The Cricket of Abel, Hirst, and Shrewsbury

by Unknown

This is just one example of the lines on which much of the book is written. As, for my own games, I studied Latham and Standing, Brown and Pettitt, Fennell and Harradine, Saunders and Fairs, so here I have studied Abel, Hirst, and Shrewsbury. What they do regularly, if unconsciously, this I have found out by questions and by the incontrovertible evidence of photographs, and this I have then analysed and described especially for the benefit of beginners, but also, it is hoped, for the benefit of others who—like myself at my own games—played and played and played, practised and practised and practised, but wrongly, for want of simple teaching, for want of elementary apprenticeship, for want of knowledge and mastery of the very alphabet of play; and so scarcely improved but rather confirmed their bad habits.

Let me diverge for a moment to give a word of warning. To all such players—whether their form of exercise be Cricket or Racquets or Tennis or Lawn Tennis or other games—I would say: “Do not grudge time and trouble spent over the simple A B C, at the start; get over the drudgery; make the letters and words automatic—integral parts of your very self and of its cells, fibres, nerves, and muscles; then and not till then play naturally. But do not imagine that it is worth while to play naturally so long as at least one-third of the mechanism of your body is wrongly employed or else atrophied through neglect. Develop all your important muscles (for pray tell me what important muscles are not wanted by a good batsman, a good bowler, a good fielder), by prompt fast and full movements of the two sides of the body independently—a most vital point; by extension movements; by practice in weight-shifting and balance; by imitation-batting and its various motions, imitation-bowling, imitation-fielding and throwing, in a bedroom or elsewhere. (I do a little nearly every morning.) Then and not till then will you have a right to tell me that you can’t play or can’t improve in spite of nets and games. Then and not till then will I believe you. Till then, I repeat, you are not yet a real failure. You have not done yourself justice.” For we wish in this book to prove several things that may give hope especially to young players and duffers, and to those who, alas, have abandoned our great national game in despair, because they have not found it worth the expenditure of money, time, tediousness, and disappointment.

Let us consider in how many respects one may very likely be making serious mistakes. Let us realise the multitude of possible faults.

1. First of all—as the photographs will clearly show, thanks to the new idea of the white line out from the middle stump—the feet are the foundations of successful and therefore of enjoyable play. Abel plays with his feet. We must have their positions and movements not only correct but also automatically correct—already integral parts of ourselves—if we would wait well, play forward well, play back well, pull well, drive well, step or jump out well, cut well, cut-drive well, bowl well, field well. So long as we have to be thinking consciously of our feet, we cannot focus our attention on the bowler’s wrist or the batsman’s bat. He who would succeed must—unless he be a genius, a born player—drill his feet for a few minutes almost every day. Such drill will be useful for many games and forms of sport, as for Football, Hockey, Track-athletics, self-defence, to say nothing of the mental and moral training which are indissolubly bound up with the physical.

2. Secondly, the weight and the balance of the body must be under control both during and after the stroke or other movement. Over his foot-work and equilibrium the keen fencer will spend many months; why should not the keen cricketer thus spend several hours? Does he not think that Cricket is of more value than many fencings? Now although the whole weight of the body must move together, especially in the forward stroke, yet perfect balance implies perfect (conscious or else sub-conscious) control of all the muscles, in Cricket scarcely to a less degree than in skating. To put the total force into batting or bowling would mean with the average player either a fall or a strain. But with special practice the power is acquired. Almost any one can by sheer practice, even of the least scientific kind, learn to direct his limbs and yet maintain his balance in skating; and if in skating why not in Cricket also, particularly should special practice-exercises be devised? These have been devised, and are offered in this volume.

3. It is above all in the full extensions that average cricketers are weak. “I say, reach out and field them,” is the complaint of the school captain; “Come forward to it; get your bat well over the ball—get right to the pitch of it,” is the refrain of the coach. But if the ordinary person followed out the instructions he would perhaps tumble over. Extension of legs, trunk, arms—this can be mastered by proper practice. Fencers and boxers can master it; why not cricketers also?

4. Boxers and “Bartitsu” experts have to be alert on the balls of their feet, and ready to move now here, now there—not ever to lose poise, but to put the full weight, to make the full extension, to shoot out the required limb or limbs fast and straight and true. The batsman, the fielder, the bowler (at least after he has bowled), all have to be prompt commanders of their many-portioned persons, waiting for the unknown, or, rather, for some one out of the several knowns. At present we have scarcely any means, except the imagination, of practising preparedness for the unforeseen. But at least we can, again by specially contrived exercises as distinct from dumb-bells, weight-lifting, strain-exercisers, gymnastics, develop an almost incredible looseness of joint and litheness of limb, so that after a little play at the game itself, merely to have seen the ball will mean to have formed “the ready” in a moment, and to be waiting in “the ready”—“the ready” being that position from which the strokes, etc., are most easily and safely made; whereas without such practice we should have stood and waited in “the unready” and should either have missed the strokes, etc., altogether, or should have made them with difficulty and with risk.

5. Nor is it mere quickness to prepare that the cricketer needs; he needs also quickness to perform, to carry through. In the hundred yards sprint, one should not only start rapidly, one should also run rapidly. As training for this we require fast full movements, simple to begin with (first for the right side, then for the left); but afterwards more and more varied, complex, and speedy. Nothing could be better here than the Macdonald Smith system. Slow movements of strain are not to be recommended for Cricket purposes, except in so far as they strengthen the fingers and the wrist and the forearm. And even these parts should not be strengthened till they have already become prompt to start and to move, lithe and supple under the control of the will.

6. A high authority, quoted in a previous chapter, asserts that Cricket does not need very special training. But we insist that, if one wishes—and one ought to wish—to run fast and vigorously and to move fast and vigorously (whether as a batsman or as a bowler or as a fielder), one should be in condition analogous to that of a football three-quarters. Quite apart from control of special muscles or sets of muscles, one must be able to run and move not only fast, but often; one must have endurance, or else one will amble after a ball—a disgusting sight to the true sportsman—instead of racing after it. And one should be calm; calmness, I find in my own case, is an inseparable accompaniment of good condition. Bad condition is a very serious fault; it “flusters” the player.

There is no space to enlarge upon errors in detail; for example, to warn the batsman against bending his right knee (except for the late cut), or against lifting his bat up and back in a crooked line before the stroke (this he can test by means of a looking-glass), or against standing too far from his work as if he were playing Lawn Tennis or Golf. These and other hindrances to success will be dealt with in the special chapters. Here let us rather try once again to emphasise the fault of faults.