(Said to be of George, Prince of Wales, afterwards George IV.)
WILLIAM DORRINTON.
Having thus given vent to a growl on an unpleasant subject, the features of professional and amateur play may now be discussed. There used to be great differences in old days, far more than there is now, but in one respect there is a great difference still, and that is in bowling. We all know what sort of bowling will be seen in a University match, or in Free Forester and Quidnunc matches. There will be one or two fair slow bowlers, but that is all. Good fast bowling has not been seen for some years in amateur elevens, but for this the amateurs are hardly to blame. The modern wicket, shaved and heavy rolled, has made it practically impossible for any really fast bowler to do any good, unless he is one of the shining lights, like Richardson or Lockwood. Amateurs like Messrs. Jessop, Kortright, and Bradley have an occasional day of success, but these bowlers, being naturally fast, depend mainly for their success on the agility of the field in the slips, and on their capacity to make the ball bump. To attain this they generally have but a short career. They take out of themselves by adopting a gigantic long run and banging the ball down from straight over their head at a terrific pace. Flesh and blood cannot stand this for more than a short time. A human being is but human after all; he is not a machine built to order like a steam engine, and work like what he has to undergo knocks him up. The professionals have always had much the best of it as regards bowling, and they have so still; but why this is so is not easy to see. Between the ages of twelve and eighteen there is no reason to suppose that the professional practises more at bowling than the amateur; the probability is the other way. A young amateur is at school during this period, where cricket is more systematically carried on than at the board school, which the professional leaves at thirteen and exchanges for a shop or a factory. But the tendency in amateur bowlers is to promise well as a boy, and not to come up to expectations as a man, and especially is this the case when, as so often happens, there is a corresponding improvement in batting.
In my experience of more than thirty years, the only instance I can call to mind of an amateur who bowled above medium pace like a professional—that is to say, with a professional’s accuracy and method—was Mr. Appleby, who died last year. Mr. Appleby had a beautiful easy action, and was always to be relied on to keep a length and direction, as J. T. Hearne did for many years. Mr. Jackson is still in the middle of his career, and next to Mr. Appleby, bowls more nearly approaching to the professional standpoint; but, good bowler as he is, he does not strike one as quite like a professional bowler. Slow bowlers are not quite in the same class. Here the amateur is more at home. Mr. W. G. Grace and the late Mr. David Buchanan were worthy of being classed with Alfred Shaw, Peate, and Rhodes. Mr. Grace must be so much used to hearing his merits discussed entirely from the batting point of view, and has done so little bowling as compared with batting, that it may interest the present generation that for some years as a bowler he was as effective as the best professional. His method, however, was very different. At a time when a wicket was supposed to be worth only ten runs, and when nearly every bowler bowled more for maidens than they do now, Mr. Grace was the first to show the way of a deliberate system of getting wickets by getting men out, other than by merely bowling them. He habitually placed a deep square leg in the right place, and tempted men like Oscroft, Charlwood, and many more to send chances there, and many a time and oft has the trick come off. He frequently bowled in a way that showed what idea was in his head. A very common device of his was in regard to l.b.w. He never objected to being hit over the ropes, as he would silently argue that an ordinary batsman, having once tasted the sweets of a mighty leg hit over the ropes, would very much like to repeat the feat, and Mr. Grace would drop down a tempting ball on the leg stump, and if, as often happened, the batsman did hit at it and did miss it, he was out l.b.w. To this day, to batsmen like those who come from Australia for the first time, and have therefore never seen Mr. Grace bowl, I would as soon put on Mr. Grace to bowl for a few overs as any man in England. He is and always has been quite unlike any other bowler, both in the way he delivered the ball and the strange way he placed his field.
Mr. Buchanan was another bowler who copied Mr. Grace in one sense, for though he did not bowl for catches to leg, he carried out the theory of bowling for catches on the off side more than any bowler before or since. A bold hitter might hit Mr. Buchanan, if he was quick on his feet and had a good eye, but for all that there were few bowlers who so rarely bowled a bad-length ball. Neither were there many bowlers who made such absolute fools of batsmen as Mr. Buchanan did. The picked professionals who played against him in Gentlemen and Players matches at Lord’s and the Oval as a rule displayed all the feebleness that was possible. Daft, Lockwood, and Oscroft were exceptions to this. Lockwood, who had a wonderful cut, more than any other, realised the danger of hitting at the pitch of Mr. Buchanan’s off ball. Instead of doing this, he got back and cut the ball behind the wicket for three runs—it might have been four, but Lockwood was a slow runner. Mr. Buchanan did not like to have a third man, and his nervous system was seriously insulted at Lockwood’s method, which forced him to change the disposition of his field in a way he did not like. Mr. Grace and Mr. Buchanan were two amateur slow bowlers who really studied the art of bowling, and both of them, Mr. Grace in particular, studied the play of their batting opponents; but when you have mentioned Messrs. Appleby, Grace, and Buchanan, and for a short time Mr. Steel, you have nearly exhausted the list of bowlers who during the last thirty years may be said to have challenged comparison with the best professionals.
In batting it is very different. Mr. Grace, of course, must be left out of any calculation. Apart from him, however, the amateurs can quite hold their own in batting. It is not fair to take as an illustration the performances of each in Gentlemen v. Players matches, because the bowling on one side is so superior to the other. But in international test matches, both here and in Australia, Messrs. Stoddart, Ranjitsinhji, Maclaren, Jackson, and Steel have been fully as good and successful as Shrewsbury, Barnes, Gunn, Hayward, and Tyldesley. As far as style is concerned, the older professionals, such as Shrewsbury and Barnes, had a more distinctive difference of method than their modern successors. Hayward and Tyldesley far more closely resembled the amateur method of Messrs. Jackson and Palairet than Shrewsbury and Barnes did that of Messrs. Steel and Stoddart. It is not easy to explain on paper the difference, but every decent judge of the game could see that a difference was there. Some of the players, like Ulyett and Bates, could and did hit as hard and as often as the amateur, but in the professional there was little real grace of style. It is strange that this is so, for grace and ease are qualities that must be born, not made, but it is true, nevertheless, speaking of the older cricketers. Nowadays it would seem that Tyldesley and Hayward have nothing to fear, as far as style is concerned, from any amateur, always excepting Mr. Palairet. As far as mere run-getting is the point of discussion, there would seem to be very little in it one way or the other. In the great series of test matches, both here and in Australia, during the last ten years there have been Stoddart, Maclaren, Ranjitsinhji, and Jackson, as there have been Shrewsbury, Hayward, Tyldesley, and Gunn, the amateurs perhaps having a shade the better of it.
The fielding also is and always has been tolerably even. In this, however, there is a great difference now as compared with old times. Thirty years ago the professional wicket-keeper was a class, even two classes, above the amateur. Lockyer, Pooley, Plumb, and Pinder formed a class that the amateurs could not show any comparison with. Possibly the rougher wicket and the, generally speaking, faster bowling made the position more unpleasant than it is now, but undoubtedly the amateur has improved beyond all knowledge in wicket-keeping, and there is not much to choose now. In other respects also the quality seems tolerably equal. The observer will undoubtedly notice a change in the figure of the ordinary professional now. The old Yorkshire eleven, with the well-known figures of Roger Iddison, Luke Greenwood, and Rowbotham, and the Nottingham eleven with Bignall and Wild, seem quite out of date now, though Hirst looks promising in this respect. But Gunn, Maurice Read, Tyldesley, Wainwright, Hirst, Braund, and several others were and are fully equal in fielding to any that the amateurs can bring to compare with them.
It would appear, then, that in batting and fielding there is little to choose between amateurs and professionals, but in bowling there is great superiority among the professionals. Of course this superiority, cæteris paribus, is so important that as long as it exists the professional must win the vast majority of matches. As a general rule this has been the case, but when Mr. Grace was in his prime, that is, between 1869 and about 1887, his tremendous skill gave the amateurs the predominance that, as far as appearances go, does not look likely to occur again.