Tyldesley did make a very fine 112 at Cape Town, and Sinclair, the South African cricketer, an equally fine 106, but the ball nearly always beat the bat, and Haigh in particular brought off some great bowling triumphs. The work he used to get on the ball was prodigious; he thought nothing of pitching six inches outside the off stump, and then hitting the leg stump. Trott, too, did one or two fine performances, while Rowe, Middleton, and Sinclair were at times almost equally successful.
At Port Elizabeth the out-field is of grass, but the wicket seemed to me even more difficult than at Cape Town, for the ball, besides taking a lot of break, turned very quickly. Perhaps, however, I am unduly influenced by the fact that I made “spectacles” at Port Elizabeth—a favourite ground, by the way, for Englishmen to fail on, for more than one well-known cricketer has “bagged a brace” there.
Cape Town and Port Elizabeth are the only two cricket grounds in South Africa which can boast of a grass out-field; all the other grounds are absolutely innocent of a blade of grass, being nothing, indeed, but a brown-reddish sand—somewhat like the colour of the sand on the seashore—rolled into a flat and hard surface. The matting is stretched on this sand, and makes a hard, true, and very fast wicket, while the ball, once past a fielder, simply flies to the boundary.
The Wanderers’ ground, Johannesburg, is by far the best ground in South Africa, for the wicket is exceptionally fast, and the out-field level and true. At Kimberley there is a good wicket, but the out-field is rather rough, which may be said with truth of nearly all South African grounds, except the Wanderers’. Natal we did not visit, but I am told that the Maritzburg Oval is in almost every respect the equal of the Wanderers’ ground.
A STATE MATCH.
The Duke of Wellington bowling out Lord Brougham.
It will be seen from what I have said that matting wickets differ according as to whether they are laid on grass or otherwise. Matting stretched on grass gives the bowler more than a two-to-one chance, but matting on the bare grassless ground favours the batsman, though I am inclined to think that a really good bowler ought always to be able to make the ball “nip” a bit. Haigh certainly made the ball turn every now and again on the Wanderers’ ground, and both he and Albert Trott have told me that they would infinitely prefer to bowl on the best matting wicket in the world rather than on a really hard, true turf pitch.
But the matting at Johannesburg is good enough for the most fastidious batsman, for it plays very fast, and though the pace of the wicket is apt to put a batsman off on first going in, once a man has got his eye in, he can make any amount of forcing strokes on both sides of the wicket, for the ball does not often hang on the pitch. Drives between cover and extra cover, and push strokes between the bowler and mid-on and past mid-on, can be made with great frequency, while the ball travels to the boundary at a great pace.