The Test That Never Was

By NEVILLE CARDUS

A FEW summers ago, Groucho Marx was taken.

to Lord's, during the course of a dull immobile county match. Through the windows of the Long Room he looked on, while a friend instructed him about the game's rules and ' know-how. 'Six balls bowled from this end, then six from the other.'

'If the batsman hits the ball where a fieldsman can't .stop it, they run.' And so on. Groucho listened attentively. 'I think I've got it. The field changes over. They run. Yeah-1 think I've got it.' He watched the game in silence for five min- utes, then said, 'Say--- when does it begin?',

Groucho's remark returned to my memory many times at Lord's this week, and when for the first two days of the Second Test no pro- gress or beginning occurred at all on the rain- soaked field of play. Even after' the action really and visibly had started, hours passed by and no authentic England and Australian Test match was to be seen--only a simulacrum of one.

Redpath, opening two Australian innings at Lord's for the first time in his period of the green and yellow leaf, was able to stay in for hours, even if during one period of fifty minutes he couldn't score a run. Edrich, who as technician is nothing compared to Cowdrey, actually scored a century, 120, his share of England's all-out total of 246, in his first Test match against Australia.

a piece of resistance, sensible, courageous and almost without the ease and relish of fine art. On the other hand, Cowdrey again played an innings hedged round by fallibility, uncertain of purpose, and anonymous in performance. Dexter pre- sumed to go in first for England once more. He

'got away' with it at Nottingham.flamboyantly and prosperously, thanks to a dropped catch giving him a second innings when his score was next to, nothing. One of the few great stroke-

players in cricket today, he lacks the solid de- fence required of a batsman to cope with the neW,• ball. This time he was immediately overwhelmed —and, yet again, an England innings began dis- couragingly. To emphasise further the un- intelligence which marked the most inglorious and inept Test match I can remember, Simpson, one of the most experienced opening batsmen in' Test cricket today, chose to go in to bat as late as number six in the order.

Again, to show folly heaping itself on folly, at a moment of incipient crisis in England's first innings, four wickets down for ninety-two, Simp- son licensed himself' to wheel up back-of-the-hand spin (actual and probably possible) for two hours

at a stretch, for no wicket Or sign of one. Next

day, the closing day, Dexter persisted in keeping Coldwell bowling away over after over, for nearly

two and a half hours. As Coldwell inevitably tired, Burge scored fifty in seventy minutes, the game's quickest, run tempo at any part. When at

last Dexter called on his spin bowlers, Titmus and Gifford, the Australian innings suffered promptly from self-doubts. Two wickets, Burge's and Red- path's, fell in quick sequence. When rain put an end to the proceedings, both Simpson and'Booth were groping at the spin with a myopia which, surely, would soon have undone each of them.

Throughout the match recurrent examples of lack of class and poor breeding offended the eye

of the connoisseur. In Australia's first innings of 176, one or two strokes as stylish and easeful in

poise as any witnessed in the match were actualtft performed by Veivers, an honest Queenslandek the last man in the world to suggest that, as maker of runs, he has a pedigree.

Neither team deserved to win, at Lord's, or anywhere else for that matter. Edrich's batting, like nearly. all the other' batting of both sides, would have had little appeal to me if the score- board had not been there. I can take no interest in any cricketer if I have to look to the score- board for a clue to the meaning of his existence at the wicket, or at the bowling crease. Hammohd, Compton, Harvey, Worrell, Sobers—and some- times O'Neill---can fascinate us scoring or not scoring. I could sit engrossed for hours by the bowling of Lindwall, Douglas Wright, Keith Miller, Bedser, to name a few artists of recent times, though not a wicket might fall their way for hours. The present rubber between England and Australia is certain to provide keen com- petitive interest, for the simple reason that it is- being played by England against Australia. But, unless magical transformation and trans- figuration occur soon, individually and col- lectively, the .series seems doomed to bouts of mediocrity, relieved by flashes of quality.

The Test match that never began, never be- came a Test match, and was never finished!

For. my own part, the first blank two days of the engagement were the best, the days without cricket; because the playing area was water- logged. And I am not sure that thousands of other visitors to Lord's on these two cricket-less days didn't share my happy experiences. On Thursday and. Friday, ticket-holders were popu- lous in the ground, the scene animated and loquacious. Outside the ground (the gates not opened), a huge queue was equally cheerful and garrulous. There• was actually singing under the gloomy sky, despite, the latest announcement: 'Wicket to be inspeeteci at 3.45.' It is discomfort of this kind that brings out the British charac- ter full strength. Inside and outside of Lord's, in the Long Room, near the Art Gallery, in the gardens and near the Tavern,. congestion, noise, dic,omfort, hilarity and conversation reigned supreme. Perfect strangers talked together. Not since the war have I seen part of the British public as cheerful as this. On. Saturday, after play had at last started, I went into the Long Room. Depression was -already returning to the place. 'Terrible cricket,' somebody growled. 'Why can't they use their feet?' moaned somebody else. I now suggest that in every summer at Lord's two matches at least are arranged, under the following condi- tions and advantages:

Guaranteed No Play. (Band, and rain, if possible).