THE ART OF WICKET-KEEPING

Wairarapa Daily Times, 8 February 1926, Page 2

THE ART OF WICKET-KEEPING

A WONDERFUL DEVELOPMENT. FEATS*THAT MAKE HISTORY. Of the many evolutions which the last hundred years have witnessed in cricket, perhaps none is more striking than the immense development in the art of wicket-keeping. In these days we take completely for granted the presence of a first-class wicket-keeper in every county side, and even ordinary • club or school teams arc considered badly served if they have not the man who will stand right up to all but definitely fast bowling and take the majority of his chances, both of stumping and catching, says ail English writer. A century ago things were altogether different. At that time round-arm bowling was just coming in, and the next ten or fifteen years saw the art of attack largely degenerate into indiscriminate slinging, in which pace was everything, and length and direction conspicuously absent. Before Such an assault the lot of the wicket-keeper was anything but a happy one, particularly on grounds such as Lord’s, when two shooters an over were varied by a ball that would pass the batsman face high. Under these conditions it is not surprising that, except in grand matches, there was little attempt at stumping. The old keepers all stood, more or less upright, a yard or more back from the wicket, and rather on the off-side of it. Down to about 1840 they wore neither pads nor gloves, and this though they had to take bowling as fast as any to be seen in county cricket to-day. Naturally enough, then, they made no attempt to stop everything that came their way, but looked for the catch on the off-side, for the most part neglecting altogether everything to leg. HEROES AT LONCt-STOP.

Now, this, of course, was only possible because of the trusted support of the long-stop. It is notcomnionly understood that, right down to the first Australian visit in 187 S, when Blackham set the world a new standard in', this respect, no keeper -in England thought of dispensing with a longstop to a bowler of any real pace. If, as old Clarke used to say, in selecting a.side, the wicket-keeper should always be the first man picked, the second, so far as consideration of field went, must, at this time, have been the “local .support.’’ In the age of the “slinging bowling,” the number of extras in even the ’Varsity matches were prodigious, sometimes amounting to- almost a third of 'the total score; and the issue of the day might easily turn on the skill and’ courage of the two men behind the stumps. The crack longstops would generally save more runs than the longest of the batsmen’s “hands.” These men would stand slightly to leg, just far enough back to take the ball on the rise from its second bound, but not so far away as to give byes. To the latter end they had to be strong throwers, the theory being that the ball should always be thrown to the bowler’s end, because the batsman, knowing himself to be in physical jeopardy, would tend to cover the back of his head with a hand, and thus reduce his pace between the wickets! The fastest bowlers had their special long-stops, without whom they might easily “bowl away a match in byes”; thus Hartoff “stopped” to Harvey Fellows, Marshall to Maroon, and padded for him, too, whilst Alfred Mynn, when not supported by his brother Walter, needed two, and once hit a * 1 second stop 5 * six times running in the chest, so that the unfortunate gentleman went home and spat blood for a fortnight! And yet Herbert Jenner, captain of Cambridge in the first Varsity match, kept to Mynn with bare hands without suffering physical disaster, thanks, it was said, to a mysterious lotion of Romany brew; Ned Wenman, captain of the great Kent eleven of that day, actually stumped a man off his bowling. THE FIRST OF THE MODERNS.

I But the first man to break away from ! the old traditions, to adopt the modern ! crouching attitude, to make leg balls his business as well as off, and to look for stumping as a regular possibility, was Tom Lockyer, who kept for the famous Surrey XI. of the ’fifties and ’sixties. Richard Daft, writing in the late nineties, could still call Lockyer the finest wicket-keeper that the game had known. He was succeeded by Poolev, who, with Binder, of Yorks, and Pilling, of Lancs, made up a famous contemporary trinity. Poolev- is something of a phenomenon, as he had never kept in his life until the age of 25, when, Lockyer’s band being sore one day, he volunteered to take his pine", aiid was soon performing as to th t manner born. A man of great courage, he had during liis career every finger of each band broken. Of modern “keepers,” Harry Butt’s hands show, perhaps, the most wear and tear. An early predecessor of Butt’s in Sussex, Thomas Box, was “a very hamlsumo ! man until he had his nose smashed ov a bumper at Lord’s. ’ ’ lr U.ekyer was the pioneer of a new school, in Mr Blackham it found :ts master. On four consecutive Australian tours, between 1878 and 1884, lie kept wickets virtually unrelieved for six days a week through the season, and that with a brilliance and certaintv, that was an absolute revelation to English cricketers. In ’7B Mr Spofforth was a pure fast bowler, and until they saw it. done, men-could not believe fb.af, in taking him, Mr Blackburn could dispense with a long-stop. Of his debt to the latter’s example and encouragement | rite most famous of our own Test match stumpers, Dick Lilley, pays a warm tribute. Lilley played in 21 “Tests” in this country, thus heading by one the Hon. F. S. Jackson and 11 nodes. Great keeper as he was, he owed his consistent selection largely to the additional argument of his batting j.ewers. A few wicket-keepers, notably Lockyer, H. H. Stephenson, and Storer, have also been bowlers of parts, whilst

Alfred Lyttelton once took off his gloves and captured four wickets for 19 iii a Test match at the Oval. TilE GREAT AMATEURS. Alfred Lyttelton was the first amateur to keep wickets for England against Australia, at Home, and he was succeeded by two others, E. F. S. Tylecote and Gregor McGregor. The lastnamed had made his reputation by the magnificent way he took the bowling of Mr-Sain Woods, when they played together for Cambridge, and perhaps he was the greatest amateur keeper that has yet appeared. In the Gentlemen v. Phi vers ’ match of 1893 he caug-it hi auk Sugg standing up to Air Ko'twrigM when that bowler was at Ills very tastes'.. But j crimp's the most spectacular

performance of all time stands to the credit of Mr Martyn, of Somerset, when, for the Gentlemen, in 1906, and on a fiery wicket at Lords, he stood up to Mr Knox and Air Brearley. AloSt of the players were frankly intimidated, but ATr Alartyn took that terrific onslaught a.s if it was the easiest thing in the world, and the crowds rose in their seats to cheer him. Somerset have had a remarkable sequenoe of amateur stumpers in Messrs Wickham, Newton, Martyn and Lyon. The wicket keeper’s lot to-day is tainly happier than once it was, o fifing to the enormous improvement in the grounds, but they have had to deal with two problems unknown to their early predecessors, the googly and the ball swinging to leg. To the first a solution was sometimes found in a prearranged signal between bowler and wicket-keeper, but Lilley, An keeping to Mr Bosanquet, would have none of it saving that it distracted the bowler, and he, as others after him, surmounted the difficulty by native gen-

Bowlers like Air George Hirst and Air Frank Foster must have been sore trials to any keeper, and the cult of the in-swing has now extended itself to right-handers, to say nothing of the leg-trap theory practised on turning wickets. But to all these trials the art of the wicket keeper has risen superior, and it remains to-day, perhaps, the most astonishing phenomenon in a highly-specialised game.