BODY-LINE BOWLING AGAIN!

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXX, Issue 21553, 26 July 1933, Page 8

BODY-LINE BOWLING AGAIN!

Cricketers from the West Indies, by their recourse to body-line bowling in their second test match, have taken the question concerning this sort of attack out of the arena of Anglo-Australian dispute. It did not arise there, for more than a year ago there were strong objections to the introduction of this type of bowling in English county matches, and the arguments used by prominent English devotees of the game, Mr. Warner being soon among them, ,were precisely those used since and now reiterated by Mr. Warner and Mr. Gilligan. One thing clear from the former's plain words now repeated—as .one of the travelling selectors of the English teams playing last season in Australia, he was not a party to these tactics there. Hobbs, who was also with that touring team, kept silent then but has since published a strong protest, framed on the lines first laid down in outspoken English criticism and remaining unassailed. The issue has been clouded by confusion of "bodyline" with merely fast bowling, with leg-theory bowling and with short bowling none of them new whereas what the English critics have decried is bowling that is fast and aimed at the batsman rather than the wicket and pitched so short and bumpingly that it compels the batsman to think more of avoiding serious injury than of batting. Mr. Warner's words "it savours of intimidation," arc the burden of the complaint made first in England and unanswered yet in spite of a spate of words more or less irrelevant and certainly uncomplimentary to the intelligence of the cricket

public. That this stylo of attack is within the four comers of cricket law iB unquestionable, but this must be poor comfort for Hammond's injured feelings and damaged appearance, or for Mr. Jardine's memory of his ignominious ducking instead of playing the ball, to say nothing of the noisy protests of the onlooking crowd at the slow scoring inevitable in the face of this attack, protests that must have jarred on his love of polite silence. Mr. Warner is sorry that the West Indians resorted to these tactics. So will bo many in lands where real cricket is loved as much as in England ; but there will be a deal of quiet satisfaction that tho English chicken has come home to roost after a riotous, time abroad.