PRESENT DAY CRICKET

Manawatu Times, Volume 60, Issue 277, 23 November 1935, Page 10

PRESENT DAY CRICKET

Under the .title "Is Cricket Declining?" the following article by Neville Cardus in the Spectator contains provocative comment on cricket to-day as compared with cricket years ago. Cardus is one of i the best-known writers on cricket in the world and an outstanding authority. “Cricket never was as good as it used to be," ho writes. “A few years ago I went to Lord’s to watch the match between the Gentlemen and the Players. Jardine, Duleep'sinhji, Chapman, Fender were playing; and Hobbs, Woolley, Sutcliffe, Larwood, and other heroes of the moment. As I . stood watching the game, a little, parson came forward in some slight indignation, and asked me where he could buy a score card/ I referred him to one of the ground boys. ‘ ‘ Lou know, ’ ’ said .he, “it is absolutely necessary for one to buy a card nowadays; these modern players are so much alike —no personality!" To sympathise with him, I replied: “Ah, Sir, there are no Ranjitsinhjia and Maclarens at the present time; no Jessops." He positively snorted: “No Ranjitsinhjis and Maclarcns? Good heavens, sir, the game had gone long before then!" “I think we may take it for granted that in a few years from now we shall look back, those of us who grow old, and deplore the lack of a Bradman, a Hammond, a —, but who else is thoro to name from the contemporary lists? I am trying to be fair to the present; I set forth on this article convinced of character and personality for every cricketer of yesterday gifted in the same raio way. Bradman and Hamm< nd, yes; they could step into the company of the immortals, and stand side by side with Grace, Stoddart, Lokmann, Trumper, J. T. Tyldesley, and the rest. There is the incomparable Woolley left to us, too; but he belongs .to the Golden Age, to the period of before the war. For the life of me, and devoted for ever to cricket though I am, in good years or in bad, I cannot to-day see on our crickets fields the rich nature, the strong individuality, of the past —and I do not hark back lur my comparisons to the legendary years of the Grand Old Man and Peel and Briggs aiid Arthur Shrewsbury. khe Former “Originals." “Think only of the Maurice Tate and Philip Mead of 1924 or thereabouts, of Hobbs as ho was iu his pomp, of Parkin, J. W. H. T. Douglas, Lmmott Robinson, and George Gunn. Then- were not only cricketers; they were ‘originals,’ to use the homely old word, men who used, consciously or unconsciously, ths game of cricket as a wav of life. Fmmot.t Robinson and Bhrdes liked to walk on to a Leeds wicket before a match began aud examine the turf. They would press and cajole it tenderly with their fingers. ‘lt’ll be “sticky" at 4 .o’clock, Fanmott,’ Rhodes would say. No, AV'Jfred,’ Emmo.tt’s reply would be, half past!’ I find that if I wish to talk about cricket with a player it is .to an old player that I must turn; the veung men seldom discuss the game, and-usually they are in haste to ‘go somewhere.’ They lack, as a class, the sense of .the historical background of cricket. ! “When I was a young man, I often talked with Lancashire batsmen and boulers, such as Tyldesley, Dean, fcharp, Cook; they spoke proudly ot the masters who had been their predecessors. My experience of the postwar cricketers, taking them in the lump, is that they are certain the old 'ui s' were of little use at all* Do rou really think W. G. Grace would have been able to play the “googly"? This question was put to me not long a"o by a young player of considerable renown. The note of doubt wps in his voice. It would have been useless to pi, out that ‘ W.G.’ solved every problem designed by bowlers (and rough, wickets) in his long career, and that we could therefore safely assume he would have gone on solving them. Besides, is the ‘googly,’ because it ib modern, the greatest of balls? Grace stopped Spofforth’s bacltbreak; Freeman’s ‘googly’ might have seemed child’s play to him. There is no trick in the contemporary bowler s trade that was not countered by cricketers of the pre-war period. The new ball and its swerve, supposed to be as ’ deadly and as ‘modern’ as poison gas, has never been bowled as viciously as Hirst bowled it. But R. H. Spooner ' played'Hirst brilliantly by means of quick strokes to the on and to leg. There have never been ££ ca^ r ‘ noocly’ bowlers than Vogler, Faulkner, and Schwarz. And R. H. Spooner conjured loveliness out of their spinning mysteries. I mention a P°°“ particularly in this argument—whatever it is—because he was the perfect example of the free stroke player of the Golden Age; and it » the batsman of the Spooner ore’ r that the modern sceptic has in mind when he imagines that bowling of the present ago would be found incomprehensible by the darlings of my youth.

Criticism of Last Century “As I say, cricket has always been a-dcclining and a-falling off. In a copy of Wisden, published round about 189$, an interview appeared with Alfred Shaw; he deplored tko absence of great bowlers and the general deterioration in spin and length. The complaint of Alfred was uttered in a period that was made luminous by the beautiful arts of Lockwood, Richardson, Giffen, J. T. Hearne, Lohmann, and Walter Mead. It is human nature.to grumblo at tho things we adore, and t<j look back on olden times and' see them through romantic mists. None the less, the grumbles of the present year, the present discontents are not the same as the ancient ones.' Nobody dreamed of accusing Maciaren, Ranjitsinhji, Trumper, Tyldesley, Jcssop, A. 0. Jones, and R. E. Foster of a Jack of scoring strokes. Nobody - suggested that England was

DOES IT SHOW A DECLINE ?

CRITICISM OF WORLD AUTHORITY

short of a fast bowler in the heyday of Richardson, Kortridght, W. M. Bradjey, Lockwood and Mold and they and a host of other fast bowlers were playing the game at the same time. Cricket is as clever in its own way to-day as ever it was; tactics change from year to year. But somehow the contemporary cleverness docs not produce the big man. Modern Lack of Stamina “The inswinger of Bowes is probably as nasty to play as ever the offbreak of Richardson was. The point is that Bowes does not bowl his inswinger as continuously as Richardson bowled his offbreak. The other day at Leeds, England failed to beat South Africa for want of a sustained attack. We all applauded the magnificent effort of Bowes’; we told ourselves that he had bowled himself to a standstill and had been foiled by want of support. The truth is that Bowes sent down 19 overs in threo spells separated from one another by lunch, tea, and 'refreshments taken to the field every hour. Topi Richardson once bowled at Old Trafford against Australia for three and a-half hours unchanged, and nearly won a match himself. Our standards have turned awry ; no fast bowler to-day would dream of working for one hour without a Test. We shake tho welkin because Hammond, with his side as safe as houses, scores 50 runs in an hour.' In 1899 at Kennington Oval, England lost five wickets on a “sticky" pitch'for 48; England were a ben-ton side. Jessop came in and cut and drove 105 in 75 minutes. It is true that Jessop was Jessop, the most wonderful, the most scientific and swift hitter the game has ever known. But a Jessop is not a mere batting technique that goes by itself; imagination *and will were needed to drive Jessop’s superb engine. “And I ask myself often, ‘Would an England cricketer to-day, even if blessed with Jessop’s technique, droam of batting in a test match as Jessop did that immortal afternoon at the Oval?’ Albert Trott once drove a bail over tho pavilion at Lord’s; he could not have done it by accident; ho must have thought about it and‘considered tho deed possible and desirable. I suggest—difficulty and for argument’s sake—that no cricketer of the present moment ever goes to Lord’s visualising a drive over the pavilion, or a spell of fast bowling lasting threo and ohalf hours, or an innings of 100 in 75 minutes in a test match-

Tile Professional Influence “The game has become mainly an affair of professional skill. And it is a fine skill —but at tbo back of it thrift and economy rule. Cricket has never touched great heights in tho absence of an amateur example and control. The amateur is passing _ from first-class cricket. Indeed, judging by this year’s university match, ho is passing from the game, as an artist and stylist, altogether. There is no England captain by divine right today. Maclnron, Jackson, Fry, the Fosters, A. O. Jones, all of these amateur cricketers —and there were a score of others —could have been seen at Lord’s once on a time in the same match. ‘You couldn’t help playing well,’ said J. T. Tyldesley to mo many years ago, ‘with Mr Maclarcn at tho other end, or Mr Spooner.’ The land is not naked at the present time; there are capable cricketers everywhere. ’ There havo probably never been batsmen more efficient than Bradman, Headley, and Bruce Mitchell. But where, or where, are the delightful artists? There is Hammond, of course. Better still, there is Woolley, who has never i|i his life compromised with his true gifts. Ho has always batted graciously, freely—or not at all. Never has ho bored a crowd; never has ho stayed in at tiio price of denying his own true strokes. He is to-day the only cricketer in the land to whom you can say for certain*: ‘He’ll give us intense pleasure, or he’ll get out.’ “And that, in a word, is where wc are-in first-class Cricket in 1935."

The Nottinghamshire County Cricket Club will give Harold Larwood a benefit next year. In a statement issued by the club on the subject appears this sentence: “It is hoped that many contributions will bo received from Australia, .where Larwood has numerous friends and admirers."