Page:The Crisis in Cricket and the Leg Before Rule (1928).djvu/80

Rh went to Australia in 1924, played eleven matches in Adelaide, Sydney and Melbourne on wickets presumably specially prepared as so graphically described by Mr. Trumble, so that concrete was substituted for grass. No fewer than 12,702 runs were scored at an average of 34 runs per wicket, and three out of five Test matches ran to the seventh day and the average number of days taken for each match was five. In the Inter-state matches it is very much the same story. In 1924-5 an average of five days was taken for every test match and the cost per wicket was 37. As long ago as 1920-1 Interstate Australian matches averaged four days and runs per wicket 36, which seems to show that batting is somewhat slower than it used to be.

All bowlers except perhaps the slow ones are overworked and the evil tends to increase. We all marvelled at the a prodigious work the great Tom Richardson got through thirty years ago, as under:—

This was a great feat, all the more because Richardson, though of powerful build, took a long run and was very fast. Tate's figures in a corresponding period are as under:—