Sporting Aspects
Hassett's Australians
By JOHN ARLOTT
THE touring cricketers who next week leave us to our football will go down in the record books as " the 1953 Australian team." Their captain, Lindsay Hassett, probably fears, behind his quizzically friendly expression, that Australia will remember it as " Hassett's side that lost the Ashes." For English cricketers, even those who sought to minimise them because we won the rubber from them, these men will, with the years, become cricketing immortals. Some of them—Hole, Archer, Craig, de Courcy, Davidson, Benaud—will be back to attack us with the weapons forged from their past summer's experience. When the Australians were presented to the Queen, Her Majesty remarked to the barely eighteen-year-old Ian Craig, " I understand this is your first visit to England." "Yes, Your Majesty," he said, " and unless my batting iinproves it will be my last." He has grown up beyond his figures and gained. this summer, experience for which two generations of English bowlers will pay. Others, in the normal course of Australian Test cricket, may have made their last visit, where- fore we may well recall the sight of them before they become legend. After all, we did beat them; and that fact alope must give them a certain friendly glory in our memories. Indeed, no statistics can expunge the awe-inspiring effect of nine of them standing in a grim, close crescent around the bats of English- men who could deceive neither themselves nor us into a state of confidence. Great batsmen may be ground into quiescent defence, great bowling may, on unhelpful pitches, appear ordinary; but great fielding is the only sustained, minute-to- minute glory of cricket, distilling suspense out of its threat to snatch the uncatchable from the confident stroke, tautening the quiet Headingley afternoon like a fiddle-string by its poised antagonism.
Morris, Benaud, de Courcy, Miller, Hole, Archer, Davidson —all made catches in this past Test series which checked the breath of thirty thousand people. They could draw the last and most fuddled straggler out from the bar when they stood, crouched for the edged stroke, against the new ball as bowled by that unique Ray Lindwall whom we shall not see again in the guise he wore in our summers of 1948 and 1953. The men who propel a cricket ball at a speed faster than the reflex of - the practised batsmen do not retain that gift into their thirties. Larwood, Gregory—even the legendary Tom Richardson—once the first young-muscled completeness was past, had to forsake pure pace and, at best, lean upon technique. Lindwall himself, at thirty-two, toyed with medium pace and, by his concealment, variety and control made that loss of concentration a virtue. Thus he could hold back his thunder- bolt until batsmen and crowd both bated their breaths against its release. Again and again men were 'caught off him, with their mouths still half-open with astonishment. .
He came softly, steadily, smoothly up, his approach like a wind, and his body, mightily muscled at the trunk, swung back and then, on the final stride, forward in a mighty, but understood; surge of impulsion. Custom could not stale the impact of his attack upon player or watcher. For two or three overs he would work up to the sine of ease and looseness when the best deliveries of his life were within his easy command. For a couple of overs he would hold that power which might at any time wreck an innings and then, even in his last over, he might unseat the best. The mothers of English boy-cricketers may well have frightened their children with the' word "Lindwall ' as an earlier generation of French- women put terror into the name of Marlborough.
Good Test cricketers are present in every period. The player who compels as Lindwall has done in two tours of this country occurs less than once in every generation. He was the siege engine who might at any time blast away all defence:' every man who batted against him, every spectator who watched him, not only recognised that fact technically but felt it.. The years which took away his power to bowl over after over at top speed have informed Lindwall's cricket brain most shrewdly. So, should he care to return in 1956 as a bowler of medium pace who is in full control of swing, length, direction, change of pace and a quick appreciation of the batsman's weakness, a very fine bowler will be needed to exclude him from the touring party.
His fellow opening bowler must almost certainly be a fresh player. That William Arras Johnston who returns to Australia with a batting average for the tour of 102 may well be content to enjoy the joke for the rest of his days in a deck-chair. Most amiable and enthusiastic of cricketers, he may accept with his philosophically but humorously raised eyebrow the likelihood that a major knee injury could be a worry to him, his selectors and his captain, and decide to play his cricket in less responsible circumstances. Australia has not had the good fortune to know the bowler Johnston who, in English air and on English turf, made a cricket ball float and curve, nip and turn so that he seemed, while leaving the batsman no moment of peace, almost to bowl for bowling's sake. In Keith Miller we have seen—and many have misunder- stood—the finest all-rounder of post-war cricket and, possibly, one as great as any the game has known. Certainly he has taken catches, played strokes and bowled balls as fine as any living man has seen. Physically a man of amazing animal grace, he is also essentially shy and, even more positively, in his human relationships, magnificently generous. In the final Test, at the Oval, he fielded. the ball over by the Vauxhall end and, with a single stride, threw it, true as by compass, a full hundred yards, full-toss into the gloves of Langley who did not need to move an inch to take it. On a cricket field, Miller is lost in the game: he would bowl with the same fire and prolific repertoire if he were playing on a desert island, for he loves to pit every ounce of himself against the other man. Only, sometimes, when his powers could not lift the game—which is for him always a game—above the pedestrian,. he would turn a hungry attention upon the crowd. He could play upon it, with an averted smile, as a busker plays a concertina, with an instant superficial effect which he found laughable. If he can sink his ebullience to the level of cricket- ing utility—if true competence upon Test level may be so slightingly described—then there is no doubt that Miller could come here three years hence as an elder batsman, playing with amusement as others would give their ears to play. Figures do not show the thoughtful help this sometimes gaily mis- chievous young man gave to the captain who treated his friendly loyalty with such unobtrusive respect. Indeed, this departing team should be remembered as " Hassett's Australians." Lindsay Hassett bears the two unmistakable marks of the great batsman: he always has plenty of time to play his strokes, and in the perfection of his timing there is a power which he rarely allowed himself to indulge in Test Matches. Rather, with consummate perfection of footwork, he moved to a position in which he could wait for the ball to hit his straightly presented bat. The entire concept of the five-day Test might have irritated him: instead, he accepted it as ordained and, with an amused air, demon- strated the type of cricket it demands. He did almost all a captain could do on the field: off it, he talked with under- standing, reason and humour to all who came to enquire, beg or importune. In doing so, he set English cricket an example of perfect " public relations " and set the tone for a team which would still have made its multitude of friends in England even if it had retained the Ashes.
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