CRICKET.

Waikato Times, Volume 114, Issue 19052, 16 September 1933, Page 17 (Supplement)

CRICKET.

MOST ORIGINAL PLAYER. I i | EXPRESSION OF TEMPERAMENT. I CLAIM FOR L. N. CONSTANTINE. f Genius i-s originality, and in cricket the man is a genius who does a thing superbly, masterfully, and entlr'cly in a way of his own. His play must make us cry out. "Nobody else could do it! ” And'we must feel and know that without It tho game would be -short of -some quality or power necessary to the fulfilment > of all Its delightful parts and pos- ! slbilities (writes "Cricketer,” who is : Neville Cfurdus, in the " Manchester j Guardian.”) j- We cannot think of cricket save in •i terms of W. G. Grace, “ RanJl," A. G. I MacLaren, J. B. Hobbs, F. E. Wolley ’ —to name a few of the indispensable ; names. These men helped to -make > cricket—-which is a living growth, not | an abstraction. Cricket, considered purely as a game in the abstract, is any engagement between two teams using bats, wickets, and a ball for the Implements. The cricket we love as a people the wide world over Is the ! sum-total of all the personfff skill and j character' which have been put Into Jt by great men who have played it j and who, by giving to the teohnlque j and form some turn or push of their j own, have kept development alive and i in touch with \ the people, deoade ! after deoade. W. 'G. Grace not only | demonstrated the art of placing the i ball and how to play forward and ! back In one comprehensive system of | footwork; also he was an eminent Victorian and the embodiment of Gloucestershire. K. S. Ranjltsinhji not only demonstrated the leg glance; ho also expressed the genius of his race. G. H. Hirst was one of the original great swervers, but he Swerved with a Yorkshire accent. In the age of jazz and Irving Berlin, C. H. Parkin became the first Jazz cricketer; his slow ball was a syncopation In flight. Representative Man. The most original crloketer of the preseqt day Is L. N. Constantine, Nothing so original, Indeed, has been witnessed on a orloket field In our time. It is not enough to say that he hits the hall hard and often, with strokes which defy analysis; U, L. Jessop did all that, Incomparably. No; Constantine’s originality is a vital and full expression of the West Indian temperament, a temperament which has never before been able to find complete artloulation In a West Indian orlcketer because It takes some time for any activity; of life to reach that stage of evolution whloh produces the representative man and i -master. There have 'been, of oourse, West Indian cricketers with as much as Constantine’s skill. G. Challenor was a great batsman, but he was not essentially West Indian In style or temperament. When we see Constantine bat or bowl or field we know at once that he Is not an English player, not an Australian player, not a South Afrloan player; we know that his cuts and drives, his whirling fast balls, his leaplngs and olutchings and dartings In the slips are raolaTl We know they are the oonsequenoe of Impulses born in the blood, hoated by sun, and Influenced by an environment and way of life muoh more natural than ours, Impulses not oommon to the psychology of the overolvlllsed quarters of the world. When Constantine plays orloket the whole -man plays, not Just the professional orlcketer part of him. There Is nothing in the world for him, when he bats, save the ball to be hit —and a boundary to hit It over. When he bowls the world Is three wlokets, there to he sent spinning gloriously. Crloket, Indeed, is Gonstaintlne’-s- element; to say that he plays cricket, or takes part in It, is to say that a fish goes swimming. Constantine Is orloket, West Indian cricket—Just as Grace was English ci'icket. The branohes are the tree; the players are the game. Breaks All Laws. Constantine performs strokes not set down In the Englishman’s or in the Australian’s repertory. He breaks all the laws, save his own laws. Sometimes, when he allows spirit to run away with him, he lets energy come out orudely, Instead of In significant form. At Lord's In the match with the M.C.G., he lost his wloket by heaving a ball "down square-leg’s throat;” the hit .was no more Constantine’s than It was any slogger’s, enjoying the humour of the village green. But the next day he was an artist, a master of the grotesque. He hit a hall for six to leg so fine that you were ready to vow that It went over tho wloketkeeper’s head. The hall was past him when he smote, as though by an afterthought, inoredibly late. Constantine’s strokes are always made late; he must have marvellous eyes. He does not lift his bat high behind 'him as the ball is coming; a high backlift means that a batsman is feeling he must give himself plenty of time. Constantine waits until the ball Is on him: then swift as lightning and swifter, he cracks his bat like a whip, using forearms whloh are as flexible as they are powerful. No man living or dead has hit a ball to tho boundary with more than the strength and velocity of Constantine. The strokes leave the field standing, and they make the sound of triumphant aggression. He can cut from the middle stump, clean down to third-man, with a stab that momentarily takes away the eyesight of the slips. He will lie back on his right foot and orash the ball past mldon—a good length ball too—with an energy that promises broken legs and cries for the ambulance. To field anywhere when Constantine is batting is to bo in danger of serious hurt any minute. He causes the largest cricket ground to seem small; when lie is riding his hurricane, eleven men aro not half enough in the field. His strokes are not blind; he knows what ho is doing, and the penetrative strength of his bat reduces the swiftest runner to a misplaced block of wood. A Hostile Bowler. Because he was horn to be a representative West Indian cricketer, lie is a fast bowler. All West Indians who -conic to the game try to howl fast as a matter of course; to train a West Indian slow bowler you must begin

-with his grandfather. Constantine runs to the wicket for dear life, a bouncing, galloping sort of run; then he leans Bldeways and without a Jump brings over his arm beautifully high. He Is a hostile bowler. Every fast bowler should be hostile. Constantine expects to take a wicket every ball; at the end of each fruitless over he looks puzzled, and takes his cap from the r umplre with his head down and lost In thought as he considers the mystery of frustration. When the ball leaves his arm the swift line of flight seems somehow part of his run up to the wloket; Constantine’s bowling, the line and direction of It, always strikes me as a visible flashing current of the man’s life-force. The pace Indeed apparently pulls his body after it; his run follows the ball, and you can never see exaotly where it ends and where exactly Constantine cease§ to be a bowler and becomes a fieldsman quick as a cat after a mouse for a oatch from his own attack. Constantine has brought off many a “o and b” which have beggared explanation and description. Apparently he has the power to be In two places at the same time. A Craok Fieldsman. Years ago at Lords, in the first Test match ever played with the West Indians in England Larwood began the second-day batting against Constantine. A ball of terrific pace jumped straight up, and Larwood,' shielding his breast, popped the ball in front of him. None of us thought the stroke was really a chance —we saw the bail in the air and said to ourselves, “If only the wicket-keeper had been closer up; if only point had been not quite so deep. . . . But lo and behold! Constantine came down tho pitch In two glorious animal leaps, and he fell in front of the block-hole, ■missing the chance only by inches. The catch would have been tho most unexpected ever made in cricket's history, surely. The effort left us all breathless; Larwood stood there the picture of astonishment, wondering "where Constantine had come from.” The. movements of Constantine in the field arc strange, almost primitive, in their pouncing voracity and unconsci-

ous beauty, a dynamio beauty, not one of smooth ourves and relaxations. He does not run after a hall hit through the slips; he springs after It, swoops on It rather .than ploks It up. There are no bones In his body, only great charges and flows of energy. You cannot see some of his slip fielding, so rapid Is his action. You hear the bat’s crack, and then you hear the ball crashing the stumps. He can catch anything. Constantine ought to have first refusal of all chances hit to any part of the field. Only one thing oan he not do; ho cannot save tho overthrows which sometimes happen from his own returns. A genius and a representative man. He has made his unique contribution to the style and technique of the game. He has at the same tlmb told the tale, of his people. At Lord’s while Constantine was batting a number of his compatriots wept for Joy and shook hands In brotherly union. Constantine was their prophet; they saw In his genius some power all their own, a power ageless, never to be put down, and free and splendid.