Sporting Aspects
Cricket's Coronation Year
By NEVILLE CARDUS FVERYBODY interested in cricket has been glad to see Leicestershire running for the County Championship as 4 never before, and I suppose that as I am a Lancashire man I should be taking a grim satisfaction in Yorkshire's lowly state during Coronation year. Once on a time I would have exulted to the heart's core to know that Yorkshire cricketers were being reduced and humbled, fair means or foul. But I was then a barbarous partisan schoolboy; and Old Trafford was situated amidst green fields, and every Whitsuntide and August Bat& Holiday, Yorkshire, led. by Lord Hawke, would invade us, and George Hirst, after rolling up the sleeve of a left arm which looked like a smoked ham, would assault my favourite batsman, the unparalleled Reggie Spooner, with a swerving new ball, red and as red-hot in my imagination as a coal of fire.
Today, with the broadmindedness of age, I confess to feelings of sadness at the departure—only temporary, we may be sure! —of glory from Yorkshire. But consolation for unaccustomed adversity will have come to most Yorkshiremen by, means of Len Hutton's success as captain of an England team that has recovered the " Ashes " for us. But few people, even those who admire Hutton the other side of idolatry, realise how great the strain the rubber has imposed on him, physically and mentally. When Hobbs provided an England innings with its spinal column match after match, he could give the whole of his attention, as batsman, to the Australian attack of the period, free of worry about tactics, knowing that if he chanced not to get runs there were other great players to follow. Seldom in recent Test matches has Hutton been able quite to trust any of his colleagues not to get out; never has he enjoyed the position of confidence occupied once by W. G. Grace, who, when they asked him his ideas about the com- position of the next England XI, simply said : " Give me Arthur "—meaning that if Arthur Shrewsbury were chosen to open the innings with him the names of the others didn't matter.
Pudsey, of course, has already paid generous and resonant tribute to Hutton, but on the whole he has scarcely had his due portion of national gratitude. We tend, as a people, to reserve our loudest cheers for the losers. On the balcony at Kennington Oval, when the multitude assembled after the finish of the fifth Test match, the applause increased in volume at the appearance of Hassett. Thus for Hassett the wheel had come an ironical full circle; for when he led Australia to a rubber's victory at Melbourne in 1951, the crowd shouted for F. R. Brown, and wouldn't go home. but hailed him again and again. I happened to run into Hassett at the back of the pavilion; he was trying to find his car and get away before the crush. " Listen to them," he said, " cheering Freddie Brown. They don't want the Australian captain. We have only won the rubber." Then he paused, looked at me with comic wist- fulness, and, apologetically taking from his pocket his fountain pen, said : " Er—would you like my autograph ? " This story, if not altogether true, is entirely characteristic of the most likeable and most friendly Australian captain of cricket ever to come to England. He has made his major errors—to the increase of his hold on our affections ! —but in the main he has conducted his side at the right tempo, and done his best to encourage his young men. The rise of Leicestershire to prominence in the county, championship delights me especially, for reasons of personal sentiment. When I was a very tiny Lancashire lad my first love in sport was not cricket but, as we called it then, " assocy '.' football; and my hero was "Billy " Meredith, who used to race down the wing for Manchester City, the ball flickering about his boots like some sort of shadow or lustre of them, leaving the track behind him strewn with frustrated and rather dizzy opponents. One afternoon I found myself outside the county ground at Old Trafford; it was probably my second visit there. To this day I can't imagine how the admission fee of sixpence came .into my possession. Lancashire were playing Leicestershire, and A. C. MacLaren made a century the majesty of which moves in my memory to this day. I decided on the spot that this was the game for me. And 'it so happened that one of the Leicestershire XI of that distant year was A. E. Knight, a professional known not only for his clear-gut strokes and sound defence but also because of his interest in classic literature and his devotion to religion and good works. Under his name appeared the first book on cricket I ever read—The Complete Cricketer; and in it was a glowing romantic word-picture of Victor Trumper that awak- ened in me an ambition one day to become a writer on cricket myself.
Leicestershire's progress towards the summits owes much to the example of C. H. Palmer, the captain—just as the amateur captaincy of a young player has achieved in Sussex virtually a resurrection. David Sheppard, at the beginning of the season, was obliged to set to work on much the same material which had seemed to be heavy and unproductive and not at all related to Sussex cricket as we all knew and loved it in the years of George Brann, " Ranji," Fry, Arthur Gilligan, Tate and Duleepsinhji; and by example of skill, fortified and inspired by love and faith in the game and the men about him, Sheppard has indeed produced for us a Sussex side handsome to watch and hard to play. In time, and before he is much older, Colin Cowdrey will do as much for Kent.
The game is already all the better in health for the new blood that has been pumped into it these recent summers by young amateurs. Some of them, unfortunately, will not be able much longer to afford to go on playing simply for pleasure. And here we touch the sore spot of contemporary cricket. In spite of the glamour cast over the scene in general by the Test matches, too much of the day-by-day county routine is without imagination, true craftsmanship or individual relish. It is possible any day to spend hours on a county cricket ground and not see a square cut, a left-hand spinner, a straight drive, a leg-break, a truly fast ball, or a vivid hook. Now these are things which are part and parcel of the technique and art of the game; and if they are not constantly on view we are watching cricket in impoverished attenuation. The average professional player, worked hard without much rest from May to September, seems more and more to look for the sort of technical trick which is easiest and safest to exploit. The new ball! So he polishes it on his body, a sight which some- how always irritates me, especially when I see boys apeing the custom during an Eton and Harrow match. The M.C.C. might do cricket some service by returning to the ancient rule or procedure by which one ball, and one ball only, was used in the longest innings. Bowlers then were compelled to learn the lovely arts and devices of spin, changes of pace and of flight.. Fast bowlers had to bowl at the wicket; even Lindwall is less dangerous by half when the ball has lost polish and prominence of seam. To bowl inswingers persistently to three short-leg fieldsmen is monstrous, witless, against the spirit: it :is a bowler's confession of fear to face the challenge of a batsman's best strokes.
But week in and week out the cricket season of 1953 has honoured Coronation year, and left us many scenes and excitements to cherish,/best of all the power and strength of Lindwall's attack; and the agonised obduracy of Trevor Bailey, who twice stood in Australia's way when the path of victory looked clear enough for them, and batted in a manner that told them they would advance only over his dead body. And even Keith Miller .wasn't prepared to go as far as all that.
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