TOO MUCH THEORY

Evening Post, Volume CX, Issue 73, 23 September 1930, Page 14

TOO MUCH THEORY

WHAT TYPE MAY OPEN ?

CRICKET STRATEGY

CURIOUS IDEAS OF PAST

The strategies of cricket, conventional though they be, have, it seems to me, become so important a feature of the game in later years that the plain sense of a situation is freque. tly lost and >the cricketer is apt to bo clouded ana confused by his own theories, writes Donald MaeDonald in the Melbourne "Age." Like the boxer who lost a championship as the result of a "slog," almost primitive in its crudity, he is ready for all that he expects, but not always ready for what he gets, especially if it has the revolutionary quality of being elemental. When the strategies of the game are so honoured in the observance as to become its conventions, the first and best quality of all strategy, which is surely surprise, seems to be sacrificed. Some of our early strategies in cricket, honoured to a venerable old age, were deficient in the most vital quality, tho will to win. The old-time captain who, having on his side a lefthand batsman, failed to send him in first with a right-hander in order to "bustle the field" was simply flouting the most widely reverenced of cricket's ten commandments. "Bustling the field" meant keeping fieldsmen and bowlers bustling from one side of the wicket to the other, and in the process wasting a lot of good time that were much better given to cricket. Apply but a grain of common sense to that situation and you realise that "bustling the field" 1' was, from the fieldsman's point of view, really the best thing you could possibly do for him. It kept Mm'.'oiV his toes,?' which means alert, awake, and less likely to miss a catch through being taken by surprise. As for the loss of time in all this misdirected "bustle," the batsmen were really wasting their own time, misusing the strategic advantage they had gained in winning the toss and getting first and best-use- of the wicket. TIME AND TIDE. Almost the aiatural parallel to. : this situation occurs in the ' conventional belie* that to lead off for Australia in the first innings of a Test match played in . England . one stonewalling batsman is essential, and even two may be desirable. ; How often of lato one has heard Woodfull and Fairfax paired as the best possible leaders, without theessential condition that they should open only the fourth innings of a game in ; which the forlorn hope of saving it was the last chance offered. They ■should certainly not lead in a first innings, when the luck of the toss had, given them.itho initiative so greatly valued and their .best chance of winning the match. Even such a success, in runs for a first wicket, as Hobbs and Sutcliffe bo frequently achieve may be dearly bought if it means a lot of valuable time occupied in the collection of the runs. Unless all that,we have heard and believe about the immense advantage of ■winning the toss in a Test match is, like some other conventions of the game, pure piffle, the golden hours of the game, the; very. best time for making runs^ are being misused for the mistaken duty of not making- runs. Is it extravagant to say. that the greater the initial success of such a partnership the greater theprobability.of the game being -unfinished? Very often a game takes its colour from that ever-important first-wicket partnership, and it seema to be nothing short of calamity that in a Test match the colour should be frequently drab, that instead of grasping with both hands the moral advantage which spinning a coin has offered us, and basking it with tho iron will to win, we should be content. to ' establish instead the meek and flabby-policy of dodging defeat. '. " ■".-': PATIENCE POSSIBLE. In watching the progress of a Test match with half a world between we can afford to be patient and philosophical, to be more concerned about results than effects. While television is still imperfect I can put up with any kind of spectacle that occurs 10,000 miles away. It is someone else's turn to sit as patiently as may be and suffer it, though St. John's "Wood and Jolimont are equally concerned- in preserving something of the spectacular, because, failing that, we may in tho long run fail also to prpserve cricket. Very often of late, in the contention that a batsman should not stand in his own light—or, as I once heard it put, "tread on. his own bootljaees"—the case of Aliek Bannerman has been mentioned in rebuttal. He was certainly slow on occasions, yet no dasher among them was more likely to send a careless first ball skimming to the fence behind square leg. The illustration falls short in two important elements. In Bannerman's day the bat had not mastered the ball to the same extent, less time was required to finish a game, and the leaders could afford to go slow without actually playing away an advantage instead of playing up to it. One needs to bear in mind also the very important point that Alick Bannerman was never twins. At the other end in turn were the stalwarts M'Donnell and Lyons. Put Bichardson on his best and busiest day in. with Woodfull" and you have in atyle, in thrill, and in effect some of the distinction which marked those old-time happy partnerships in which stocky Alick Bannerman was not only a ready running mate, but ever the steadying guide, philosopher, and friend. "Catch -me going in first again with Lord Alick," remarked Bonnor after a fine opening at Scarborough. "One moment it's 'Come on, Bon. Are you asleep?' the next, 'Go back, you fool!' Then he comes half-way down the wicket and reads the Biot Act to you." SNUBBED. And, great or small,' they took it all from Lord Alick. , After a famous partnership with Lyons on the Sydney ground, I heard a fussy and indiscreet onlooker offer Alick Bannerman some advico upon the subject of faster scoring. The batsman listened as if «vory word were golden in its wisdom, and then asked: "What time did you say the balloon went up?" Possibly you may think the retort desirable wherever the onlooker presumes to criticise the player. Our chief difiiculty, of late, has been to find bowlers of international eminence; our default in not making intelligent use of what, we possess. I sometimes wonder whether we are not still obsessed by the convention that building up a strong bowling side is first of all an intellectual exercise in which the qualities of symmetry, of balance, or of contrast must be primarily considered apart from any crude capacity for just hitting the wicket. Once you had to begin with a pair of right-hand length bowlers, who, if they turned the ball at all, did it across the toes in open, honest fashion, which caused the old-time bowler to remark: "Ah, ,lad, she coom back on-thee." For variety rather than stock purposes you had a left-hander to seek the blind spot between wicket" and pad—"to bend them" the other way, and the much more awkward way. You provided a fast bowler tp help the batsman to get himself out' before he knew he was in, arid then as contrast ft slow bowler whose theoretical value was to uiaks the fast bowler aeeui to be faster

to everybody—excepting the experimental batsman.

That was theoretically the perfect bowling side, even if it did not always win matches. One express bowler, one left-hander, one "googly merchant"— as Midwinter called' him —were highly desirable, but two of them, however good, meant wasteful and ridiculous success. The long-continued double of Bhodes and Hirst for Yorkshire, the fact that year after year left-handers like I'erris, Tarrant, Blythe, or Saunders got them on all sorts of pitches, never quite upset the theory that the lefthander was a specialist, and, in England, chiefly a mud-grubber. ;