We begin by pointing out what appears at first to be the most ridiculous change; yet it is certain that when the tail of a team does go in, then it wants to enjoy itself for more than a few brief seconds. If the captain will not every now and then absolutely reverse the order of going in (at least at the end of a day’s scouting), then let the tail improve its own batting. The improvement rests with the members themselves. Let them begin practice on any level piece of ground, with a soft ball and a stick (to emphasise the importance of the straight bat); or let them in private (if not in a new form of drill) lunge with the left foot, stretch straight forward with the head and left-wrist and elbow, move the right foot across and cut with shoulder, forearm, and wrist, repeat the body-swing, and so on. The drill could be made less dull if one individual “set” the exercises to the rest, at first simple movements, then more complex movements with varied pace. Let the players give themselves the best possible chance of a reasonably long innings when they do go in. Let them make runs somehow,[10] not neglecting the safest kind of pull, for example, merely because it is called “bad style.”
More important than attention to batting is attention to bowling. We need not allow a “free margin” to bowlers of doubtful action; there are other remedies. Why should not people learn to make the ball curl in the air, starting their experiments with a Lawn Tennis ball, which gives more marked effects. That which is done habitually by Baseball throwers, and occasionally if unintentionally by a few bowlers, can surely be done frequently and intentionally by many bowlers, if only there be careful and thorough research. But anyhow let the breaks be learnt; let the first finger and the wrist be trained to strong movements of various kinds. Let the young players be given small bats and balls to play with. Let them and older players be given an over now and then for a change in less important games. Certainly let the various mechanisms of bowling be mastered before a player decides that he has not the gift of bowling; let him do arm-and-shoulder extensions (see the photographs of Hirst), wrist-turns, and so on; and then (as suggested above), practise with a stump, a wicket-keeper, and another bowler on the other side of the stump; let each have his little paper-marks on the ground, and let him pitch the ball as near as he can to these. Let every would-be bowler, that is to say every cricketer, try to bowl round the wicket, if only in the old style with the low delivery (like W. G.’s, as described by Mr. A. G. Steel). Or let him try his luck with lobs, if only that he may learn how to make the ball break both ways. Let him see if he cannot bowl a little with his left-hand—who knows? We must raise the number of bowlers as well as the standard of bowling. On that point all are agreed.[11]
Perhaps at the same time the power of the batsman might be lessened,[12] either by a number-limit or a time-limit to the innings, or by a smaller bat (narrower and thicker), or by a larger wicket (higher or broader, or both—at the moment when I write this, the suggested change has not been accepted by all—), or, better still, by the following plan. On a caking wicket we do not need to shorten the batsman’s innings, except to put a stop to excessive poking. The ground takes whatever break is put on (and perhaps adds some of its own). Why should there not be an artificial material which would take a good deal of break and not be dangerous. The M.C.C. out of its abundance might offer a reward (say of £100) to the inventor of some material, which need not extend over more than a small area. We want a floor that will show just what twist or spin has been given to the ball, so that inferior batsmen shall not now make their centuries merely because the ball will not “bite.” In Racquets, Tennis, covered-court Lawn Tennis, and Ping-Pong, the ball performs practically whatever antics it ought to perform. We want a pitch that will carry out the bowler’s work without adding or subtracting much. Neither a plumb wicket nor a caking wicket does that. We need some such material as Mr. W. J. Ford suggests, perhaps a kind akin to cokernut matting.
The proposed leg-before-wicket reform by which the batsman is given out if, in the opinion of the umpire, the ball would have struck his wicket (rather than if the ball pitches in a line between the wickets, which militates against the old round-arm bowling round the wicket), may or may not prove advisable. It is not a really radical reform.
But far the best change, the most potent, and in every way most profitable to all, to the bowler, the wicket-keep, the fielder, the spectator, and even ultimately to the batsman, would be an improvement in fielding. Some time ago one of the greatest of all cover-points past or present remarked to a friend of his, “If you and I were there, that side would have been out by now.” With this man at cover, the batsman was never let off at cover. With a team of such fielders, the game would be quite altered. A century would then mean something. As it is, a player is said to have given no chances when with a field full of Vernon Royles[13] he would have given several chances of being caught, and many chances of being run out. But how can fielding be improved?
Why are there so few prizes for fielding? Why in athletic sports is there a prize only for distance-throwing, and not for regulated direction or regulated pitch? Here is a great opening for schools, and especially to-day when, as Abel said, stone-throwing in cities is sadly discouraged! The beach of the sea-side is not always accessible. Besides this, it is good to practise catching and fielding with a soft ball against a wall; various games of catching and fielding can be made exciting enough; the stump-game (suggested in another chapter) can be adapted to throwing as well as to bowling; points may be counted. Excellent exercise can thus be had at odd moments. Or Fives and left-handed Squash will develop the left side, and prizes for left-hand throwing may be offered by schools. Boxing is capital in its effects on alertness and “eye.” There should be boxing by all means.
And let there be training in general—for how can one field well unless he be fresh and untired? Let there be full control of arms and legs and body without loss of balance, full quick stretchings, full and quick stoopings, in all directions; let there be—we repeat—plenty of Fives for the left side and for stooping; diving and swimming for endurance; and the fast extension-movements, at the end of which the extensions should be held for a moment or two.
This implies careful analysis of the mechanisms of fielding—of starting, of catching, of picking up, of throwing in. It implies a system or systems based on this analysis. It implies careful study. But if Cricket be a desirable game, above all if it be compulsory, then it must be taught well, especially at the outset. As Murdoch says: “A good ground-work must be laid down, and the young beginner cannot be too painstaking and careful.” The drill must not be in all the refinements of Cricket, such as the Ranjiglide; it must be in that A B C of fielding, etc., which no really great fielder has lacked. That which is not by nature must come by art. Some drill there must be, even if it only be self-drill. But drill itself will do a boy no harm to-day. A veteran cricketer, in his time an excellent field and now a superintendent of a boys’ institution, tells me on the one hand of the inferiority of fielding to-day, and on the other hand of the lack of persistent concentration among boys to-day. Boys, he says, lack that power, and drill can give it to them so that it lasts through life.
Reform in Cricket must not be merely reform for a few match-players. Apart from increased power of sustained self-control, of immediate self-direction, apart from confidence and readiness, it must be for the greater enjoyment and greater skill of the majority of British boys and men. With this end in view, we may have to adapt Cricket to indoor play in well-lighted and well-ventilated rooms in cities and suburbs (in America the city-clubs, built storey upon storey upwards, allow of other games by electric light). Any old room would do. We do not want only this adapted game, any more than we want only drill and practice; we want net-play also; practice-games also; matches also. But we want the game itself, the grand old game, when it is played, to be played better and to be played better all round, in all its branches, by all its players.
When we come to look at the matter impartially, and to ask what Cricket might and should do for us physically, aesthetically, mentally, morally, as individuals, as groups, as a nation; when we come to compare its effects—even as they now are—with those of our school-lessons in Latin grammar, geography, history, arithmetic, and so on, we do not hesitate to say that Government support is needed, not only in establishing such clubs, for evening and wet-day play within cities, but also for allowing Cricket—the trinity of Cricket, batting and bowling and fielding, and perhaps the theory of Cricket also—to count something in certain Government examinations, especially in those for the Indian Civil Service. For is it not of more value than many crammings?