Confidence in Youth

Sun (Auckland), Volume III, Issue 803, 25 October 1929, Page 15

Confidence in Youth

LESSON TO ENGLISH CRICKET The SoLith Africans’ Tour "THE young side came over to learn from their elders and 1 they have proved uncommonly apt pupils. They go back to the sun and summer heat, to the glare and dusty soil grounds of the Transvaal, and, for a while at least, to matting wickets, with a fine conception of the game as a result of their experiences on the many county grounds in England.

! V lus comn }ents the correspondent of • a koutli African exchange on the rei cen t tour of the South African cricket- ! ers in England. Iwo phases of the Africanders’ cricket have emerged to claim signal honour—their extraordinary line fielding and the genius in the leadership of H. G. Deane. They have reaped many triumphs In tho course of adapting themselves to tho conditions of Englisii grass wickets, the different atmosphere, and the veiled visibility, but nothing has been so unanimous or so welcome at home as the convincing justification given to the policy of the selectors in placing their confidence in youth. Whether it was that they underestimated the possibilities of their own progress, or whether the glamour that surrounds a great cricketer when known only by name faded on practical acquaintance, the South Africans did not j find the best English cricketers as strong as they had expected, or as formidable as the results of their tour in Australia would seem to make them. ! It needs no subtle compliment to the Colonials to expose that view as one , that grew proportionately with their own development, and in true perspec- ; live it seems that the success of a ! country lowly placed in the status of cricketing nations bred, an opinion that j did not rightly assess England’s ■ prowess. Outside of the Test teams j England proved rich in able cricketers. SUBTLE CAPTAINCY To the tourists their opponents’ bat--1 ting was inevitably strong. Judged on the season’s merits and the performI ances of the Test matches no batsman I made a deeper impression on tho side than Woolley, who fulfilled all the

j claims to greatness which were accorded to him by those who returned to the Union after the South African tour of 1924. Then came Hammond and Sutcliffe leading an imposing array that included a briefly-acquainted but impressive Hobbs. England’s batting is tho strongest phase of her present-day cricket, and had it not been that Deane handled the lean attack at his command with exceptional vision and with invaluable support from the field in the Test matches there is little doubt that the prodigious scores recorded against the South Africans on the occasion of their last visit would have been repeated. At a time when the cricket world is debating whether the general absence of effective bowlers is caused by a dearth of good material or by the accumulation of elements that favour the batsman it is difficult to appraise the English attack. Purely an impressionistic view was that pervading the atmosphere in which those who represented England bowled was an air something akin to staleness. Tho lire and sting that was expected in the bowling of Tate and Larwood in particular was as it were harnessed to some hampering force that could not wholly be shaken off, but in the strangeness and deceptive flight of Freeman’s bowling they met something that for a while penetrated effectively tho weak link of their batting armour and which hastened the addition to their syllabus of a rapid course of learning in the counters to slow break bowling that lives a complete life before it hits the pitch. Nothing perhaps made such a profound impression on the South African bowlers and the team in general as the revelation of a national trait on the cricket field in the patience and consistent accuracy of the average English bowler. One of the characteristics over which the colonials marvelled in those first few weeks when a whole new universe swam into their ken and they became acquainted with the Englishmen at home, was his infinite patience in every sphere of life, whether it was waiting in a theatre queue, delayed by the exigencies of traffic control, or put to discomfort by unkindly weather. And on the cricket field one of their first lessons was the need for consistent length ns exploited by bowlers all over England. In the development of bowlers of the steady, safe type, the nursery of attack should never be poor, but the impression left among the South Africans was that they met very few really dangerous bowlers. A VITAL MATCH The South Africans played in innumerable games where the contribution of one or two individuals singled the matches out as triumphs for those particular players. But no game lives so fresh or so vividly in their minds as the second Test match, played at Lord’s at the end of June. Before that game four players certain of selection | were crippled by injuries, and. with ex- i actly 12 men with which to Garry on. j the South Africans rose to the occasion with a magnificent display of team- J

work which responded to the inspiring leadership of 11. G. Dean. It was, moreover, a vital gamij. in the stage of the tour, and cess of a team composed of four of the reserve men had an effect on the subsequent matches which at once heralded a fruitful visit. To the South Africans, the living incidents of that game, played amid all tho glamour of England’s citadel of cricket, were the bowling of D. P. B. Morkel on the first morning of the match, when ho took the first three English wickets for 18 runs, the possibilities that were given to the situation when at lunch England adjourned in the midst of her second innings with the score-board showing 117 for five, and the audacious tactics of the 20-year-old H. G. Owen-Smith when, in partnership with A. J. Bell, he enabled them to pass their opponents’ first innings score by a lead of 20 runs. Cricket followers throughout England showed the visitors the greatest respect, and treated them always with an. impartiality that prompted Deane at one stage to say that from the behaviour of the crowd it was extremely difficult for him to determine whether he was playing cricket in South Africa or England. As in their daily lives the crowd brought to the cricket fields their fine sense of humour and cheerful outlook, and in their implicit friendliness there was always a contact that could clearly bo felt between those on tho cricket field and those who looked on.