WISDEN*

By J. P. W. MALLALIEU, M.P.

WHEN I was a boy I was bad at arithmetic and could celdorn remember dates; but I could recite Yorkshire averages without effort ; and, almost without effort, could calculate in my head not only where Yorkshire would be in the table —she was always top—but also how far behind her the others would be if they won, drew or lost their current matches. Nearly all the small boys at my school loved playing and watching cricket. Almost more we loved talking about it. We talked about our own achieve- ments, about our intimate friendships with the great, about relations of ours who had bowled W.G. ; and as on these subjects there were no records nor eye-witnesses our imaginations grew wide-eyed.

But whenever we came to real cricket events, our talk was exact.

We read every cricket book in the library. We read every cricket account in the morning papers. Nothing that was happening and little that had happened in the cricket world escaped us. Even the trivialities were filed neatly in our minds, and the unusual went both into our minds and, for greater accuracy, into our notebooks. Today my interest in cricket detail is less sharp, perhaps because long ago I lost my own notebook. But I can, and do, still read another man's—the "cricketers' almanac." of Mr. Wisden which has now reached its 86th edition. The information in Wisden may not always be as remarkable as the information in our notebooks of days gone by, but it is at least as accurate and much more comprehensive. There are, to begin with, the detailed scores of the past season's first- class matches. They may not be quite so romantic-looking as the faded newspaper cuttings and actual score cards we pasted in our books. Anyhow the scores of past matches should be left to mature until, when you come upon them again in twenty years' time, they give you once again the bouquet of grounds where you have been happy and carry you across half a lifetime to scenes and strokes and catches that had passed from your mind's eye. These old scores can become so much a part of your memory that you begin to remember matches you never saw. Indeed, today, some of my most vivid memories arc of matches played ten or twenty years before I was born. But even the scores in the latest Wisden, for all their newness, do recall a summer that seemed gone for good, the last cricket summer to be dominated by Bradman, the first in which Glamorgan won the Championship. In twenty years I shall browse through these scores again, and again see the perky Bradman settling at the crease, sec the tigerish grace of Lindwall and, curiously above either, laugh again at the impetuous impishness of Miller.

Then, in this Wisden, there are, as always, those details of record feats with bat and ball which fascinate so many schoolboys of all ages. Did you know that Pougher of Leicester once took five Australian wickets for no runs ? Did you know there ever was a rougher of Leicester ? His analysis for that great day at Lords in 1896 is there in Wisden as a permanent memorial.— 0 M R • W 3 3 0 5 No bowler is likely to equal that again, not against the Australians. It is right that we should remember Pougher. I hope some future

*86th Edition of Wisden. Sporting Handbooks Lid. 9s. 6d.

edition of Wisden will tell me whether- he' ever did anything else.

These scores and records, however, are Wisden's normal fare. What makes his 86th Edition remarkable among the other 85 is that it deals with the centenary of W. G. Grace and the, retirement of Don Bradman. I never saw W. G. Grace but those who did were content to call him " the great cricketer," an incomparable. I first saw Bradman back in 1930 in Chicago. On that bumpy improvised pitch he made 9. I last saw him bat in the Second Test at Lord's. He made 38 streaky runs. I am ashamed to say that I was bored even by some of his great innings, just as I have been bored by the perfection•of professional billiard-players. Indeed the only Bradman innings that gave me, unqualified delight was a 132 he scored before lunch at Scarborough in 1934. Then it seemed he was a god instead of a machine. Yet his performances show him to be great. The average for his Career of 338 innings was 95.14 and his average for 8o Test Match innings was 99.94. And more significant than figures are the judgements of the men who played with him— of George Duckworth, for example, who said that the 334 innings at Leeds in 1930 was the greatest he had ever seen. Ducky kept wicket throughout and so had a good view. Bradman was certainly " the great cricketer " of his generation.

But the comparison, indeed the contrast, between Grace and Bradman as men makes itself. In this edition of Wisden are two essays, one on Grace by the Editor, the other on Bradman by Robertson-Glasgow. The Editor tells how Grace sat up all one August night on a difficult maternity case and next day carried his bat through an innings of 348, scoring 221, followed this up by taking 6 Middlesex wickets for 45 and followed that up by taking 5 second innings wickets for 75. He tells how Grace, when 18, scored 224 for England against Surrey at the Oval and was then allowed, during the second day of the match, to go to Crystal Palace where he won the National Olympian Association 44o yards hurdles in 70 seconds. He tells how Grace, after a three-day match against Kent, during which he was on the field while every ball was bowled, " trotted from the dressing-tent in his tweed tail suit and hard felt hat, carrying his heavy cricket bag, to a four-wheeled cab." And he tells of Grace sorting out some strangers in his side. "Where do you go in ?" "I'm always number one." "Number eleven today. And you, my lad, where do you go in ?" " Where I'm put, sir." " Then, come in first with me."

There are no stories like that in Robertson-Glasgow's beautifully written essay. "No one ever laughed about Bradman," he says ; "he was no laughing matter." Least of all to himself. While Grace interspersed cricket with midwifery or ran hurdle races half-way through a big match, Bradman, even when his last tour was over and his team on the way home, refused to play cricket against an R.A.F. team at Aden for fear of spoiling his concentration. This absolute concentration was in part self-imposed. In part he felt it imposed on him by his position. "He couldn't stroll from his hotel to post a letter or buy a collar stud," says Robertson-Glasgow ; "The mob wouldn't let him. There had to be a car waiting with engine running and he would plunge into it like a cork from a bottle." . . . while Grace carried his own bag to the four-wheeler. Poor little, great little, Bradman.

Dr. Herbert Evatt, deputy Prime Minister of Australia, recalls a Punch drawing in the Trumper era. A small boy about to play

cricket in a London back street announces to the boys around him: "You all be England and I'll be Victor Trumper." Any cricketing boy who has grown up in England during the past twenty years would fight for the right to be Bradman against the whole world.

And yet when I re-read this Wisden in years to come it will not, I think, be mainly Bradman who comes back to my mind. At least as much, I shall see Keith Miller, whom Wisden barely mentions— five Australians are chosen as the cricketers of the year and Miller is not among them—Miller of the flying arms and tossing hair, Miller

of the shamefaced, boyish naughtiness, Miller the scatterbrained.

Miller the uncontrollable. Great ability combined with absolute concentration breeds records, admiration and knighthoods. But

great ability combined with warm-hearted abandon breeds pleasure, affection and cricket. You can keep your records if you'll leave me the joy of the unexpected.