Cricket (Lyttelton, 1898)/Chapter 6
VI
CAPTAINCY—UMPIRING—CRICKET REFORM
CAPTAINCY
To be captain, to preside over the destinies of your side, to put your men in to bat in right order, to change the bowling, to put the bowlers on at the right end, to know when to declare the innings at an end, to judge accurately of your own powers, when to go on to bowl yourself and when to take yourself off, whether to go in or not after winning the toss, to place your field with judgment—to be able to do all these things makes a formidable demand upon the brains and nerves of a man. Besides all these, then there is the indefinable something which goes to making your own eleven trust you: the taking things coolly—an easy enough task when things are going well, but very difficult when, for instance, a Jessop is making runs at the rate of two a minute, mis-hits going everywhere except to hand; and place the field how you will, luck is all in favour of the hitter, and you know your best bowler is obeying his fallen nature, and is unmistakably losing his pluck;—under these circumstances the ideal captain has to wear a calm face. All the while a serpent is preying on his vitals, and he is conscious of critics in the pavilion and round the ground, a few of whom understand the game, whilst many do not—no wonder there are many men who play to enjoy the game, and are happy when not captain. I wish the learned critics could be got to understand that the captain in the field looks at the game from a closer point of view than they do; that it is probable that no two real judges would often agree as to the particular change of bowling that is desirable; that, therefore, in many cases the captain may be as right as they are in the course he is adopting; and that his position is not one to be envied.
In county and other matches a committee chooses the eleven; at the Universities and public schools the further onerous duty of selecting the side is also thrown on the captain, handicapped, in many instances, by a multitude of ignorant advisers, each recommending a different selection. We will pass this by and try to give a word of advice on other points. The glass is rising; there has been rain over night; if the sun comes out the wicket will play very difficult; it may come out in ten minutes, it may in two hours, and a captain has won the toss. If ever a man desires the gift of correct prophecy he desires it now. When will the sunshine? This is the question, and not being possessed of supernatural powers, what is a captain to do? I humbly think that if the sun is out he had better put the opposite side in; if not, go in himself. If the wicket is soft and just rolled, put a hitter in first; it will play tolerably easy for twenty minutes, and in that time a hitter may get thirty runs, and this may win a match. (Remember Massie's innings in the great International match of 1882.) But when in doubt, go in first, and trust to Providence for the rest; and always go in first in a one-day match. Modesty is a great virtue, but if a captain is a good bat he should go in high, or even first; if he is the best bowler he should begin, and not go off early because he is captain; in fact, he should be possessed of the right medium, a half-way house between conceit and modesty. Of the two vices he had better be over-conscious of his own powers than over-modest.
When in the field the management of the bowling and the placing of the field is very difficult. Begin, as it is obvious you should, with your two best bowlers; and, as a rule, put your best bowler on if possible to a new man after a wicket has fallen, as he is more likely to get a new man out. An inferior bowler may enable a new bat to get his eye in, so that he will be able afterwards to hit about the good bowlers. A captain should be able quickly to judge of the play of a batsman, as to which is his favourite hit, and place the field accordingly. This seems easy, but there are many captains who appear blind as far as this is concerned. I remember one University match where one man scored a hundred, and not till he had got over sixty did the rival captain put an extra short-leg to stop his favourite stroke—off his legs. When a hitter like Jessop begins work, I know it is easy to say that a captain should keep his head, whilst I am well aware that it is extremely difficult for him to do so; but there are some rules that ought to be observed. If you have a bowler who can break the ball, try him, for if the hitter runs out and tries to hit a ball and does not quite get at the pitch, the ball may break past his bat and he is bowled or stumped. Remember also to instruct your best bowler to bowl a good length rather wide of the off stump. The hitter sooner or later will have a slog, and will very likely be caught somewhere on the off side. If, as sometimes happens, the wickets are pitched near one boundary, don't put your slow bowler on the end where an airy sky-scraper will fall over the boundary—put him on, instead, at the end where there is plenty of room for the deep fields to get a catch. Another bit of policy, I think, is sound—that is, not to be in a hurry to change the bowling. Some captains, I notice, seem to change at nearly every over. The hitter is much more likely to get out to a good bowler than he is to an indiscriminate collection of bad length bowlers; for, naturally, bad length balls are what the hitter revels in, though I am well aware that Jessop, for instance, appears to be able to hit a good length ball in a way that is quite amazing. Lastly, take it easy as to time. See that your fields are in their proper places before the bowler begins the over; and bear in mind the golden rule of all—to tell your bowlers to bowl a good length wide of the off stump; there are more hitters got out if they adopt this policy, caught on the off side to such balls, than any other way. An old cricketer may here be permitted to indulge in an old memory, namely, the genuine shooter, which sealed the fate of all sloggers, and which, alas, is now never seen.
To know when to declare the innings at an end depends on many circumstances—the state of the wicket, the batting strength of your opponents, your own bowling strength, and how much time there is left. Some captains, notably Mr. F. S. Jackson, think that you ought to declare when it is possible for the other side to get the runs in the time, arguing that they will try and win the match by adopting a freer style, and that therefore you have a better chance of getting them out. If you declare when there are two hours left for play, and three hundred and fifty runs to get to win, all that your rivals will do is to stick, play maiden after maiden, and score at the rate of thirty runs per hour. Unless they are very bad they cannot be got out, and a drawn match is the result. There is a great deal of truth in this view, but in important matches it seems to me that the fear of losing is the predominant feeling, and that the side which goes in last adopts invariably the timid course, and, fearing to risk defeat, plays the poking game.
To sum up, an ideal captain should be an excellent judge of the game, be possessed of an imperturbable coolness, a calm tender, and firmness of character, and should have besides a cheerful and popular manner. To possess all these qualities is given to very few, and as a consequence bad captains are many. Naturally, as it is difficult for one professional to have much control over his brethren, there have been few professionals who have succeeded as captains ; but George Parr and Shrewsbury were, and are, good and capable captains. V. E. Walker, Mitchell, Webbe, Shuter, Lord Hawke, and Hornby were all excellent. The first, from his well-known and well-deserved popularity, his great knowledge of the game, and his keenness, I reckon to have been perhaps the best captain that ever lived; and Trott the Australian, in the season of 1896, proved himself to be quite in the first rank of captains. The post is a thankless one, very easy to criticise, and seldom do you see the press, for instance, give it adequate notice.
UMPIRING
One reason why umpiring is often bad is, in the first place, because it is very difficult; in the second place, because none but professionals act in all but a few matches. In saying this I do not wish to cast any aspersion on professionals, but as professionals they are more likely to exist on terms of bon camaraderie with their brother professionals—they cannot be in an entirely independent position. The chief difficulty is to give correct decisions on leg-before-wicket appeals and runs out. There are, of course, some obvious cases, but the instances of l.b.w., where it is a question of the nicest judgment, are numerous. How often does one see at Lords a ball delivered from the Pavilion end which apparently pitches dead straight, is missed by the batsman, and yet misses the wicket. If it had hit the batsman on the leg you would have blamed the umpire for not giving him out, and yet he would have been right and the critic wrong. As a matter of fact, to bowlers round the wicket, unless the ball is right up, it is generally right to judge that the batsman is not out. The line of the ball delivered with the hand wide away from the bowling wicket makes it almost impossible that a short ball can both pitch straight on the wicket and then go on and hit the stumps. At the same time I think the benefit of the doubt, which by an unwritten law of cricket seems invariably given to the batsman, might in this particular be given to the bowler. It is bad play to put the leg in front of the wicket, and in these days of gigantic run-getting the bowler ought to have the benefit of the doubt, and not the batsman. An umpire has many things to think about—he has to count the balls, he has to look at the bowler's feet to see that he does not go over or wide of the crease; he ought to look at the arm of some bowlers to see that they do not throw. I may note here, in passing, that as it is impossible for an umpire to look at the same second at a man's feet and hand, so is it possible for a dishonest bowler to bowl a no-ball by going over the crease, and to throw the next ball, having almost forced the umpire to look at his feet and not his hand. He has to determine any question that may arise as to l.b.w., runs out, catches at the wicket and occasionally elsewhere; call wide if necessary, see no short runs are scored, announce the fact of boundary hits to the scorers, and thoroughly understand the rules. This is a great list, and has only to be set out in order to show that the post is no sinecure. We hope bowlers will call to mind the remark of old Jemmy Grundy when dismissing about the twelfth frivolous appeal—"Not hout, and yer knows it."
CRICKET REFORM
My readers may have become tired of the frequent use of the word "difficult" in what I have written, but I must perforce use the word again in writing of cricket reform. No reform is wanted in the summers when the weather makes the wickets soft and infavour of the bowlers, because what reforms may be said to be necessary for hard wickets ought to be in the direction of doing something to make batting less easy, and there is not the slightest necessity for doing this in wet years. The ideal to be kept in view is to arrive at some condition of things which shall ensure a sort of equality between attack and defence, and that condition of things is not found to-day. On soft wickets the batsmen appear to be impotent; on hard the bowlers appear to be similarly afflicted. We seem to have struck on a cycle of hard seasons, and the run-getting is so enormous that drawn games are beginning to be the rule and not the exception; and yet for the next two years we may have bad weather, and a new rule that might have been of benefit to the game this year, will be found useless or harmful next year. The subject is not one on which I have at all made up my mind, but the question comes repeatedly to me as to whether human ingenuity cannot devise some means whereby the hard wickets may be made by some sort of treatment, not dangerous, but more difficult. Why should pitches be made so deadly smooth? Any duffer gets runs now. Let a little more grass be left on the wicket, as there used to be when the scythe and not the mowing machine was used. A possibly crude suggestion this, but we had better fun in the days when the bowlers had more to help them. The subject, however, must here be dismissed for the present.