NOTTS’ BEST TEAM

Sun (Auckland), Volume III, Issue 818, 12 November 1929, Page 14

NOTTS’ BEST TEAM

CAROLS REVIEWS ENGLISH CRICKET SEASON A. W. CARR’S CAPTAINCY Few cricketers will deny that this season Nottinghamshire has been the best of the county sides. I risked the prophecy early in May that Carr and his men would win i the championship—if they could stay the course. Thus Neville Curdus, the well-known llngllsh cricket critic reviews the past rounty cricket season at Home. He ! ‘•ontinues: The main dangers to Nottinghamshire were a wet summer and the pres- j wtee in the eleven of several cricketers definitely arrived at the veteran stage. • Moist pitches would surely have stolen i power from the attack of Barratt. Larwood and Arthur Staples, and oven I Voce—for 1 doubt whether Voce as a i slow left-hander could have achieved , the necessary readjustments of style. It is rather an ironical eigumentury on modern butsmanship that Nutting- ■ hamshire, a team without a swift outfielder, should have won the championship. Where, indeed, are the great out- i fielders of English cricket nowadays? i Where are the successors to L)avid i Denton. J. T. Tyldesley and Hutchings -poor Kenneth, dark and handsome, a voung god of the sun. moving on air in front of the ladies’ pavilion! Sandliam is a quick anti accurate out Held: so is Ley land. Who are the others? But demand cyeutes supply; at the present time, great hits to the “deep” are not, common, hence the scarcity of great outfielders. Not long ago l saw McDonald field- j ins in majestic isolation a deep extracover; the Lancashire captain presum- ! ably sent McDonald to that position as a restful spot for him. after a spell of ; arduous fast bowling ! Out-fielders | have been so rare even in our England • elevens this year that Tate has had j to chase not a few boundary hits when i he ought to have been getting back his second bowling wind. The South Ai'ri- 1 , ana have most ruthlessly shown up. me slow-footedness of English fielding rhis season. It must be mended before the Australians get at us in another test match. County captains can help in this matter; does anybody ever ( rake courage to suggest a bout of fielding practice on a county ground in this e.-a of democratic government in first- | class cricket? SUBTLE FENDER The captaincy of Carr went a long v> ;<y toward winning the championship i*>r Nottinghamshire. He lias not the subtlety of Fender, but becauso of that I think he is the quicker to jump at an | opportunity presented by some turn of me. gam© favourable to his side. Fen-j her, so it always strikes nie. is student of cricket even before he is ’ oaptnirv his mind analyses overmuch j, . rid perhaps in consequence l»io t . rrategy sometimes defeats itself by « pronencss to see danger where none Carr does not attempt lo toot out j motives: ho takes u situation at its r ; ,o© value. If a batsman, for example, eenm to show signs of not liking a < ertain sort of bowling. Carr will do his best t once to see that the batsman is given his fill of this bowling from both ends of the crease. T ender might even take off a bowler because a batsman gives a hint of discomfort: Fender, a great “bluffer” himself, is perpetually on the watch for “bluit in others! A thinker of cricket, perhaps < the acutest since Noble. But for straightforward captaincy of the inspiring order, give me A. W. Carr! j There is about this cricketer an Lnglish straightforwardness of action: tlm professionals of Nottinghamshire would , follow him anywhere—over the t<»p in ( the most serious field action of all! Ssomo of us would have loved to (Gloucestershire at the head of tlm tabic, if only because of our undying affection for the “Old Man.” Glouces- ' tershire missed the honour with a pathetie narrowness—by two defeats. | a. six-run deficit and a one-run deficit' Cruel luck! Yet. to sum up in sheer technical values. Gloucestershire was : hardly ‘in if with Nottinghamshire 1 OULEEPSINHJI And Goddard rh» only , mk bmiiva Unj l craM Ifl raiiiai Lax* h 1

j wood. Barratt. Voce. S. Staples and j : A. Staples. And Gloucestershire’s batj ting lacked the all-round reliability of ; that which was exercised week after j week by Gunn, Whvsall. "Walker and ! Payton, to say nothing of C’arr. Bar- ! ratt, Larwood and A. Staples—each a (hard hitter of bowling worn down by the mainstays. The Nottinghamshire batting mingled defence and offence in proportion; the | side played as doggedly as Lancashire and Yorkshire themselves, when ocI casion demanded. At other times they l forced the pace as violently as even a Sussex man could have desired. Notj tinghamshire cricket. to my fancy, i stands with one foot planted in the canny North, the other in the softer j South. At Trent Bridge, the atraos- ! phere is thrifty but not moan, ambij tious but not ungallant, combative, yet ! chivalrous. Perhaps if the county championship was awarded to the team which, winning or losing, could be trusted to give day by day the greatest amount of pleasure to the greatest number of cricket lovers — on this reckoning, we all of us should have to take off our hats to Sussex—to Duleepsinhji especially'. Ile was the young cricketer of the j summer: the others were Voce. Wyatt. ; Goddard. Peebles and Robins. All of j them will play for England in at least one of next year’s test matches.