Cricket (Lyttelton, 1898)/Chapter 1
CRICKET
I
BATTING
Cricket may for descriptive purposes be divided into two separate classes: (1) Batting, (2) Bowling and Fielding. There are certain conditions of wicket when the attacking party may be said to be the batsmen and the defending party the bowlers; on other conditions of wicket exactly the contrary state of things is brought about. In a hot summer, when the wicket is true and fast, English bowlers can bowl a good length, but few can turn the ball or cause it to come at different speeds from the ground when delivered at the same pace before reaching the ground. The batsman has, therefore, comparatively an easy task, and instead of devoting his mind to merely keeping his wicket from falling, i.e., to defensive purposes, he attacks, and makes run-getting his primary object; but on a soft, caking wicket the bowler has a good time of it, and becomes the attacking party, while the ordinary run of batsmen have to defend. In the present chapter, therefore, I propose to treat of batting under two distinct heads: first, when the wicket is true and hard, and against the bowlers; and second, when the wicket is soft and tricky, and in favour of the bowlers.
Thirty years ago wickets generally were more in favour of bowlers than they are now, for the mowing machine and the heavy roller make modern wickets like billiard tables. Whereas on the old grounds you had to prepare your mind for an occasional bumping ball as well as a dead shooter, now, in years like 1896, for instance, you can assume that the ball will come true and of a certain altitude, and may play accordingly.
A batsman can generally tell what the wicket is going to do even before he begins batting, the state of the weather for a week previous and the reputation of the ground will be enough; and he will go in with a light heart and look forward to a pleasant hour. There are many sorts of players. There is the batsman whose temperament, if he is not sure about the length of a ball, will lead him to try a smack, while another will play at the same ball carefully. There are some, like Abel, who absolutely refuse to hit at any ball except those that exactly suit their fancy, and those particular balls they will hit for four; there are others, on the contrary, like O'Brien and Jessop, who, when they get set, seem to have the power to hit balls of any length or pace. W. G. Grace in his prime did not appear to hit, in the sense of putting out the whole of his strength; in fact he did not hit, strictly speaking, except sometimes to leg and a cut, but he had the supreme art of pushing the ball for four and placing it out of the reach of the field. Of course Grace's play is a feature by itself, unique, unapproached and unapproachable. In making comparisons between this and that player, or sets of players; it is always understood that 'Grace is left out of the question—his standard, so far as batting is concerned, is to be looked at; not emulated. Those who never saw him in his prime, like our University players of to-day, can never know what cricket was when Grace was king; for half-an-hour of Grace's batting was to bowlers and field what Rudyard Kipling says of the Zulus and the British soldier:—
"An 'appy day with Fuzzy on the rush
Will last an 'ealthy Tommy for a year."
Half-an-hour of Grace's batting found the bowlers demoralised, the fields at their wits' end, the captain tearing his hair, and this not once or twice only, but week after week, year after year.
To return, however, to our batsman who on a hot day steps out to try his luck at the wicket, at the beginning of a match when the ball is red and the wickets very green. a very fast bowler on at one end and a medium pace at the other. Now some bats have what to others is an extraordinary knack of playing back on fast wickets to fast bowling; and all Nottingham was probably talking; in 1897, of Gunn's great innings in the Notts and Surrey match. It was reported that the feature of that innings was Gunn's back play to Richardson. Back play by most bats to Richardson on a fast wicket would simply result in a waste of strength by a fruitless movement of the bat, a noise among the stumps, and a walk to the pavilion. But Gunn has in these days, and Carpenter had in the sixties, the power, given to few, of playing back to fast bowlers; and this power must be found out for the batsman by the batsman himself, and, if found to answer, persevered in. Hardly a coach and teacher exists who would teach a boy to play back to fast bowling unless the ball is very short; it is far easier for the general run of bats to play forward, for the great pace of the ball makes it a gift to be quick enough to come down on the ball before it is past the bat. To an ordinary player it is wise to say that the ball of which you must be careful when you first go in is a very fast and short ball that you must play back to, but which is very likely to bowl you before you have got accustomed to the pace of the ground. You must be careful of such a ball; you must concentrate your mind on stopping it; and the obvious truth must be pressed home again, that, for at any rate a quarter of an hour, defence, not attack, must be your one consideration; and to the fast bowler the best advice for most batsmen is to make forward play the backbone of your play. There are players like Jessop, of Cambridge University and Gloucestershire, whose play is all hit. Such players have a splendid eye, often only staying about fifteen minutes at the wicket, but during that time scoring about a run and a half a minute. An ideal side ought to have at least one such hitter in its ranks. A great deal of the success of the various Australian elevens was due to the fact that some great hitter or hitters were to be found who, in a few minutes, used sometimes to turn a match. Of course such players must carry out their regular tactics. They are almost to a certainty weak in defence, and so they had better trust to their eye and play their own game.
About nervousness nothing can be said. Every cricketer who is played for his batting is nervous, and if you hear anybody say he does not know what it is to feel nervous, catalogue that individual as one of many who do not like their true feelings to be known of men. Now we will suppose our friend, after a single, to have got down to the other end and to be preparing to meet the medium pace bowler, who has the power of changing his pace. If it is necessary to be careful for a quarter of an hour to fast bowling, it is probably correct to say that you had better pay respect to a "dodgy" bowler for half-an-hour before you play a free game. With the fast bowler you may assume that the pace for every ball is very much alike; but with the medium dodgy bowler like Lohmann this is not by any means the case; if you hit at all wildly you will find it easy to mis-hit, and if you leave your ground the wicket-keeper finds it easy to stump you. Let the different principles necessary for playing fast bowling and slow be here briefly examined.
Before going further, it must be remembered that each age has its characteristics, and that what was deemed true and correct, and even indispensable, in old days, is now criticised and not acted upon by a new and sceptical generation. Formerly it was a universally received axiom that to fast bowling the right foot must be kept firm as a rock—not the whole of the right foot, for when you are playing forward, the tip of the five toes of the right foot only must touch the ground, the back of the heel pointing straight to the sky; but the whole of the right foot must never be shifted except when you move it across to cut. Be careful to distinguish between cutting and off-driving. They are quite distinct, and one important difference between them consists in the fact that in off-driving, the left foot is moved across; in cutting, the right. G. H. Longman is the only instance I can call to mind of a man who cut with the left foot across, and his cutting consisted of beautiful timing of the ball, and more of a drive than a cut. But Prince Ranjitsinhji, whose wrists resemble small serpents, steps back to fast bowling, and with that marvellous quickness of his, hits the shortest fast balls all round the wicket. This, however, is a gift that I have never observed in anybody else, and I incline to the old opinion, that the right foot should never be moved to fast bowling except to cut. If anybody tries Prince Ranjitsinhji's methods with less than his suppleness of wrist, he will find his wicket disturbed. Ranjitsinhji himself could never have done it in old days when the wickets sometimes shot and often bumped; it is a stroke, in fact, begotten and nurtured on Fenners and Brighton. Another difference between playing fast bowling and slow, is that fast bowling is far easier to hit behind the wicket on the off-side than slow, as may be seen from the fact that Richardson has, besides the wicket-keep, three fields in the slips at least; while to slow—Tyler, for instance—two would suffice. As every cricketer knows, players are constantly caught in two minds when playing slow bowling, the result being a compromise frequently attended by disaster. To fast bowling there is no time for two minds; your first instinct may be a wrong one, but for better for worse it is the first and only instinct.
A good batsman often leaves his ground to slow bowling, and, meeting the ball either full pitch or the second it leaves the ground, pulls it to leg if a full pitch, or drives it if a half volley. In the case of a full pitch a batsman often has the power to place it where there are no fields; if leg is put square, as he invariably is to slow bowling, he can pull the ball fine out of his reach. Great care, however, is necessary to go out to the right ball; for if a bowler has any break, and you do not smother the ball, the batsman will be beat by the break, and stumped or bowled. Some bowlers break so much that it is almost true to say you had better go on the safe side and not leave your ground, unless you can be sure of getting the ball full pitch.
To very slow bowlers it therefore follows that the really proper standard of play is to play back, or, going out of your ground, to hit full pitch; but remember one thing, never go out to a ball unless certain of making it a full pitch, that is on the off side, for it is not easy to hit it with a straight bat, since if you miss it you must be stumped. To medium pace bowling some sort of compromise must be adopted between the two methods I have recommended. You cannot go out of your ground to such bowlers; on the other hand, you ought not to play so many balls forward, and you must be very careful to observe the changes of pace. When the wicket is very hard and fast, the commonest way of getting out is to be caught behind the wicket either by the wicket-keep standing back, or in the slips; and the reason is, that to one sort of bowler it is very easy to hit under the balls you are trying to cut; and to another sort (when the ball comes across at all from leg) batsmen are very apt to play inside it, just turning it thereby into short slip's hands. It is well when you first go in, therefore, to sacrifice some strength at off balls, refraining from making a clean hit, and, instead, to hit on the top of the ball to keep it down.
To score on difficult bowlers' wickets is an art that stands by itself. The men who can do this are the chosen few. Where one man can show scientific cricket on soft, caking grounds, ten at least can be found who can play and hit bowling when the wicket is hard and fast. There are two sorts of players whose methods are entirely different and entirely opposite. The really scientific batsman who plays correct and orthodox cricket, watching every ball with the eye of a hawk, keeping his left shoulder well forward and thereby getting well over the bumping ball, holding the bat, when occasion demands, loosely—such a bat hardly exists. Of course, putting Grace aside, the only batsmen of the scientific sort whom I have seen rise above difficulties of wicket are Shrewsbury, Barnes, Steel, and Rashleigh; and of these the greatest is Shrewsbury, whose innings of 164, in 1886, against Palmer, Giffen, Garrett, Spofforth, and Evans, was the greatest individual innings on a bowler's wicket that I have ever seen; and ever to be held in honour was Rashleigh's two innings in 1888, when he scored 48 and 37 on a real bowler's wicket against Turner and Ferris just in their prime, and whom he had never seen before.
The other sort of player, who sometimes comes off on difficult wickets, is the bold and fearless hitter; and in this, as in several other ways, we have learnt a lesson from the Australians. In the particular match I have just mentioned, in which Rashleigh played those two celebrated innings, the opposite method was seen when M'Donnell, though against vastly inferior bowling, scored over 100 by the most fearless, dashing cricket. In the same year M'Donnell's greatest innings was played at Manchester, when, in the last innings, going in first with Bannerman, on a soft wicket against Peate and the crack northern bowlers, he scored 82 out of a total of 86. This innings of M'Donnell, and Shrewsbury's of 164, I consider the two greatest batting feats that this generation has seen on bad wickets, while O'Brien's 148 against Surrey in 1896 ranks high.
In giving a sort of brief summary of batting now, it appears to me that, as may be naturally inferred when so many splendid grounds are provided, batsmen score faster and far more largely than formerly; but not being so accustomed to bad wickets, they do not rise superior to difficulties of pitch so well as our former batsmen. On bad wickets, I think, in their prime, Carpenter, Mitchell, George Parr, Daft, and Hayward, having been obliged to play grand bowling before the heavy roller and mowing machines were invented, became more proficient than players do now, except the four players mentioned before. Batsmen get demoralised when the wicket plays tricky. They never get hurt now, but I remember Grace on Lords, about 1869, against Freeman and Emmett, getting a tremendous crack on the elbow, and how the crowd cheered when he drove the next ball for six. Big scoring is all very well, but it is not the whole of cricket. I may be wrong, but I think I see a decadence, not because of less skill, but because the old balance has been rudely disturbed. It is not possible to make bowlers good enough to get bats out on hard wickets for reasonable scores, so as to make it possible for matches to be finished always in three days, and tolerably often in two days, such as Fenners, Brighton, and many others.
Of course, Grace is by far the greatest batsman of all time; but no cricketer ought ever to forget that no county has, during the space of the last fifty years, produced such five mighty bats as Nottingham, in the persons of George Parr, Richard Daft, Arthur Shrewsbury, William Barnes, and William Gunn.