FUTURE CRICKET.

Globe, Volume IV, Issue 479, 30 December 1875, Page 3

FUTURE CRICKET.

The following interesting article is extracted from Bell’s Life of October 9th, We recommend it to the notice of our Canterbury cricketers :

Will our great grandsons play cricket with the some zest that we do ? We can hardly answer the question by reasoning from the analogies supplied by history. Pure games such as cricket games—that is, which are not mimicries of war or hunting — are rare in history. And yet cricket is only a modification of the game of ball, which is certainly of unknown longevity. It must, however, be remembered that splueristike was a very simple play, and that cricket is is in its very essence highly complicated. When Nausicaa and her damsels played at ball on the Pnteacian shores, or when Horace excused himself, on the plea of weak sight, from joining Maecenas at a friendly bout, and preferred a nap in the company of Virgil, the game was merely a dance to music, accompanied with graceful tossing of balls to and fro. In considering, then, whether or not cricket is likely to be the passing fashion of a single century, we have nothing to guide us but the nature of the game itself. As a national sport cricket is not above a centiry old, and some people imagine that it already is showing signs of being “worked out.” We would admit that, on a prima facie view, it seems likely that when a game has attained its highest standard of excellence it will thereafter insensibly decline. Men like to see possibilities of progress before them, and cannot bear to acquiesce in standing still or falling off. Blondin has probably damped the ardour of many an aspirant to tight-rope fame, and everybody began to cry out against the spot-stroke as soon as Cook had mastered it. The question, then, whether our great grandchildren will play cricket may resolve itself into a question whether they may reasonably be expected to play cricket better than we do. On the other hand, it may be said that cricket contains in itself such infinite varieties of pastime that cricketers will never —as in the case of the spot stroke —arrive at any monotonous degree of skill. And to this latter view we incline.

Most spectators, especially if old frequenters of London grounds, will have felt that the cricket has been somewhat dull this year. There has been a want of verve and eagerness in the play, and a corresponding want of interest and excitement on the part of the spectators. The enthusiasm that made 1871 and 1872 such remarkable cricketing years is now conspicuous by its absence. Still more noticeable has been a general loss of confidence in our leading batsmen. Are these symptoms of the decline of cricket, or only of temporary derangements ? We believe that the reasons are not far to seek. There must always be cycles in the history of cricket—alternations of brilliant play with duller times, the elder cricketers are too good to retire, and the younger not quite good enough to take their places. Cricketers run much into “schools,” and come on and go off in batches. Moreover, for the greater part of the season the weather was wretchedly cold and dispiriting, and the cricketer is an animal that rejoices in sun. But beyond all this we believe that there is a general cause that has affected this year’s cricket; 1871 and 1872 were phenomenal and sensational years,, and a change then began of which we arc only now feeling the real effects. Then it was that modern amateur batting, which had for some time previously been asserting against the older school the freedom of its style and the grandeur of its hitting, definitely conquered, and for the time being almost suppressed, swift round-arm bowling. There was, in fact, a crisis in the game. The crisis was not quite understood, because amateurs like Mr Butler and Mr Powys, and professionals like Hill, Freeman, and M l l ntyre, at times still sent in their swift deliveries with appalling success. Slow bowling, too, had long been as a mere pis alter, as a means of tempting a

batsman into indiscretions, and getting wickets at a heavy cost. That a slow bowler could keep a batsman more strictly on the defensive than Tarrant, Jackson, or Wootton in their best days was never even imagined. But, well or ill understood, the change induced by the cricket of 1871 and 1872 has been a very great one. Fast round-arm bowling has declined, and slow roundarm bowling—a style that was once thought almost an eccentricity has for the time taken its place. Such an extraordinary feat as that of Alfred Shaw this year against the M.O.C. really explains the cricket of 1875, because it is about typical of what has been seen or attempted on all the principal cricket grounds. The only elevens in England that could now meet first-class teams with fast bowling alone arc those of Notts and Yorkshire ; and even these counties have greatly —Notts, perhaps, chiefly —relied on their slow bowlers. Elsewhere we sec slow roundarm bowling almost exclusively. Middlesex, with Mr Hadow and Mr Snow ; Gloucester, with Mr Grace and Mr Miles ; Surrey, with Sontherton and Mr Strachan ; Sussex, with Lillywhite ; Lancashire, with Watson ; and Derbyshire, with Mycroft—all show the present tendencies of cricket. In the University match this year, the fast bowling was hit all over the field, while the slow bowlers were bowling maiden after maiden. Never since Wisden was in his prime, and Mr Fellowcs was smashing stumps, has there been such a dearth of fast bowlers. To say the truth, fast bowlers have been * ‘ found out,” and, unless they are eminently and, exceptionally good, have little chance against the best batsmen. On the other hand, slow bowlers have for the- ti,mc being completely succeeded in driving batsmen from their commanding style into a cautious and almost timid game. Bowling is almost infinite in its variety, and our belief is that this tern porary check to sensational scoring is a strong proof —not of the waning of cricket—but of its exuberant vitality. It has always been thus. When swift “grubs” had had their day, came David Harris with his swift underhands of good pitch; when the school of underhands had died out, came the elder Lillywhite, chiefest of medium-paced, roundarm bowlers ; to him succeeded the ileign of Terror; and now we have slow bowling again. As long as bowling immediately catches up batting whenever batting gets a little ahead, there need be no fear as to the future of cricket.

We have some hopes that the cricketers of the future may find cricket capable of indefinite expansion in the direction of good fielding. It is not too much to say that — taking one example only—in the long score made by the Gentlemen this year against the Players at Lord’s something like one quarter of the runs could possibly have been saved by extraordinarily good fielding. We italicise the adverb, but really in a match like that the fielding ought to be extraordinary. How much our present fielding needs a general improvement, was, by force of contrast, shown by the Oxford Eleven of last year, and by the American Base Ball players. There is no doubt that bowlers could be assisted by the field far more than they are. If all outfielders fielded like Lord Harris or Mr Renny-Tailyour—determining to save runs and run out batsmen whenever those ends could be attained by the utmost of human swiftness, strength, and agility--how many hundred runs would not be saved in even first-class matches !