Page:The Crisis in Cricket and the Leg Before Rule (1928).djvu/68

60 resemble concrete. Our wickets to a great extent, and according to Strudwick, have all the life taken out of them and are made dead easy to bat on by another sort of treatment—i.e. marl. The result is that three days are not long enough to enable a match to be finished. A remedy must be found and a natural question to be asked first is whether marling or any sort of top-dressing is necessary.

Nobody wants to see cricket played on wickets which make the ball kick enough to become dangerous. It would appear at first sight that marling is not necessary as it was not brought into use until about 1897, and there were previously to that, from say 1880 to 1897, fast bowlers like Crossland, Kortright, Lockwood, Rotherham, Richard son, Woodcock, S. M. J. Woods and Wilson of Worcester­shire, who did not hurt batsmen to speak of. Moreover, marl has never been used at Lords. I can only suppose that some intelligent groundsman found it out and gradually it spread until wickets are now, as Strudwick tells us, lifeless and impossible for bowlers. I admit that I heard that one well known groundsman has said that marling is necessary to prevent wickets becoming dangerous. My reply to this takes the form of two questions: (i) why did batsmen escape with their lives when they played bowlers like Richardson, Kortright and Woods on unmarled wickets? and (ii) why did county captains about 1901 pass a resolution that artificial preparation of wickets was undesirable? (Wisden, 1902.)