“ACID TEST”

Sun (Auckland), Volume I, Issue 163, 30 September 1927, Page 10

“ACID TEST”

E. A. MACDONALD’S FAST BOWLING HAS PROVIDED ! MUCH-NEEDED TONIC IN ENGLISH CRICKET

A MASTER OF STYLE

A graphic pen picture of E. A. Macdonald. the famous Australian bowler. now a Lancashire professional. is given in the following article by Neville Cardus, the wellknown English cricket writer: I do not know a more interesting player in cricket to-day than Macdonald. says Mr. Cardus. He is, as the crowd puts it. a “personality.” Not only does he bowl fast on hard grounds; when the wicket is soft and sensitive to spin, he exploits mediumpaced off breaks from round the wicket. At Northampton the other day he was; destructive to the tune of a dozen wickets on a turf of the sort which usually finds most fast bowlers helpless. He is a tall inscrutable man, all languid curves when he is not bowling. And when he is bowling, how beautiful is his action! The picture seen in 1921 of Macdonald and Gregory at work together will never be forgotten by those of us who were fortunate enough to be there. Gregory* shook the earth as he ran; his action was like a wave that raised itself high and then broke magnificently, with many a spray of fury scattered in the air. Macdonald was all lithe concentration the moment he ran to the wicket, ball in hand; he ran silently along a sinister curve. And the quick droop of his right wrist as he let the ball go suggested the calculated poise of the cobra’s head before the spitting of venom. Gregory and Macdonald “on the kill” was surely as noble a sight as Lockwood and Richardson. I do not think the two Australians made a com-

bination as good technically as that of the Surrey masters, but they addressed no smaller appeal to the imagination. GREAT COM 31 NATION The two combinations possessed points of similarity. Richardson and Gregory were giants of simple heart and energy; in both men the love of hard work was always burning a grand flame. Lockwood, like Macdonald, must be counted among the more subtle players of the game. Lockwood’s power was incalculable, for at one moment it would break into storm and destroy right and left, and at another it would hang about the field sullen and merely potential, like a heavy cloud is still, but full of thunder. Macdonald, too, is a bowler of strange moods. He needs a stern challenge to move him to the heights. Last year at Dover, Kent required 400 to make for victory on the last day against Lancashire. Throughout the afternoon, Macdonald’s fires slumbered, while Woolley and Hardinge forged ahead towards a superb Kent victory. At the tea interval, a miracle and nothing less was demanded by Lancashire to save the game. And Macdonald did the “hat trick!” Only the great men of cricket win matches in this dramatic way. Consistency, as Emerson once said, is the mark of the simple heart. Macdonald is never consistent in his bowling; style is the man—and Macdonald is a genius prompted by a demon of sinister changefulness. Macdonald has been much at the mercy of the Lancashire slip fieldsmen this season; I cannot calculate howmany catches have been missed off his bow-ling. To-day he does not attack the stumps as directly as he did in 1921. He exploits the ‘ bumping” short ball on wickets which he considers so good that they don’t give a bowler a fair chance. MAC’S “BUMPER” Concerning Macdonald’s “bumper,” much molly-coddle nonsense has been talked during the season by modern batsmen who never had to tackle Ernest Jones, Cotter, Neville. Knox. Macdonald’s short rising bowling is dangerous to the life and limb of no real batsman. Sutcliffe, Hammond and Cook of Sussex have each enjoyed themselves against Macdonald’s “bumpers,” and have proved that, to tne cricketer who has the courage to stand up to them, fast bumpers are “safe” enough and profitable. Macdonald is very quick to cease pitching a short length to a batsman of mettle and skill; at Leeds a week or two ago he bowled medium pace for Sutcliffe and reserved his "bumpers” for the tender-hearted. Macdonald has a right to play upon a batsman’s nervousness; cricket is a great game because not only is it a test of skill but also a test of character. My own view is that Macdonald has indirectly performed a useful service for English cricket sinee he threw in his lot with Lancashire. He lias put many of our batsmen through a sort of baptism of fire. We lost the i 921 test matches because few of our cricketers had the stomach for fast bowling. To-day I have got into the habit o* regarding Macdonald as an “acid test’ of an English batsman: until I have seen them at the wicket against “Mac” I prefer not to deliver judgment on any of our latest “big average” cricketers. And this “acid test” has so far worked very well: it has taught me that our finest batsmen this year include Hammond, Sutcliffe, Cook of Sussex, D. R. Jardine, George Gunn A. P. F. Chapman, Whysall, Parsons and Bates.