Surrey Heroes
By NEVILLE CARDUS
BY force of enthusiastic character and a skill of the sort which everybody can understand at sight, W. S. Surridge has inspired an excellent Surrey cricket team to win the county championship of 1952. The honour returns after thirty- eight years to a great cricket-ground, where exactly seventy years from this very day, August 29th, Australia defeated England for the first time on English soil—by seven runs. Surrey's con- quests in 1914 were clouded at the end by the outbreak of war, and fifteen years had then gone by since the county had ruled supreme as, once in the mid-nineties, they apparently did by divine right. In 1914 Tom Hayward opened every Surrey innings with Hobbs, the greatest batsman of them all, not excelled in mastery of technique and achievement yet. And Hayward, for ever one of a half-dozen greatest professional bats- men, belonged to the champions of 1895, when K. J. Key was captain, and the names of Abel, Lockwood, Lohmann and Richardson were pronounced with breathless admiration by people not staled by " records "—names that seemed to glow with a lustre not to be diminished by time. There is scarcely a doubt that in three or so decades to come middle-aged folk at the Oval will be glancing back in memory, while some contemp- orary " master " compiles a hundred runs in four and a half hours, and saying, " Ah—where's your Alec Bedser nowadays, and your May and Jim Laker, not to mention Fishlock ? "
, Surrey's success this year has proved once again that first- class bowling of variety, backed-up by quick opportunist fielding, will win matches that can only be left unfinished by superb batsmanship in an eleven with a mediocre attack. During the heyday of Hobbs, a Surrey innings would move proces- sionally along the warm day, Ducat succeeding unto Sandham, Jardine unto Ducat, Fender arriving at the crease sixth or seventh wicket down with Alan Peach to follow, boundaries and brilliance to the end. But the county championship was not won this way. Collective effort, all-round efficiency, rather than anything so capricious as individual genius, are the signs of progress in our present age. We must consider, too, in all fairness, the possibility that the Surrey side led by Fender was unfortunate enough to play its best in summers in which Lancashire or Yorkshire cricket was at full bloom.
No lover of the game, none with a sense of history, won't be glad that Surrey cricket has, so to say, returned to the throne- room. Kennington Oval knows how to house greatness. The place does not vie with Lord's in aesthetics or deportment, but it has its own essential London character. At the Oval cricket is played in " Cockayne." South-east is South-east and North- west is North-west. Even to a Lancashire boy, who had not yet seen any other county field except Old Trafford, the famous chocolate-coloured cap could suggest a kind of dusty reflected ,glory of achievement; and I shall never forget my awe when I saw Hayward the first time, and how, when batting and between overs, he pushed his cap a little to the back of his head to cool his brow. Hayward for years was regarded as the embodiment of dignified poise and proportion in batsmanship. Some of us, barbarian Lancashire boys brought up on the cross-bat brilliance of J. T. Tyldesley actually amused ourselVes on drowsy afternoons at Old Trafford, when Surrey were playing Lancashire and not getting out quickly enough, by calling out to Hayward, " Ole Surrey veteran; ole tap-ball ! '
Hayward was then in his thirty-fifth year. And a newspaper article of the period discussed him rather in this way : " Few people realise the value of self- restraint. Experience, a hard task-master, has taught Hayward this lesson. One of the secrets of his success is self-restraint." Next day, or the day after, Hayward ill a bad light at the Oval against Leicestershire scored 125 before lunch. The same season-1906—at Bristol, so the newspapers report, " Surrey had an hour and three-quarters to bat and, but for a brilliant effort by Hayward, would have fared badly. As it was they lost three wickets for 127, of which the famous batsman made no less than 100." A week or two later the same newspaper describes an innings of 208 by Hayward, made in three hours fifty-five minutes : "In an hour after tea he scored 88 out of 146. As a fitting climax to some grand hitting he brought off five great drives in one over off ()wife. In each case Hayward jumped yards to make a half-volley. The first hit put the ball into the ladies' stand, the next cleared that building, the next Devey tried to catch, but his hands were over the wires in front of the pavilion, the fourth went into the ladies' stand, and the last, the biggest of all, cleared the wing of the pavilion." These allusions and references, it may be well to observe, are not to G. L. Jessop but to Tom Hayward, historically known as a sound responsible and classic " No. I " batsman for Surrey and England.
I doubt if, when we come to think of it, any other county cricket-team has anything more to show of renown and glamour than Surrey. Hobbs, the greatest of all batsmen—as we have agreed. He played with and emerged from the classic form of attack : speed and length to the offside. He saw the advent of the " googly " and " swinger." He showed the way to counter them. In his long career he had to cope with all the kinds of bowling which are now known and documented. In Australia, in South Africa (on matting wickets), in all conditions good and evil to batsmen, he was master all the time. He Was recently asked, " What did you think of yourself as a bat, Jack ? ' " Well," came the quiet modest answer, " I think I was pretty good before the war of 1914." " But why, Jack ? You scored. thousands of runs after 1914." " Ah yes," replied Hobbs, " but I was obliged to play a lot off the back foot then." Before 1914 Hobbs was as brilliant as Trumper himself.
Bobby Abel, a little man with a big average; Lohmarin I never saw, but all who played with him agree that he was the ideal cricketer; Richardson and Lockwood, who, I am certain, were in conjunction the most wonderful fast attack of all time—the honest cleaving axe and the incalculable flash of lightning ! The genius of J. N. Crawford, who one day crashed J. M. Gregory's furious speed into the pavilion at the Oval, on to the awning; D. R. Jardine, strongest of all captains of cricket; "Razor" Smith, not excelled on a "sticky" wicket; Hitch, Sand- ham, the Reads, Brockwell, Strudwick, E. M. Dowson, " Ernie " Hayes, the terrific N. A. Knox and " Shrimp " Leveson-Gower —there is no end to the roll, right down to the present moment and to those who work hard_behind the scenes and in the nets: Brian Castor and " Johnny" McMahon. It's a pity the poet Craig isn't at hand to write his noble numbers about them: " And all the players are Gentlemen, and all the gentlemen are Players. . "
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