ENGLISH BOWLERS CALM

Southland Times, Issue 23026, 21 October 1936, Page 14

ENGLISH BOWLERS CALM

BRADMAN’S DOUBLE CENTURY AGGRESSIVE BATSMEN IN TEAM The news of Bradman’s double century against O’Reilly has been received on the Orion with philosophic calm by the English bowlers, (said Neville Cardus in a wireless message to The Sun, Sydney, before the English cricketers arrived at Fremantle). For my part, I wish I could have seen how Bradman dealt with the leg trap of O’Reilly, for England’s success in the Tests, will, I think, depend largely on whether O'Reilly is given permission by the batsmen to place two or three fieldsmen within a pickpocket’s _ distance of the said batsmen’s left hip. In recent years, England has lost several matches to Australia, because Grimmett and O’Reilly have been free to exploit “booby traps”—silly points, silly mid-ons, and all sorts of absurd positions. At Lord's, in 1930, Grimmett placed his silly point and silly mid-on almost on the pitch itself. Even then, they were rather too deep. The present England team is the most free, ad most aggressive in batsmanship sent to Australia since the

war. If each player remains true to his style, Australian crowds will see some delightful cricket, whatever the result of the rubber. Vital Batsmanship. There are only two batsmen in Allen’s command of whom you can say that they are stonewallers on principle. These are Fagg and Wyatt. From the others one looks for gallant, flashing strokes. Barnett is capable of hitting three fours off the first over of any match; and there is vitality and challenge in the batting whenever Hardstaff is at the wicket, or Leyland, or Hammond, or Worthington, or Fishlock, or Allen, or Robins. This England team might any day score a brave and beautiful 500, all out, or an equally brave and beautiful 150, also all out.

It will be a mistake if these natural stroke players try to change their methods, and endeavour to put into practice the dreary modern gospel of “safety first,” with no fours before lunch, according to the Lancashire and Yorkshire trade union rules. O’Reilly thrives on batsmen who are afraid to drive him. A concerted raid must be made on O’Reilly’s short legs; he must be compelled to open out his field. O’Reilly, and possibly FleetwoodSmith, are England’s chief dangers. If Fleetwood-Smith is now physically fit’ and if he is able to bowl with the wonderful spin he achieved at Canterbury against Kent two years ago, then he must be regarded as a force and protagonist of great importance. The new leg-before-wicket rule should suit his Oriental obliquities of spin. Incomparable Bradman. Bradman, obviously, is at the height of his powers already. Frankly, I am glad of it. I love to see him in full blast. Brilliant, powerful, unorthodox, and audacious, his great artillery interrupted now and again by strange skyrockets of vulgarity. Original nature is always breaking through the grim machine of Bradman’s incomparable efficiency, which keeps his cricket close to our affections. Without these sudden and unprincipled moments of rebelliousness against his own technical accuracy, Bradman’s cricket would become bloodless and automatic. I thrill to see him defying his own grammar, so to say, and hurling purple rhetoric over the field with a cross bat. He may be a Don, but he is no pundit. “The Game’s The Thing.” The England team is eager to begin practice at Perth. Everything promises

a chivalrous rubber and fine antagonism, but generous sportsmanship. Let us all work to keep the atmosphere clean and unexcited by irrelevant sensation. “The game’s the thing.” And, above all, let us, as Tristram Shandy says, “keep our tempers.” Cricket has a rich humorous tradition. When I think of some of the gags of the great characters, I feel as though Tom Emmett, Johnny Briggs, Cecil Parkin, J. J. Lyons, Warwick Armstrong, Sam Carter, Maurice Tate, and others, had walked straight from the pages of Charles Dickens. Away with the contemporary solemnity. Let us play hard, but with a laugh. And give the crowd its chance to join in the fun, too. It will not abuse the jester’s licence.