Page:The Crisis in Cricket and the Leg Before Rule (1928).djvu/88

Rh concrete substituted. Australia knows what she wants, and I can well feel that three-day matches in Australia may not be the same thing that they are here, but I have Mr. Trumble on my side when I say that we have an interest in this question of Australian wickets, as we are vitally concerned with Test cricket there, and I hope our authorities w ill give the subject serious attention some day, though it may be too late to take any steps that will have any effect on the cricket of the Australian tour at the end of this year. As far as marling or any form of artificial treatment is concerned, its effect has been well described in these pages by Strudwick, and I have nothing more to add. I have not seen many of the easiest batting grounds in England, but I have seen much cricket at the Oval and some at Brighton, and if Southampton, Taunton, Worcester and Edgbaston, for instance, are artificially treated as at the Oval, I should describe them as the worst grounds in England, because they are the best—the best because the groundsman can do no more than he is doing—the worst because the result of his skill is an undue preponderance of drawn matches. Twenty-five county matches in August in the last six years at the Oval—nineteen drawn to six finished, and eight of the nineteen draws due entirely to unhealthy run-getting!

My own feeling is strongly in favour of an alteration in the l.b.w. rule on several grounds, and I rely largely on the figures given in a former chapter in Spofforth's case which are well worth consideration. Here was a splendid bowler who constantly made use of the off break, and got scores and scores of wickets thereby, but out of four hundred and four wickets which he got in England when he was in his