Sixthly.—Be sure to practise bowling both sides of the wicket.
Seventhly.—If you want to become a really good bowler accustom your fingers early to get as much twist as possible on the ball, both ways.
[CHAPTER IV.]
CAPTAINCY.
(By A. G. Steel.)
Going in.
It is a strange fact connected with cricket that a good captain is but seldom met with. The game has made such progress in popularity during the last thirty years, and the numbers of those who are proficient in its different branches have increased so enormously, that we should certainly expect to find in our county and other important matches captains who thoroughly understand the duties they are called upon to fulfil. But on looking round we are disappointed to find that the really good captains in first-class (including of course county) cricket are extremely few, and these few are amateurs. The cause of this may be that few men are able to take part in first-class cricket after they have served such an apprenticeship as would give them the experience, calmness, and judgment necessary for the difficult post of captain; or it may be that the qualifications for a good leader in the cricket-field are, from their very nature, seldom met with—in other words, that a captain is born not made, and very seldom born, too. Few professional cricketers (it is a well-known fact) make good captains; we have hardly ever seen a match played, where a professional cricketer was captain of either side, in which he was not guilty of some very palpable blunders. Take the Gentlemen v. Players matches, at Lord’s and the Oval, for the last twenty years; the Players have always been seriously handicapped by the want of a good captain, though Shrewsbury and Gunn may be exceptions. Bowlers are kept on maiden after maiden without the faintest chance of a wicket, no originality of attack is ever attempted, and altogether the captaincy is usually bad. It must, however, be admitted that ‘professional’ captains are in a more difficult position than amateurs, inasmuch as they are often exposed to the but thinly concealed murmurings of their fellows, who consider that they have not been treated with the amount of consideration they deserve. Amateurs always have made, and always will make, the best captains; and this is only natural. An educated mind, with a logical power of reasoning, will always treat every subject better than one comparatively untaught. There are exceptions to every rule, and Alfred Shaw, the best professional captain we ever came across, is the exception here. The disastrous effects of bad captaincy on the success of a side were never more clearly manifested than by the Australian team that visited England in 1878. This team contained several good bowlers who, helped by the sticky state of the ground, were very deadly to our best batsmen. Their batting was rough and rather untutored, but still at times dangerous. They met with great success until the grounds got hard and firm, when their bowlers were collared. It is in adversity at cricket, as in the more serious walks of life, that the best qualities come to the fore; and whenever the Australian bowlers were collared, the whole team seemed to go to pieces. Either the captain or the bowlers placed the fielders in the most extraordinary and unheard-of positions, where they had but little chance of saving runs or getting catches. Spofforth during one match at Lord’s in that season bowled the greater part of the day to a batsman—the Hon. Edward Lyttelton—who was not dismissed till he had topped his hundred. Ball after ball was neatly cut on the hard true ground to the boundary, past the spot where third man ought to have been but was not. Fancy a fast bowler bowling on a hard ground, while a batsman made a hundred without a third man; then think that this batsman was one of the finest amateur cutters of his day, and you will wonder what had become of the management of the side! This was, however, the first year the Australians visited us; on many subsequent occasions we found out to our cost that they had made good use of their time and experience in England, and had improved, in every branch of the game, to what was to an Englishman’s eye an alarming extent. Their captaincy, however, has never been good, till Trott, a thoroughly good captain, took command in 1896; Murdoch, of course, had a thoroughly sound knowledge of the game; but his better judgment was too frequently hampered by the ceaseless chattering and advice of one or two men who never could grasp the fact that in the cricket-field there can only be one captain.
The chief qualifications for a good captain are a sound knowledge of the game, a calm judgment, and the ability to inspire others with confidence.
Bad captains may be split up into three classes:—