Bowlers of the type of Haigh, Tate, or Howell (the Australian) are the most successful on matting wickets, but slow bowlers are not, as a rule, effective, and fast bowlers, unless really great ones, are usually heavily punished.
The ordinary spikes one uses in England are quite useless on the matting, and have to be replaced by a sort of flat nail.
The length of the matting varies in different places, and this, I venture to think, causes great inconvenience. At present the matting may be any length up to 22 yards, and often I found myself standing at one wicket with both feet off the matting, at another time with both feet on, and at another with one foot off and the other on the matting, while at Cape Town the pins which keep the matting down were placed just where the ordinary batsman puts his right leg. The South African Cricket Association might very easily pass a law making the matting uniform throughout the country, and in my opinion the matting should stop about a foot in front of the popping-crease. This is the length at Johannesburg. A captain may if he desires have the matting stretched tight at the commencement of each innings. In that case the pins are removed from the end and side of the matting, which is then well stretched by scores of Kaffirs, and afterwards firmly pinned into the ground. As a rule, however, merely the end pins are removed for a minute or two, the matting is given a pull, the pins replaced, and the matting swept, for pieces of grit and sand are very apt to collect on the mat, and a batsman has to look out for this while he is at the wickets.
The great difficulty which frequently besets a captain on turf wickets, as to which roller he will put on at the commencement of his side’s innings, or at the beginning of the day’s play, is removed, for no rolling of the matting is necessary. Towards the end of an innings the matting is apt to get a trifle loose, and batting is no fun then, for should the ball pitch on one of the creases in the matting, it will probably break very quickly; and in this case the last few batsmen have the worst of the wicket. Winning or losing the toss, of course, makes no difference whatever, and rain, too, has little or no effect on the state of the pitch. One great advantage of these sandy grounds is that play is nearly always possible within a few minutes after the heaviest shower. I have seen the Johannesburg ground absolutely under water and resembling a lake, and yet play in progress within three-quarters of an hour after the rain had ceased.
Cricket on matting is not half such a good game as cricket on turf, but as there is no turf worthy the name in South Africa, South Africans have no other alternative but to play on matting. There is at first, to one accustomed to grass wickets, an air of unreality about the whole thing, and the game does not seem to be quite the same cricket we learnt in England. For the first few weeks I hated the “mat,” but after a while one becomes more at home on it, and at the end of the tour I was quite fond of a matting wicket—though I never could agree with those who said that they preferred it to grass. One thing is certain, and that is, that playing for three or four months on matting wickets does improve one’s batting, and makes one a more resourceful player. At Johannesburg, Kimberley, and the grassless grounds, forward play and hard forcing strokes score tremendously, but at Cape Town and Port Elizabeth forcing forward strokes are at a discount; the man who can play back well will make the most runs.
Lord Hawke’s team played seventeen matches, won fifteen, and drew two. Five eleven-a-side matches were played, viz. two games v. All South Africa, two against Cape Colony, and one against the Transvaal.
At Cape Town we played a couple of games with XIII. of the Western Province, the remaining fixtures being chiefly against XV’s.
At Cape Town we just won our first match by 25 runs against a Western Province XIII., chiefly owing to some grand bowling by Trott, Cuttell, and Haigh, the Yorkshireman taking five wickets for 14 runs at the crisis of the game. The highest total in the match was 149, and the highest individual score 45 by H. H. Francis. Murray Bisset, who captained the South African XI. in England, batted well in both innings, and Rowe and Middleton took seventeen of our wickets between them.
The return game saw us victorious by 106 runs, for we were all in better form by this time, and more accustomed to the eccentricities of the mat. Rowe and Middleton did even better than before, taking nineteen wickets between them, while Trott and Haigh bowled splendidly for us.
From Cape Town we went in turn to Graaf Reinet, Port Elizabeth, Grahamstown, and King William’s Town, victory awaiting us at each place. At King William’s Town we drew lots for the order of going in, and F. Mitchell and Tyldesley put on over 100 runs for the last wicket; but the most interesting thing about this match was a splendidly-hit innings of 66 by Giddy, who scored his runs in three-quarters of an hour. He twice hit Milligan out of the ground, and scored 16 off one over of Haigh’s (there were five balls to the over at that time).