RANJI AND FRY

Sun (Auckland), Volume II, Issue 423, 3 August 1928, Page 11

RANJI AND FRY

GREAT DAYS OF SUSSEX CRICKET RECALLED MASTER CRAFTSMEN BOTH A vivid picture of great days in English cricket is portrayed by a writer in the “Manchester Guardian,” who has this to say about Sussex, the county Bowley and Langridge are playing for. He says: “Sussex is a side which is full of the warm South. They play, surely, tawny cricket that has lived much in the sun. Think of the Relfs, old George Cox, Brann, and to-day Tate, Gil.ligan, and Bowley—all of them born cricketers. It was right that Ranji should have played for Sussex; warm, brilliant light was always in his batting. His lissom beauty might have seemed out of place day by day at Sheffield. Master Craftsman “Ranji and Fry! Let Lancashire bowlers of the present time thank their stars that they have not this afternoon to tackle the problem of getting these two cricketers out on a perfect wicket. Ted Wainwright used to talk to me about Fry and Ranji, talk with a simple eloquence—years after actual experience of them had lost its sweat and hopeless labour. “When you looked upon Fry at the wicket you looked upon the schoolman glorying in a system, even though it did blind him, body and soul. It was all superb, but of the comprehensive earth. When you looked upon Ranji at the other end you turned from the known world of law and order to the world of the occult; you turned from West to the East. Ranji was the most remarkable instance in all cricket’s history of a man expressing through the game not only his individual genius but the genius of his race.” “No Englishman could have batted like Ranji. ‘Ranji,’ said Ted Wainwright once, * ’e never made a Christian stroxe in his life.’ The light that shone on our cricket fields when Ranji batted was a light out of his own land, a dusky, inscrutable light. His was the cricket of black magic indeed. A sudden sinuous turn of the wrist, and. lo! the ball had vanished —where? The bowler, knowing he had aimed on the middle stump, saw, as in a vision, the form of Ranji, all fluttering curves. The bat made its beautiful pass, a wizard’s wand. From the very middle stump the ball was spirited away to the leg-sid© boundary. “A Conjurer” “And the bowler, a good believer in the true faith, crossed himself at the sight of it ail. ‘Ranji/ declared George Giffen. ‘Call him a batsman? Why, he’s a bloomin’ conjurer!’ Well, do we not associate the East with conjurers, flying carpets, rope-climbers, and all manner of enchantment? When Ranji came to cricket it was a thoroughly English period. Grace, Shrewsbury, Gunn, Attewell. and the rest were eminent Victorians, who gave to cricket the period’s direct, firm, and rather complacent outlines. It was the age of the straight bat and the honest length ball. “When Ranji passed out of cricket a wonder and a glory departed from the game for ever. It is not in nature that there should be another Ranji. We who have had the good luck to see Ranji, let us be grateful. Did he really happen; was he perhaps a dream, all dreamed on some midsummer’s night long ago?”