THE M.C.C. IN AFRICA
By OLIVER WARNER
CRICKET tours in South Africa are apt to be a success. Next in importance to those in Australia, their atmo- sphere is wholly different. The Tests are not played with the same intensity of feeling, nor are South African cricket pundits so likely to make those extraordinary statements which sometimes render Australian tours pyrotechnic. It would be a delicious sight to see a tableful of critics eating their own words. Few would starve.
Walter Hammond captains a team rich in talent, and at one time or another most of its members have displayed it. Wickets have changed since the classic days of Sidney Barnes on matting, and conditions in South Africa are now a modest guide to those in Australia, though it must be added that the tourists, to their advantage, have had more rain than they could have expected.
With the next series of Tests in view, two facts are apparent. The first is that persistence with Edrich can chiefly be justified by the fact that he has proved himself an air-rounder of possibility. His bowling feats in some of the lesser matches have been remarkable, while with Hammond himself using the ball too sparingly, he has generally been deputed to open with Fames. Nevertheless he is a problem. He is a fine field—but so are others: a fine bat—but others are more successful in Tests. That confidence of which he had such a plenty must now be wilting : if it has the power of recovery, whatever Edrich does in the immediate future his return one day should be certain ; at least, one hopes so, though here one may think upon the strange and final dropping of George Gunn after the War, despite a far better record.
The second fact, deduced not from Tests but from routine matches, is that H. T. Bartlett is a punishing left-hander who might well assume the mantle of Woolley. If Paynter and Leyland remain in international cricket, and Verity retains his guile, there are four first-rate left-handers to daunt Australia, none of them alike.
Wright remains what he was, a bowler of possibilities who, even if he is at times expensive, is always liable to pull not the rabbits out of the hutch but the good batsman away from the line of the ball. Nobody seems to have paid much atten- tion to what has been clear to Kent supporters for some time, that he is a very fair bat, better than Wilkinson, for instance, his fellow " surprise merchant." That should be an asset for the future. It is to be hoped that neither of these men will be overworked.
Hammond, Ames and Hutton abide in the top and indis- pensable flight, and with the four left-handers mentioned, plus Wright, Bowes and Compton, ten of the possible Australian Test team seem to pick themselves. Fames, now returning to the form of which we knew him capable, com- pletes a formidable eleven.
As three out of five Tests have been played, the rubber might by now have been decided. Instead, there have been two draws, and a resounding England win. The moral is clear enough: the prime need in English cricket is not batting, but aggressive bowling. Everyone who remembers him sighs for Barnes, but a new Tate is enough to ask at present—a " bread and butter bowler " with stamina, and with the power of producing, once or twice in an innings, that unplayable ball. (In parenthesis, one day somebody will discover that there are still possibilities in under-arm bowling. A lob-merchant was to have performed in the last Eton and Harrow match, but it came to nothing, and the county game has waited many years for the resurrection of an art which, if only for its rarity, would do much to upset the orthodox. Lobs, like under-arm screws in tennis, have won important matches before now, when exploited with the necessary surprise.)
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