ENGLISH CRICKET
By R. C. ROBERTSON-GLASGOW
AFRIEND of mine who fancies himself as a student of affairs remarked the other day, with that air of fatality beloved of the self-appointed epigrammatist, "It ain't exactly what we lose, but the depressing way we lose it." He wasn't talking of cricket, but I am ; and I snatch the loan of his words, as being a better fit for my subject than for his.
England has lost the Test Rubber in Australia, and the Ashes lie cold till the English summer of 1948. Only humbugs and cynics despise victory in games ; only fanatics and melancholics feed long on defeat. To anyone who, in 1945, had seen the available strength of England cricket struggling for equality with teams drawn solely from the Australian Services it was evident that our chance of escaping defeat from the full strength of Australia on their own grounds was slight indeed. Anticipation was not disappointed. Apart from the Fifth Test, at Sydney, where, in spite of Hammond's absence and Hutton's sudden illness, England stretched Australia almost taut, we went down heavily. True, we squeezed a draw out of two of the Tests, and so, to outward seeming, fared better than did J. W. H. T. Douglas's England team in Australia immediately after the First World War ; but had Hammond's team, like Douglas's, played their Tests to a finish, their score, I fancy, would have been o-5 at the end. In the 1920's we grew up to strength again. The same can happen in the 1940's. But the growth will need help. Nature unaided is not always a success. Wise gardening is called for.
Postponing this horticulture for a moment, we may very briefly examine the particular work of the selectors of the recent England cricket team and also the general premisses of the selectorial system. The common answer of selectors to critics is that it is easy to be wise after the event. Thus their attitude is: "We have done our best. What happens thereafter is not our fault." Non sic abibunt. No other promoters dare claim such immunity. The Hollywood selectors are not favoured by the total silence of Mr. Agate or Miss Lejeune. Mr. Harold Holt would read about it if he sponsored a vocalist who emptied the Albert Hall by sounds as of ducks that die in tempests. It is not suggested that other cricketers than those chosen would have altered the final result, but they might have given more enter- tainment on the way to the guillotine. Truly, the selectors made some whacking blunders. To pass over Harold Gimblett without one single trial was injustice verging on insanity ; for there was a batsman, free but sound, at the height of his form (he scored seven centuries in the season), at the prime of his cricketing powers (thirty- two years), of a temperamental and hereditary independence (yeo- man farmer stock) already proved (he won the match for England v. India at Lord's in 1936) and fitly framed to be an antidote to the fearful gropings of our batsmen in Australia. Further, they omitted to send the one bowler, E. P. Robinson of Yorkshire, who could have provided what the attack so sadly lacked, spin with length.
But these omissions were symptomatic of the Marylebone Club's traditional and permeating weakness—caution. Not only in the narrow field of selection, they fear youth and shut their doors on adventure. They prefer mediocre certainty to brilliant possibility. Their slogan is never, "Try it " ; always, "Has it been done before?" The very trees of St. John's Wood seem to murmur the sad word "No." Under the ivy of the Pavilion you might, unsurprised, find the text: "Let us alone. What pleasure can we have To war with change?"
And so to Australia sailed our handful of young cricketers with an escort of hopeful old gentlemen. There is neither timc nor space for an exhaustive and technical analysis of the Test matches. On this subject hundreds of columns have been filled, thousands of words have swum under or flashed over the ocean. Myself, I felt that our chance of success depended on one question—Was William Vote, of Nottinghamshire, the man, or something like the man, that he had been during G. 0. Allen's Australian tour in 1936-1937?
The answer soon came—no; and I waited for tales of rearguard actions, of strategic withdrawals to prepared positions. The eccen- tricity of umpires was thrown in as a marginal favour.
Then came the inevitable attacks, Press and private, on Walter Hammond, who was simultaneously losing his own form and Eng- land's matches. As one who has been privileged to bowl, inter- mittently and often inaccurately, against that great master of batting, I am glad that I did not see him in his decline. It would have been like seeing Moiseiwitsch fumble, then fall from his stool, in his playing of the Emperor Concerto. As to Hammond's tactical captaincy, it would appear to have been competent enough. Anyhow, Test series are not won or lost on the exact position of a fine-leg or the absence of a second slip. Defeats, like volcanic eruptions, start far from view. As to his personal leadership, I should not care to judge. But, strong or weak, his leadership was known and weighed in the balance before the tour began.
Rather, I should say that both Hammond and Bradman led their respective teams and directed—I would not say inspired—the Test matches according to a system of which they are the acquiescent heirs.
It is a system born out of Commerce by Prestige. There is a miserliness about these matches, which can be seen, and deplored,
not only in individual players (e.g., Lindsay Hassett, a beautiful stroke-player turned tortoise by policy) but in open insults to the spirit of cricket such as Bradman's refusal to accept Hammond's challenge on the last day of the Fourth Test at Adelaide. Bradman, I know, would have the complete theoretical answer to this charge, like any good lawyer or accountant. But we are weary of this desk- and-ledger philosophy. Test cricket gasps for an open window.
And, if it be argued that these matches brought in £40,000 or £5o,00o, the answer is that millionaires can die of a broken heart. What's happened to the fun? Not long ago I had a letter from Aubrey Smith, Ambassador Extraordinary to the United States, in which he recalled how, in a match in Australia, he had dropped Moses (" a very fine batsman") in the slips, and Moses had told him he ought to bend lower and sleep less. Rough and homely jesting, but of a right spirit. Where now is the vipp.7), the joy of battle? "They bat," wrote one onlooker, "as if not only their life but their very living depended on it, and they keep counting over their strokes to see if one of the three is missing."
But "away with melancholy." Make way for hope and recon- struction. And here, we should do well to imitate the Australian method in encouraging young cricket. Give them pitches to play on. Compare the thin ooze of ore into the first-class game with the wealth unmined, unseen, uncared for. Public Scrools have their fine pitches, and are generous in lending them to those who have not. Universities, and many Clubs, do the same. Private enter- prise does what it can. But now is the time for the Government to nationalise cricket. Let them divert some of the land and the money that they vote themselves to the making of concrete pitches, with matting superimposed, for the benefit of the tens of thousands of boys who now play cricket, if they ever do, on pitches where any one of them might have torpedoed the great Doctor with five balls out of six and knocked his cap off with the other. Next, having given them the place, give them the time for playing. Then, and then only, cricket in England, as in Australia, will be a happy game for the many instead of a perfunctory trade for the few:
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