Death of a Series . . . And that is
more than one can say of the rest of the match, or indeed of the series. The rain that washed away the fifth day's cricket was in retrospect the right ending. When the Australian team was selected for this tour I described it in the Spectator as the worst Australian side ever to tour these islands. I still think so. And I also think that they proved them- selves rather better than we were. English cricket, then, is at its all-time low. We are today the fourth cricketing power. If there were two divisions for Test matches as is sometimes urged, we would be the sandwich country. Six-day cricket, dead pitches and seamers, seamers, seamers all the time strangle us.
For four days it looked odds-on a finish at the Oval. The first sight of the shaven buff- coloured strip conjured up grim memories of the Manchester concrete wicket, but in fact on the opening day the ball kept coming through at un- even heights. Hawke bowled exceptionally well and some spineless batting contributed to England's modest total of 182. Probably this was in fact a better performance on the day than it seemed at the time. Two hundred and fifty would have been a reasonable score, and 300 a good one. Unfortunately the wicket got steadily better and the bounce of the ball more predictable. The Australian innings was torment to watch. Cart- wright bowling endless overs to Bill Lawry with Parks (apart from a few overs) standing yards back to ordinary medium pace was enough to drive the Chairman of the English Selectors back
to his office. It nearly drove me. The argument, of course, for standing back is that catches at the wicket come much more frequently than stump- ings. This is only half a case. If the wicketkeeper stands up he crowds the batsman. Alec Bedser, bowling considerably faster than Cartwright does, gained enormously in menace from the fact that Godfrey Evans was breathing down the bats- man's neck. And if Parks can't stand up to bowl- ing of this pace he shouldn't be in the English side. There are at least three better wicketkeepers in county cricket, Murray, Binks and Andrew, and Parks's batting average of just under thirty in the series certainly isn't enough compensation.
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