TEST CRICKET

Otago Daily Times, Issue 23107, 5 February 1937, Page 8

TEST CRICKET

Now that the fourth of the present series of test cricket matches in Australia is over, two sentences in one of the interesting despatches written by J. B. Hobbs this week may be recalled. The crowd at Adelaide, he wrote, “ did not want to see test cricket.” It “ wanted to see Bradman bat.” It is easy to sympathise with the South Australian people. A test match has become a dour business. The match at Adelaide was prolonged into the sixth day. The aggregate score for the four innings was 1294 runs. In five full days’ cricket 1199 runs were scored. This gave an average of 240 runs a day. Those who were present at Carisbrook on the first day of the match this season between Auckland and Otago will remember that a score of 550 (for five wickets) was made by Auckland. Even, however, if we disregard a comparison, which may be inapt, between test cricket in Australia and Plunket Shield cricket in New Zealand, the criticism is still reasonable that scoring at the rate of 240 runs a day—in fine weather on an Australian wicket on a ground with a short boundary—represents dull cricket to all but the relatively small number of persons who are capable of a full appreciation of a duel between bowler and batsman. Yet the interest in this series of matches is so widespread and keen in Australia that, though the prospect may be that of a repetition of unenterprising batting and slow scoring, a tremendous crowd of spectators may be expected at the final match, which will be begun at Melbourne on February 26. There is one proviso: Bradman must not fail. Upon Bradman, who is this week the object of adulation of the cricket writers, the chances of the Australian team depend much too largely. His batting was disappointing in the matches at Brisbane and Sydney, and the Australians lost. It is hardly too much to say that it is to his batting that the Australians owed their success at Melbourne and Adelaide. The Australian team does not seem to be so well balanced as to afford any well-grounded confidence in its success and the reliance that is placed on the efforts of one individual member of it must be embarrassing to him.