grown-ups amongst us it is never as good as it used to be. It-is good to think of Paynter as a hero with our youngsters. He is aIm'icashii'e lad, and he bats I.i.e out. His pulls from the middle stump arc real “county,” cross-bat and all. There is .an aptness about a Iruc cricketer’s style, a. genuine accem. Consider Lord Aberdare, butter known as the Hon. C. N. Bruce, who <. year or two ago .played for Middlesex. Each of his innings had blue blood in its veins; he drove through the covers like an aristocrat. This was cricket of poise, hauteur, and excluswe gs the pavilion at Lord’s.

? There you had the pnof that the Style is the man himself. Imagine

Richard Tyldesley batting like that; imagine Richard Tyldesley with his left leg thrust across, all ofty disdain, his wrists supple and stylish, his strokes out of Debrett’s! You would laugh, because you would see the incongruity, the falsity, of it. The accent would be untrue. Imagine that some summer morning Lord Aberdare has just seen ,an article containing a criticism of his play. “I have read your notes to-day,” he might say, “and you have made one or two deprecatory comments upon my cricket, to which 1 would like to take exception.” The accent and choice of words would not be out of character.

NO’l HIS OWN TONGUE. But let us suppose that Richard Tyldesley. after reading an article, has approached a cricket-writer, saying, “I have read your notes to-day and you have made one or two deprecatory comments . . .” etc., etc. In a minute we should realise that Tyldesley was not speaking to us in his proper tongue; we should expect, him to say — well, we should expect him to talk to us in Westhough ton. It is the same wben.a Tyldesley or a Lord Aberdare is playing cricket; we expect from the cue a Westhoughton cut,' and from the other we expect a Winchester cover-drive.

Paynter’s cricket tells you where he hails from; it is out of the Lancashire soil; his strokes come from I he very shape of him. He is not altogether beautiful in his style, hut then, Lancashire county is not altogether beautiful. Paynter is a Lancashire lad in every innings, just as Spooner was a Liverpool gentleman, it is easy to point cut that Paynter's bat is not straight; the most myopic eye could make this discovery. But J. T. Tyldesley’s bal was not straight. Paynter's play has as much of the original gumption in it as of acquired and cultivated craftsmanship. You can see some cricketers getting I hoi:.’ deeds done by giving careful attention to fust principles. Sutcliffe is one of those who have added by thoughtfulness several inches to their stature. Theie arc other cricketers who are splendid in so far as they are instinctive; their gifts arc homely to us because they do. not ever appeal' recondite. The difference between Henry James and Charles Dickens, ('. B. Fry ami George Ilin-t! When Paynter hits hard I can hear his bat uttering many «'- “By gum” and many a “Gradcly.” To object to Paynter’s pull is as beside the point of the man’s style as it would have been in the old days to object, to Palairet’s cover-drive. A cricketer’s technique, like that of any other artist or etafisman. is “<orteu'. if its parts are relevant one to another, ■ amj if they arc essential to the working of the whole. The job of criticism is to distinguish between genuine traits of style and characteristics which are insignificant and superfluous. These are the “faults.” Fcr example, Paynter is guilty of a “fault,” when to an off-side hall lie holds out his bat with his arms a. long

way from his body. That stroke is negative and tells us nothing true of Paynter, is dangerous., and cannot be fitted to his style in the lump. It is pedantic to say of a batsman that his style is not good merely because his Lest strokes arc sent to the on and to leg. The complete cricketer, of ccuise, scores all round the wicket. Maybe Paynter has already added to his off-side hits, as a consequence of experience on the last turf of Australia. He is good enough, to be going on with, anyhow. Last year, at Bradford, lie played an innings of genius against Yorkshire. His driving that day, on a bad wicket, was violent and rapid. Paynter is one of those rare batsmen who can win a match in an hour. And ho can be dogged, obstinate as a mule. He is of our own soil; his cripket tells of life bred in places that get close to tho bone of things. He won tho hearts of the Australian crowds, not ony by his gallant batting, but by his swift, vehement fielding. He runs after a. ball like the wind; yon cannot tell, one foot from another as they twinkle in pursuit. Here, again, he is a cricketer who stirs the natural impulses of men—and of .boys. The urchin in the park chose his hero well—not Bradman, not Hammond, not Sutcliffe, but “Eddie Paynter,” scarcely known to us a year ago. and to-day part of Lancashire county's fame and character.