OLD PLAYERS LEAD

Hawke's Bay Herald-Tribune, Volume 81, Issue 49, 20 November 1937, Page 16

OLD PLAYERS LEAD

BRITISH CRICKET SEASON THE FORM OF THE BOWLEBS. AN 1 ECCENTRIC BREAK. There is a depressing middle-aged look about the best of English bowlers as their form is reflected by the statistics of the 1937 English cricket season, writes H. J. Henley in the London Observer. Matthews, who heads the list — on rather slender evidence, for he played little first-class cricket — is 32. Verity, in his thirty-third year, has no thing to fear from younger rivals as a slow leftrhander — and even Verity is a jong way from being a Rhodes. Two of the other most*prominent positions, on aggregate as well as 0|i average, are occupied by Goddard and-J. C. Clay, both old men in the bowling sense, for the former has passed his thirty-j-ixU. birthday and the latter is in his fortieth year. But neither has ever before had so good a record, although it cannot be said that anno domini has improved them. They have not gone forward, but others have fallen below standard. That is the difference, and it is worth a thought that Goddard and Clay . are medium-pace, finger-snap off-oreak-ers, a style despised by a new. generation whose fetish is freak-spin of the googly kind, with the ball squeezed out of the back of the hand, ' and- with accuracy elusive. ' Swervcrs and Googlers. Except for a few slow lelL-handers, with Verity alone distinguished vyhen the pitch helps him, ana ono or two fast bowlers, of whom Gover is the most consistently • quick, English bowling is almost exclusively composed of fast, medium sea.n swir.gers, who, rightly or wrongly, . are considered to be innocuous when the shine has worn off the ball, and who are, as a consequence, often kept idle bet'ween' a total of 50 and 200, and of the leg-brealc-cum-googly tribe, who are regarded as useless while the ball is new, and whose destructive balls stand only as a green oasis in a desert of erraticness. The season, as a v.—le, showed more retreat than advance in general bowling form, with injury and ' ill-health responsible for so:ne,,of the disappointment. Cole, of Kent, who, in the previous year had potentialities as a fast bowler, suddenly became wildly erratic. Daly, of Surrey, who in His first season had bowled leg breaks with a certain amount of g,uile, was a miserable failure, and nqpe bf the others introduced to first-class cricket in 1936 progressed in 1937 to an. extent to matter. But there are hope? of Wright and Harding, both of Kent, totally different in style. Wright, 23 years old, only in his second year as a regular member of his county team, was very expensive — a f ashionable crime — but he'-is a bowler exceedingly interesting in a tantalising .way. He is a Jekyll and Hyde bowler; he goes to extremes of good and bad. He bowls leg breaks, contrasted by an occasional googly, at a faster pace than anyone since Vogler, of South Africa,- for a brief period one of the world's greatest. In one innings he looks like an English bowler— too quick through the air for a batsman to have time to get down the pitch to him, fast ehough and deceptive enough off tlie ground to beat a back stroke. But there are other days when he cends down a melancholy series of long hops— anfl his long hop-days are in the majority. wickets cost him 40 b -V ievzz OCa Since Harding's modest bag of eleven wickets cost him 404 runs, he I does not at a glance appear to have done anything in particular. But this is a time when we clutch at straws, and of Harding, who was badly served by the Kent slips, it can at least be said that he looks g'ood. He is fairiy tall, slim, loose-armed, and although respectably fast, he does not exert himself beyond his yo„ulhful strength. ' He get's the impetus of a rhythmical run behind a liigh action, and follows through after a delivery almost circular. What is equally important, he does not pitch short after batsmen begin to drive him, nor lose his persistency when catches are dropped. And a stout heart matters more to a bowler than some of the physical qualities. Search for Others. But a search tor otiier Dowlers of higli promise brings tlioughts of needles and haystacks. There are, of course, plenty of players still well under 30 who liave a liighly crcditable season behind them, but most of tliese have remained at one stage of utility too long to encourage hope of improvement. No new attributes can come into their bowling now. They are county hacks— -nothing more. For years too much attention has been paid to swerve and ecccntric break, not enough .to accuracy and generalship. The trick bowier, the bowler who works on a plan, Iooking several moves ahead, as a chess player does, is almost defunct. This is not because present-day bowlers have turnips' upon their shoulders instead of heads, but because they haye not suflicient con-, trol over the ball to work successfully a scheme which depends for shccess upon a series bf balls subtly different in character, each a completement , of anotlier. No doubt many bowlers of to-day have sufficient brain to devise even clever schemes,* but they lack the control of length an.lJ direction riecessary to carry them out successfully. Their want of accuracy would let most of them down anyway. What can be done about it all? Nothing, except to re-exampie some of the new theories with a view to scrapping them, and to resurrect. some of the old principles.