LEAVES OF A SPORTFOLIO

Manawatu Times, Volume LVI, Issue 7066, 27 January 1933, Page 4

LEAVES OF A SPORTFOLIO

Handicap To New Zealand Cricket —Shortage Of Good Bowlers — Many Faults In Style

do suffer from not having really good slips-fielding, to take a reasonably good percentage of the catches which are offered there, they are helped toward lbvv decisions and toward mis-hits in front of the wicket by this style of moving in front of the stumps and turning to force the ball to the on-side. Besides tlie actual repression of off-side stroke play, there is also the lessened attention to seeing that front foot and bat both move toward the ball in the making of off-side strokes. In one of the .Plunkct Shield matches, in particular, the manner in which some batsmen attempted off-drives with the front foot going toward the bowler and the bat swinging away toward wide mid-off was astonishing in the select of a province’s batsmen.

cause of iiis success in club games, he is often listened, to with respect by young howlers, who do not regard the fact that many immature batsmen are among his victims and the possibility that tie would have become more notable in cricket in his own province, and even in the Dominion in. general, if he had bowled at the stumps.

The most authoritative opinion in countries of much greater fame in cricket than New Zealand has yet is that a bowler’s main attack should be at the stumps. C. V. Grimmett sums up very well bn "tills; point, in his latest book. He says:— Many bowlers are guilty of bowling ott the wicket, especially when a new batsman conies In. This is a very had fault. It means that the howler is giving the batsman every: assistance and is actually playing him in. ' The batsman need not play any ball which is not likely io hit the wicket. Thus he is getting used to the bowler' while not taking the slightest risk. but he lias : to play every hall that is directed to the stumps. If lie does not play the hall he will he bowled. If lie does—well, there is a chance oi getting reason given for howling oil’ the wicket is that it is the howlers endeavour to keep down runs. Actually this is a big mistake. It is much harder to score oil' balls on Hie wicket than those on the IC The l batsman is forced to take risks in •trying to get the ball away when it is likely to tiit the stumps. To' keep down runs at any tune t Is best to bowl at the. stumps, the resultant strokes should lie between mid-on and mid- „»• unless as I mentioned belorc, the batsman takes risks-and this obviously, is what the bowler wants him to do. ' u iB not meant that tho howler should not howl oir the wicket -occasionaU} - fh s introduces variety jnto his ntlatk. But as a general rule, it is far bcttci to attain the batsman. This can only be done by lYiroim' him to play - each hall. And xue onlv way to force him to play each ball is by bowling to bit-his stumps., Anyone who lias read much that has been written by. or about rea ly -great howlers of England, Austialia, ana South Africa knows that their Pj'aciicc was in accordance with Grimmett s a vocacy. ... As I write, a mail from Austra ia brings a mass of commentary on. the second Test, at Melbourne, and in it is the following note by J. Ryder, a former captain of Australia: “In the second innings, especially, the English attack troubled Australia only when bowleis attacked the wickets—a plan norn which both Australia and England reaped greater rewards than from an> unorthodox methods.” Other winters also comment on the greater success o. an attack directed at the stumps.

The better the howling the better the batting; the better the batting the better the howling. That is an old saying in cricket, atul a pretty sound one. Tiie converse also holds true; the weaker the bowling the weaker the batting, and so on. But the old saying connotes the existence of a spirit of real endeavour in both howler and batsman —in each to outdo the other. And there needs to be proper encouragement and skilful tuition of each.

PERHAPS overmuch emphasis has been laid on batting by the coaches who have been imported into New Zealand from time to time. Some of them certainly have tried to teach the arts of howling, but, looking back on their work, as a whole, one is struck more by their influence on batting than oil howling. Probably the responsibility for that rested not witii them but with the associations which engaged them; until lately provincial associations have thought more of developing batsmen than of developing bowlers. One result of this lingers even when associations arc giving more attention to the development of bowling. There is not a sufficiently clear policy in the encouragement of young bowlers in this country, and, partly because of that, and partly because of tlicir want of good models, too many ol our young bowlers do not attack the stumps often enough. There is, I know, a conflict of opinion among many experienced cricketers in New Zealand about whether or not the main object of a bowler’s attack should lie the stumps. One veteran player of my acquaintance, who takes many wickets in club cricket, says that lie practically never bowls at the stumps; he “diddles out” the batsmen. He really bowls at the stumps more than lie admits, for lie makes a good many appeals for Jhw in the course of a season, and he should not get an lbw dccsion unless the hall would have hit the wickets lmt for having been obstructed by the batsman’s legs. However, the point is that his advice is, in effect, that howlers should not bowl at the stumps, and, be-

GOING hack to Grimmclt’s latest hook, I read this: “The no-ball habit is purely and simply the result of careless practice methods. Really it is tiie worst fault a bowler can commit. It gives away: runs anil nullities

the chance of taking a wicket. It gives the batsman a heap of confidence. . . . There is absolutely no excuse for the no-bull habil. A visit to any practice ground will reveal numbers of bowlers who indulge in this fault. How can they hope to bowl correctly or do themselves justice in a match if they do not practise carefully?” Grimmett goes on to point out that if a bowler has a "stutter” in his run it has been caused by ntglect to measure the length of his run correctly in Hie first instance—the hesitation is a last-second effort to correct the stride so that the back foot shall cmne to the right position at the wicket just before delivery. The great disadvantage of an interrupted run, which militates against accuracy and also means that there is no flow of power in the run until after the “stutter,”, should be obvious. Unfortunately, it is not obvious to some bowlers,

I have in mind a certain northern bowler who has a very interrupted run to the wicket and who is very prone to bowl no-balls. He is, then, by, the Grimmett standard —and that is the standard of all first-class bowlers —distinctly a had bowler. Yet this bowler has represented both his province and New Zealand! Well may we wonder not only what he could do if he perfected his run to the wicket, but also what is the batting that allows him, with his present had style, to get many wickets in New Zealand 1 . A better standard of howling in both representative and club cricket is urgently necessary to maintain the progress of the game in New Zealand. There is. as yet, too much falseness of values in cricket in the Dominion. Beenuse of llie very indifferent standard of bowling, in general, in club games, many batsmen arc represented by their scores in club cricket to be much better than they really are. That is wliy so many players whose inclusion in representative teams is urged simply because they have made big scores in club games fail when they arc opposed by better howling. It is also the reason why, every now and again, a new bowler, especially of the fast-nicdium sort, flashes across tlic horizon in some province or other and then falls like the stick of a rocket; ho has had a temporary' success against mediocre batsmen, or even against fairly good batsmen on an indifferent wicket, hut has been unable, through weakness.in. his technical equipment, to maintain it m better-class company. The truer standard of values is not merely how many runs_n batsman has made, or how many wickets a howler lias taken, but how tic has made his runs or taken his wickets.

Another important factor in the development of howling is te.am-eaptain.cy. Clubs have not paid sufficient attention to this, and the standard of captaincy of club teams is not good enough. Club and provincial captains are themselves at a great disadvantage, because all too seldom do they have in their teams howlers who can howl accurately enough to fit their leader’s, plau of campaign. But many captains of club learns conduce toward this state of affairs, by not being competent enough to give sound advice to their howlers. One disadvantage of having the administration of a game organised for the conduct of championship competitions is that the clubs concerned leave 100 much, in really important affairs, to tlicir associations, and spend too much of the time of tlicir club committee meetings on small things that one mail, instead of half-a-dozen or more could deal with. A. L, C.