Sporting Aspects
Modern Cricket
By JOHN ARLOTT pERHAPS no game has changed so much as cricket. Yet it might also be said that no game has seemed to change so little. The two statements may be reconciled . by the defensible theory that the game has always reflected the community , in which it is played and has, therefore, developed in unchanging relative sympathy with its followers and critics. The change from under-arm to round-arm bowling came with the shift of the main centres of the game from rural Hampshire, Sussex and Kent, to London. The development Hampshire, Sussex and Kent, to London. The development from round-arm to over-arm coincided with the growth of cricket in the still raw centres of the Industrial Revolution. The batsmen of the Victorian day were not habitual strikers of sixes. Their spectators esteemed style above all. That William Guy of Nottingham who was said to be " all ease and elegance, fit to play before the Queen in Her Majesty's parlour " was a member of William Clarke's Magnificent All-England eleven which, in fact, consisted of the eleven finest players in the country, but who often scored at no more than twenty runs an hour.
Jessop, Thornton, and Alletson—of the solitary but unparalleled orgy of hitting—were essentially Edwardian figures, like Bosanquet with his slightly improper googly, Jacques of Hampshire with his " leg-theory," and George Gunn who teased fast-bowlers. Inter-war cricket with its rich mixture of everything the game ever had, was contemporary with the palais de danse, ice-rinks, charabanc trips, holiday camps and all the symptoms of " try everything once before tomorrow." " Modern "—or post-war--cricket is a planned, rationalised affair. In effect, the bowlers have created a trade union to adjust the balance between themselves and the batsmen. Once, most county teams were composed of amateurs—or members—who filled all but the sheet-anchor post in the early places of the batting-order, with professionals to do the donkey work of stock-bowling. Less definably, but equally definitely, batsmen blame the aristocrats of the twentieth-century game, the breakers of records whose cannon-fodder was bowling. The groundsmen, by their production of comfortable wickets, did much to perpetuate this situation. The bowlers' revolution was the move labelled " body line "; their masters' subsequent concession, the " new " l.b.w. law, under which a batsman could be out to a ball pitching outside his off-stump. Bowlers and their captains took home the new law as lawyers take a fresh Act of Parliament, to probe it for loopholes. The batsman could no longer push a prac- tised pad in' ront of the off-break or inswinger pitching outside the line of the off-stump. This would mean more l.b.w.
decisions and the stumps would be hit more often. The bowlers, however; recognised the new law as capable of further exploitation. Leg-theory had been bowled before, but not with outstanding success, except by loot, who coupled an exceptionally sharp inswing with a well-concealed ball which " went the other way " to compel the batsman to play a stroke. Now, that compulsion was not required. Moreover, the ball moving in to the batsman could not, without inartistic strokes—or, more compellingly, without danger of hitting a catch—be played to the off side. So B. H. Lyon recalled Tom Goddard, Gloucestershire's former fast bowler from Lord's where he had become a practitioner of the slow off-break. He posted legside fieldsmen in an arc a bare six yards from the bat— with a deep square leg to levy a catch on the bold man who hit over their heads—and then invited the batsmen to play the sharply-turning off-break without giving a catch. . J. C. Clay, of Glamorgan, and the late George Macaulay of York- shire, at their different paces, used R, similar method and, indeed, most counties carried a bowler capable of employing the method on a suitable wicket.
The real era of the inswing bowler began in 1946. Pollard, Pope, Gladwin, Bedser, Shackleton, Butler, Perks, Pritchard, Smith, Aspinall, Andrews, Gray, Clarke—every county had one, and six of them played for England.
They could not, however, work alone. They needed fields- men who could catch the betrayed stroke in positions from which the batsman's body blinded them to the ball until the last possible second. Upon their cue, these fieldsmen sprang up. The great tradition of slip-fielding began to die out in England until, today, good slips can be counted on the fingers of one hand. Meanwhile, such names as Watkins, Ikin, Lock, Geoffrey Edrich, Townsend, Clift, Wooller, Revill, became associated with acrobatic feats of catching a few 'feet from the bat on the leg-side.
The initiative did not remain there, because batsmen began to perfect the technique—which had developed in the 'twenties and 'thirties—of the on-side push, steering the ball between the fieldsmen, or going in to drive wide of mid-on. The mastery of handsome strokes on the off became less a recom- mendation of a batsman than safety against the ball which " comes on." Even the leg-glance was frowned upon. Did not Sir Donald Bradman himself fall three times in successive Test innings to leg-glances played to Bedser's sharp inswing ? The stroke was " not business ' and it must go. So, gradually, the inswing bowler had to develop variations : mere inswing' could be played profitably and safely for runs, or, with an appearance of stoicism, was allowed to thump against a well- padded thigh. All this the batsman could do—except on a fast wicket. Faithful still to his old masters, the groundsman produced yet slower pitches. After all, no groundsman has ever been dismissed for making a wicket on which a batting record was broken, but more than one has been in danger for creating a spin-bowler's pleasure-garden which ended a match in a single day. So the defensive field was developed. Like inswing, short-leg fieldsmen and leg-theory, it was not new, but it had never before been a general practice. With quick-moving fieldsmen deployed at a " saving the one " distance from the batsman's wicket, the bowlers pitched the ball safely short of a length from which it could be driven, yet not short enough to be hooked.
In the case of inswing, the bowler's ally was the short-leg fieldsman. In defensive bowling, he is aided by the crowd with its new and antagonistically derisive slow hand-clap. The batsman may play orthodox strokes with all reasonable power along the ground : the defensively positioned fieldsmen will stop them. He may hit each ball of six hard and correctly, yet he will have played back a maiden over. Crowds notice maiden overs and, convinced of the batsman's supposed superiority over the bowler, they will resent such a passive state of affairs.
To such barracking, the batsman—other than the fortunate man who can shut out so consciously spiteful a sound—has two possible reactions. He can do his best to "entertain his paying customers," hit out and be caught, or he can steel himself against it and relapse into even grimmer defence. If he waits long enough, the new ball will come again and the bowlers will begin to attack again, leaving gaps in the field for him to score runs. This very situation, at Old Trafford in 1951, cost the South African Eric Rowan his wicket and, subse- quently, his chance of consideration for a place in the team to tour Australia.
The fact is That there is no consistent reply to accurate, fractionally short-of-a-length bowling to a skilfully placed field. The bowler is, for the moment, wielding a powerful weapon. Unfortunately;it is not exciting for spectators. They blame the batsman. The batsman blames the bowler. The bowler blames the groundsman, the spectator, the batsman, and history.
Previous page
