Mr. Warner is the most courteous of guests and opponents, and can be depended upon to say the right thing upon all occasions, but somewhere at the back of his head one suspects that there lurks the polished idea that it would have been better for African cricket, better for English cricket, and especially better for himself, if he had been enabled to be in the company of the best of English cricketers in this African campaign, and to have firmly asserted the supremacy of the Old Country at our national game.
One or two of our general officers suffered defeat in South Africa a few years ago, but we never heard of any of them exulting in the idea that it was a “good thing, as it had given a fillip to fighting in South Africa.” And we may be sure that Mr. Warner, over this unfortunate tour in Africa, has been throughout as keen as any general officer. But he had not got the men!
Now, what is to be said of “Mr. Lacey’s opinion,” as reported in the Star newspaper, when he consented to be interviewed upon the “unaccountable defeat of the M.C.C. team in four Test matches out of five.” The Secretary of the Marylebone Club is stated to have said, “Not unaccountable at all. It is a case in which the better side has won.”
Later on Mr. Lacey is reported as saying: “It was never intended to send a representative eleven of England, but I thought we had chosen a side quite worthy of upholding the cricket honour of the country. Apparently we were wrong.”
Now here is an important statement. Mr. Lacey seems to imply that he could have sent a more powerful team to South Africa if he or the management of the Club had been able to realise that the Africans, whom they had seen winning at Lord’s in 1904 against their own Eleven of England, were an extremely good side of cricketers.
According to the Star, Mr. Lacey has now no good word for the side of which he says, “I thought we had chosen a side quite worthy of upholding the cricket honour of the country.” He says: “I can only attribute the defeat of our eleven to inferior play. The fielding has been poor, the bowling only moderate, and the batting, with one or two exceptions, second-rate.”
“I believe the chief cause of our defeat has been poor fielding. Then again, such really great batsmen as P. F. Warner and Hayes have not done themselves justice.” Further, he says, “A great many judges of the game attribute the apparent failure of our team to the fact that our men are playing on matting, but I can scarcely agree with them. I have practised a lot on matting wickets, and judging from my own experience, it should hold no terrors for a really good batsman.”
The great want of the team appears to have been a really good batsman, and it seems a thousand pities from the point of view of the cricketing public that Mr. Lacey did not personally conduct this team.
But “All’s well that ends well,” and the final paragraph of the opinion of Mr. Lacey upon South African cricket states that:—
“Our defeat cannot do any harm; in fact, it may lead to a lot of good, and if the South Africans visit us in 1907, they should command a great amount of respect from all the first-class counties” (not yet, even, is the Marylebone Club pledged to extend any more respect to South Africa than was the case in 1904), “as judging by the improvement in their play, the South Africans will give us some good games, and may even be a hard nut to crack for a representative English team.”