PERSONAL COLUMN

Dust and Ashes

SIMON RAVEN

I was fortunate enough to be able to watch the sixth and seventh Test matches in Australia, ball by ball, from first to last.

• Although I am a frequent spectator of cricket, it is over twenty years since I have seen a Test match played out in its entirety (as oppoSed to watching the odd day), and I was in for a nasty shock. For what had not really been revealed to me by casual at- tendance, but was now made abundantly plain by continuous attention for days on end, was crudely this: that while the county game has declined quite badly enough, the international game, in relation to its own proper standards, has declined even more horribly, until the quality of Test cricket has become as raddled as a moth-eaten sock.

This revelation was not vouchsafed to me alone. Frank Woolley (a noble figure at over eighty, straight as a guardsman and courteous as a king) was interviewed by at least one important Australian newspaper, in which he deposed, quietly but insistently, that there could be no cricket worth the name unless the bowlers attacked the stumps and the batsmen attacked the ball. That, he said, was what cricket was about, an elemen- tary lesson which had yet to be learned whether by the captains or the players on both sides.

That was as far as Woolley went in public. Were he not such a kind man, he would doubtless have added that Test cricketers ought, on the whole, to be able to hold simple catches; that they should not blow' full tosses and long-hops with the lavish abandon of schoolboys; that if they do; their opponents ought to hit them, instead of nib- bling at them as though at a plate of suspect fish; that cricketers (unlike footballers) are expected to obey the umpire and not to behave like seven-year-olds on a beach if they happen to be run out; that fast bowlers who are not trying and therefore get hit to the boundary ought not to complain about the shape of the ball and thereafter to sulk like jilted housemaids; and that if batsmen are so incompetent as to mistake harmless long-hops for bumpers, and so cowardly as

to turn their backs on them, then sooner or later they are going to get hurt and serve them bloody well right.

No names, no pack drill. One man, however, may be named because he came out with a public statement in his own person and of his own free will. That one is K. D. Walters; and since what he stated is entirely typical of the spirit in which these Tests were played, it is worth a word or two here. Walters, then, has announced, urbi et orbi, that he will never hook the ball. This supposedly brilliant attacking batsman, who goes in at second or third wicket for his country, who was once tipped as the new Bradman, has announced that he refuses to hook. Were he approaching the evening of his days, a little sympathy would be in order;

Hobbs himself, after all, was somewhat wary towards the end; but Walters is just twenty- five years old and so, one may suppose, in his prime. Not that one would know it: apart from the occasional graceful stroke through the covers, he now bats like a shop steward in search of his next grievance—put upon, self-righteous and reluctant, crabbily determined not to give one penn'orth more than he's being paid.

But as to that, he's not the only one. Indeed, if somebody were to ask me to give my one most abiding impression of the two Tests which I saw, I should say that the cricket was somehow dominated by a trades- union mentality. Apart from a few

honourable exceptions (of whom more later) the players seemed merely to be going through the motions. They were there because they were paid to be there, and they were required to play for six hours a day to get their money; and so play they must (if they couldn't evade it by pleading the weather or the light), but nobody need ex- pect them to jump about to entertain us. They were not going to be exploited, not they. They weren't going to risk being hurt (what about future contracts?), and they weren't going to stretch their energies unduly (what about the girls that evening?), and they weren't going to lose face by being polite to the umpire (who did he think he was?), and as for playing the game with love—well, who ever heard of anything as fuddy-duddy as that in this day and age?

The pity was, of course, that one of the few players who would have played with love, Colin Cowdrey, ran into such hopeless form that there could, be no question of selecting him. (It is also a pity that his failure was greeted with such spiteful pleasure by some of his own colleagues, but I can't go into that here; let him whom the sunhat fits wear it.) Of the Englishmen whom I did see play, Luckhurst and Knott certainly gave their guts to it (when was there last a wicket- keeper as accurate and courageous as Alan Knott?), and the latecomer, Willis, bowled each ball as if Belial were after him. Boycott too is sound at heart (if not always sound of temper), and Lever can bowl with classic authority. But I wouldn't cross the road to see any of the rest of them clocking-in and clocking-out.

Of the Australians, Keith Stackpole at least is a trier, the kind of man who makes you feel that this is an occasion, not just a working day to be got through, and that he wants to rise to it. Kerry O'Keefe seems to enjoy his bowling, always a good sign, and Ian Chappell cuts with a certain relish. To Lillee, one must grant that he burns fuel. Of the other Australians whom I saw, I had better just say that neither their talent nor their enthusiasm is obtrusive.

To sum up, then, and saving the ex- ceptions cited, the players and therefore the two matches 1 saw quite simply lacked zest. The only reason that the cricket had interest was that the actual contest for the Ashes was close. Close, but not close fought. Fight was what we didn't see. And of course when this happens we know whom, in the end, we must blame : the captains. The captain of a cricket team, like the captain of a ship of the

line or a company of soldiers, must be a man of quality, character, style and mark, a man whom you can recognise a mile off and who makes you feel a mile high as you salute him. If we cannot always find a Prince Rupert, we might surely run to a Lord Ten- nyson; at a pinch, even Colonel Blimp might serve; but what is no use at all is Corporal Bloggins . . . especially if he is going to lose his head whenever a tiny fraction of the crowd throws a few beer cans about. One should add that in the case of a touring side the captain is also a kind of ambassador, and should therefore know how to behave off the field—which means, among other things, being friendly at parties to the boys of the old brigade (who may be tiresome now but were once young and handsome as you), and not crouching in corners with cronies.

But of what use to talk? The fashion is for democracy and 'professionalism', and so doubtless we shall continue to get dingy leaders and beggarly, clock-watching cricket.