LEAVES OF A SPORTFOLIO

Manawatu Times, Volume LVI, Issue 7106, 15 March 1933, Page 10

LEAVES OF A SPORTFOLIO

Sterile In Enjoyment —The Tests In Australia —England And lThe Body-Line Attack

SNLY the very earnest partisans of either side, I imagine, can be at all sorry that the Test cricket series in . Australia has finished. To people with no strong leanings to either of the contestants, to enthusiasts who wished only the better side to win without any generous share ot tiie luck of the game, and who were mindful of the fact that both teams are British, in the larger sense of that word, there was no enjoyment in the series. In general, the cricket itsell was too lethargic, in the oppressive Test-match atmosphere, but whatever quiet enjoyment might have been found in the inter-action of technical arts of the game was blown away by the explosiveness of emotionalisms, the restraint on the batting did not extend to the emotions of the antagonists and their partisans. There too many nauseating “incidents in the series. • A distortion of the values of international sport seems to have become inevitable in modern conditions. It seems to be accompanied nowadays by more captiousness among many ot the spectators and also among many of the players. Perhaps this captiousness is induced by the general restlessness of the world, and is an indirect effect of social and economic conditions, and sports are providing the easiest outlet for much of it. So far as cricket, at any rate, is concerned, it would be a good thing if there were a respite from Test matches for at least 10 years. The general conception of “the rigour of the game’’ seems to have changed. Once it meant no more than playing the game to the hilt, but within the laws of the game and within the spirit of sportsmanship. Now there appears to be an inclination to regard “rigour’’ as something approaching rigor mortis! * * *

STERILE in enjoyment, the Tests in Australia have been also sterile in interesting points of cricket technique, so far as anyone who has not seen them can gather from the commentaries of competent observers, both Australian and English. Discussions of technique have revolved round practically only one point—the body-line attack, which itself wholly sterilises the beauty of batsmanship. Failing to get enjoyment out of these Tests, at second-hand, at least one commentator refers to them only in a sens© of duty must be done. What, then, can be the spirit in which he approaches again the subject of bodyline bowling? Frankly, I am tired of it. Yet it is a subject that no one who has at heart the interests of cricket, or of any other sport, should avoid. “This dreadful thing,” as Arthur Gilligan, a former captain of England, called it a few days ago, threatens to become a disease in cricket, ant it is a symptom of something from which no sport can ever be wholly free —occasional indul-

gence of hunger for victory without sufficient regard to the consequences outside the immediate object. It has long since become clear that the body-line attack was the M.C.C. team's counter to unlimited Tests, Australian shirt-front wickets, and the Bradman menace to England’s success. Obviously, the Marylebone Cricket Club was not responsible for its introduction into the Tests. The responsibility lies with D. R. Jardine and his fellowmembers of the M.C.C. team’s own selection committee, P. F. Warner and H. Sutcliffe, and with Larwood, the instrument used; it does not matter from whom the suggestion to use it originated. But the fact that it had already been used in county cricket in England, and that there had been protests against it before the team left England, is important. I have heard it said that there would not have been so much fuss about the body-line attack had not some of Australia’s player-writers pandered to sensationalism in their treatment of it. There is an appearance of truth about that suggestion, but it is not wholly true, and it skirts the vital point. The player-writer has much to answer for in respect of this tour, and the general public should not need much more evidence of the wisdom of the Australian Board of Cricket Control’s 20-year-old rule regarding player-writers. But the sensationalism of the playerwriters has not had any effect on the more thoughtful cricket enthusiasts, and it is noteworthy that the bestinformed, most uncompromising, and most effective opponents of the bodyline attack are men who have had no part in Test cricket, and who are concerned less with the effect of this type of bowling on Test cricket than with its effect on cricket generally.

GLANCING back over comments on the subject that have appeared in English papers, and especially in paper’s that have not the slightest leaning toward sensationalism or “stunting,” one notes a clear advance in opinion about it. There is a hint of satirical humour in the change. In England, as in New Zealand, there was at first much confusion of the body-line attack with the normal form of bowling to a leg-trap field which has been in operation in cricket often before, and which, while cramping to the game, was not dangerous to life and limb. Among the people who did realise the difference the general attitude to the early news from Australia was of scornful disbelief that any English team could do such a thing.

There was, of course, in England, as elsewhere, and in the usual number, the estimable person who declared that in his day batsmen had no trouble in dealing with “bumpers,” and that if he were only young again he’d show them, b’gad. and so on. But after a while his voice was not heard so loud in the land- statements by authoritative English commentators that never before

the Test matches had this particular form of attack been used were having an effect. Disbelief that any captain of England would use such intimidatory tactics implied, of course, that such tactics would he foreign to that captain’s sense of sportsmanship. So, when the accumulating evidence convinced English critics that body-line howling really had been adopted by the M.C.C. team in the Tests, they were constrained to discuss tlie principle rather than the particular application. The better-informed of them could not condone it, because they could judge the probable results of a wholesale emulation of it on cricket generally. Perhaps they recognised, too, that Jardine could conceive that it is not a violation of good sportsmanship. There are many good sportsmen who, playing the game up to the hilt but scorning an unfair advantage, hold that body-line bowling is “all in the game.” It is a matter of difference of personal opinion. But sometimes personal opinion is born of lack of foresight or lack of personal experience.

ADMITTEDLY, Jardine was ill a difficult position. It was obvious that if his fast howling were mastered his whole attack on a good wicket would be mastered. To he effective against Test-match batsmen, in the lighter Australian atmosphere, which gives less “flight” to the ball than the English atmosphere, his slow and medium-paced bowlers needed worn or “sticky” wickets. He knew the lesson of Test history, that fast howlers are generally expensive in such matches on Australian wickets. He had more fast howling than preceding teams had possessed, but much of it was untried against Australian batsmen. Jardine wanted something that would be new to Australian batsmen, something that would force them to evolve a new technique to meet it. Larwood and Voce had used the body-line attack in county cricket before, and Larwood had become the fastest bowler of the day. Concentrating his desires on winning the Tests, Jardine shaped this w'eapon to his ends. It was something entirely new to Test cricket, and it succeeded. The people who say that it had been used in Test cricket before are quite wrong. Fast bowlers had bowled “bumpers” before. but not to a leg-theory field. In any case, Larwood, the principal exponent of body-line bowling, had advantages denied to the fast bowlers of the past. He had a smaller, but not lighter, hall to howl with, and the batsman had a larger wicket to defend against the ball which - did not rise high. Some people thought that, after the Ashes were won, Jardine would not use the body-line attack in the fifth Test. But if lie had omitted it frorn that match, and had lost, his use of it in the earlier games would have appeared in an even more glaring light.

CONSIDERING the generally disturbed atmosphere of the Tests, and the breaches of courtesy on both sides, one may, perhaps, not cai-e greatly that the body-line attack was used in them, were it not for its effect on other cricket, and especially on young players. That is the point which is troubling the foremost English and Australian critics.

The thing is being fought, and it has to be fought. “This violence, which is entirely against the spirit of cricket”; “this brutal device”; “an offence against the great game”; “this dreadful thing” —these are expressions used about it, not by Australians, but by some of the leading English critics, who themselves have played in first-class cricket. It has been suggested that the laws of the game should be altered to prohibit body-line bowling of “bumpers*” There would, however, be difficulty to frame a satisfactory rule on the point, and prohibitive additions to laws of sport tend to confirm a wrong attitude toward the laws.

The Marylebone Cricket Club is in an awkward position. If it were to express disapproval of body-line bowling, or to assent to a new law prohibiting, it, Hie club would be, in effect, censuring Hie captain of the team it has sent to Australia. Possibly the question will be seltled by an agreement with Australia, without the proposed reference to the Imperial Cricket Council. So far as county cricket is concerned, the county clubs have a weapon against the use of this form of bowling. Each club has to play a minimum number of matches in the county competition, but each docs not play every other club. The counties which realise llie danger to cricket generally could refuse to play counties that adopt body-line bonding. A.L.C.