CRICKET.

New Zealand Illustrated Sporting & Dramatic Review, Volume XIV, Issue 852, 5 July 1906, Page 10

CRICKET.

There isn’t the faintest doubt but that cricket as it is played to-day can do with a considerable amount of brightening up, and the “Daily Mail” has invited the leaders of the game to suggest methods by which this improvement may be accomplished. From their repiles one gathers that the payment of “talent money” and the curse of “average-mongering” are regarded as the worst blots on the game. A. O. Jones, the Notts captain, is agin talent money, but he says, “In my opinion, the best way to make the game more popular would be for all cricket grounds to have a uniform boundary, say, 75 yards all round. All cricketers, even the worst stonewallers, will have a ‘go’ if you give them a chance and they think they can hit the ball over the boundary, and even the hitters would be inclined to ‘chance their arm’ more than ever. But, of course, to make the scheme better, every hit that drops over the boundary must count six so as to make it worth the batsman’s risk. This would not only make the game more interesting from a batting point of view, but it would also put a greater premium on fielding and catching, which I think are really appreciated by the spectators more than any big scores made by individuals.” J. T. Tyldesley regards average-mongering as bad as talentgetting in rendering the game slow and in making the amateur as much a stone-waller as a professional. “There is a kind of a hall-mark stamp,” he says, “about a score of 50 or 100 that is absent from a 47 or 98 and it is with the idea of trying to make sure of reaching the goal that many players adopt the slow method of obtaining the last few runs. This applies to both amateurs and professionals alike. Compilers of statistics, tables and books on the game invariably pick out fifty and ‘centuries,’ and to this fact, along with the publication of the averages, a portion of the mischief may perhaps be attributed” G. L. Jessop thinks cricket might be brightened, but while he thinks the batsmen are to blame for slow play he does not exonerate the

bowler. According to him: “Wide leg-bowling and the stereotyped bowling for catches in the slips have much to answer for in this respect. No self-respecting batsman cares to be ‘fooled’ out by such tactics, and consequently too often we are treated to a game of patience between the bowler and batsman, with no other result than the exhaustion of the patience of the spectators and the increasing risk of a drawn game.”

Hirst was in magnificent form at Leeds in the Yorkshire and Leicester match, played just prior to the last mail leaving England. Yorkshire gained an easy victory over Leicester by an innings and 103 runs. The champions raked together a total of 244 —of which Denton contributed 108 —and then the old firm went on to bowl. In their first innings the visitors made 34, the highest individual score being nine. It is not often that a first-class match is won and lost in such a short period as six hours, yet this was the full time occupied by Yorkshire and Leicestershire in bringing their game to a definite conclusion. Hirst has never done anything with the ball quite so fine as his seven wickets for 18 since he dismissed five of the Australian batsmen on the same ground in the famous--23 innings of 1902.