An Official Team for Australia
I do not know whether there is any truth in the rumor that the Melbourne Club have requested the M.C.C. to send out a team in the autumn. Assuming the rumor to be true, it is to be hoped that the M.C.C. will not lightly dismiss the request. From many points of view, apart from the mere question of winning or losing matches, the last two tours in Australia—Mr. Stoddart’s and Mr. Maclaren’s—were not unqualified success successes.
The man who undertakes to run what I may call an unofficial team in Australia is faced with all sorts of difficulties, and I do not believe that “The Ashes” will ever be recovered from Australia until the M.C.C. takes the matter in hand and sends out an official team under its own. auspices. A well-known English cricketer, who is perhaps more familiar with the conditions of present-day Australian cricket than any other man in England, told me lately that Australian bowling is not nearly as strong as it was a couple of years ago, and that the prime necessity for an England touring eleven would not be so much the pick of our batsmen as the very best of our bowlers.
In other words, we have plenty of batsmen in this country capable of making lots of runs against the best of the Australian bowlers, but only the best of our bowlers would stand any chance of dismissing the best Australian batsmen for a reasonable score.
The Yorkshire Trio.
If this is the case, the main difficulty with the MCC, should they decide to send out a team at the end of the summer, would be the inclusion of Rhodes, Haigh, and Hirst among their players. For a test match played in England, F. S. Jackson is a sine qua non, but his presence in a team intended for Australia is not so much a necessity, and the same remark may be applied to two or three other English batsmen. At any rate, the day of the private tour seems to be past, and if an English team is to recover our lost laurels in Australia, it must be under the auspices of the M.C.C. Sports, and Pastimes.
Black coats and dropped catches.
While every cricketer will be inclined to treat the opinions of Mr. A. G. Steel and Lord Harris with profound respect, it is not easy to accept implicitly their statement that the fielding of today is as good as it was thirty years ago. Alfred Shaw was engaged in first-class cricket long before either Mr. Steel or Lord Harris came into the game and continued in it long after both of these players had abandoned county cricket. Shaw, however, in his book written last year states that neither English bowling nor fielding are anything like as good as they were when he was in his prime.
Shaw’s active connection with the game plus his experience as an umpire gives immense weight to his opinion, and there is something particularly seductive in his argument that if catches had been dropped in the eighties in the same way as they have been dropped in the last five years, he would not have had such a harvest of victims.
Lord Harris’s suggestion that the modern fieldsman cannot see the ball because of the big attendance of spectators all dressed in black coats is somewhat far-fetched. There was a goodly gathering of spectators in black and brown at the test matches last year, but the color of their coats did not seem to interfere with the fielding of Jessop, MacLaren, and Tyldesley, not to speak of the Australians.
A Cricket Classic.
Cricket literature contains only one classic. It is no disparagement of the many excellent books that have been written on the game to say that the foundation of every cricket library is Cricket Scores and Biographies and a collection of Wisden. Mr. Arthur Haygarth, the compiler of the fourteen volumes of Scores and Biographies, began his self-imposed task while he was still at Harrow in 1842, and for upwards of sixty years he was always unearthing fresh facts about famous old cricketers.
In journeying about the country in search of information, he spent quite a small fortune, and there is no doubt that had he not undertaken to write the history of the game, he would have been a far richer man at the time of his death. I do not know whether any other instances of a man can be mentioned who, from boyhood old age, had readily bestowed his whole time and thought to a single subject without the least intention of any pecuniary profit.
A Son of Harrow.
It is not, however, only as the compiler of scores and biography that Mr. Haygarth will be remembered. He was in the Harrow eleven in 1842 and 1843 and for twenty years played in the big matches at Lord’s. From 1846 to 1857 he appeared regularly for the Gentlemen against the Players, and in the last-mentioned year he was in the whole time during which Mr. Hankey was playing his historic innings of 70 against the bowling of Wisden, Willsher, Jackson, and Stevenson.
Like poor I. D. Walker and A. J. Webbe, his interest in Harrow was unabated, and a few days ago, before his death, he wrote a poem dealing with the school on the hill. In his younger days, he would frequently rise at five in the morning and walk to Harrow to coach the boys, after which he would return to London, on foot.
Ranji, Editor.
There is no limit to Ranji’s versatility. The claims of county cricket are heavy enough in all conscience, but the lithe and active Ranji finds time to open bazaars, write cricket articles, and even edit a paper. Those who like the strong touch of an editor’s personality in their newspapers had certainly nothing to complain of in the journal, which Ranji edited for one day only last week. Perhaps Ranji was determined to make the most of his opportunity, but at any rate, the Sun on Monday, May 11, was permeated from start to finish with the opinions, reminiscences, and ideas of its one-day editor.
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