Page:Out-door Games Cricket and Golf (1901).djvu/102

Rh quality of English wickets. In England, though we are in a cycle of dry seasons, which has made an exception lately, we have a variety of wickets, and this has enabled us to introduce batsmen like Grace, Shrewsbury, A. J. Webbe, Jackson, Steel, and A. P. Lucas, who may be trusted frequently to show us first-rate cricket on all sorts of wickets; from what I have seen of Australian cricket here they have given us hitters like McDonnell and Bonner, but not men who play the game as scientific batsmen on soft wickets. I do not say this in any unfriendly spirit; it is only natural that they should only be able to play as the circumstances of their climate permit them. I only repeat that on the whole it is a misfortune that Australian weather and climate should stereotype Australian batsmen into one mould. This cannot be helped; but there is a reverse side to the picture, and that is that the Australian climate must in the long run produce bowlers of greater variety than we can in England. Bowlers of the Jemmy Grundy, Mead, and Hearne type are impossible in Australia—as they say there, they play batsmen in. The same condition of things has made Australians pay greater attention