Page:The Crisis in Cricket and the Leg Before Rule (1928).djvu/78

Rh He brings before us the complete obliteration of grass wickets in Australia and the substitution of something so hard and smooth that a ball on contact keeps a more or less uniform height, with no variety in pace off the ground. On such pitches only freak bowlers, like Mailey, can make the ball turn. But the cost is tremendous, each freak wicket in Australia costing over thirty runs. I had a conversation with Mr. Trumble in the summer of 1926 and I asked him if the ball ever got up as I thought it must do, the pitch being so hard, and his reply was that the only ball that any bowler could make get up must be so short as to be practically useless.

Mr. Trumble in a subsequent letter returns to the subject and says, which is perfectly true, that the groundsman now holds sway over the game, and goes on to describe the preparation of Australian wickets—flooding for twelve days, heavy rolling, finally making the wicket like concrete. He adds, again with perfect truth, "It might be just as sensible to cut out all this preparation and put down a per­manent concrete bed." So it might. Some years ago I was told that Apled, the late groundsman at the Oval, stood wrapped in blissful admiration of a lovely, possibly marled, wicket of his making and said with pride that no match could be finished in three days on that pitch. He was right, the match was drawn. I am not speaking of South Africa, of which I know little and where matting is used, but both in England and in Australia the object of the groundsman is to make wickets so easy that drawn matches in England are getting to be almost as numerous as finishes, and in Australia a match may in the near future require a fortnight