Meanwhile a war of attrition was being enacted in the middle. For twelve consecutive overs there were neither runs nor wickets. Sooner or later there must be a lapse of concentration on the part of one of the batsmen, or one of the bowlers must tire. Lucas was anchored at the far end, facing Spofforth, Lyttelton was opposed to Boyle. Whose nerve was going to break first?
At length Spofforth could stand it no longer. Everything that he could bowl to Lucas was met with the straightest bat in England, and at the end of the over he consulted with Murdoch. His idea was that he might break up the partnership if the batsmen changed ends and he could get a bowl at Lyttelton. It was arranged that if the batsmen had still not scored a run by the last ball of Boyle’s next over, Boyle should give the batsman a single, even if this meant a misfield. Lyttelton in fact played the last ball to Bannerman at mid-off, Bannerman let it slip through his fingers, and the batsmen took one.
It was a bold move, because it broke the tension of that sequence of maidens and left England with only 19 to win. And it bore no fruit at first, Lyttelton defending with equal skill and stubbornness. Four more maiden overs followed before Spofforth at last beat Lyttelton with a ball that just took the top of the middle stump. 66 for 5.
One man in the crowd found to his astonishment that during those 17 overs for 1 run he had gnawed halfway through his umbrella handle. Even the hands of the scorers were unsteady, and their fingers trembled. There was half an hour left for play. Next man in was A. G. Steel.
Bowling from the pavilion end, Spofforth had achieved a position of strategic value. As each new batsman came in he had to pass Spofforth on his way to the crease. Each man was treated to so searching and baleful a stare that the existing nervousness was multiplied threefold. Horan, at short leg, was close enough to see the strain written on the batsmen’s faces. Cold and nerves had induced a deathly pallor, and their lips were ashen grey.
Spofforth ran up to bowl to Steel. The light was beginning to deteriorate, Spofforth had the dark background of the stands behind him, and he bowled his fastest at Steel. Somehow Steel kept the ball out of his wicket, but he looked ill at ease. At the other end, though, a late cut by Lucas off Boyle yielded four runs and brought a tumultuous cheering from the crowd. They too were shivering and were greatly relieved to have something to applaud. 15 to win. Once again Spofforth ran up to bowl to Steel. The action was the same, but this time Spofforth held the ball back, Steel played a shade too soon, and there was Spofforth halfway down the pitch, almost on top of the batsman, to snap up the catch. 70 for 6.
Another tremendous cheer from the Oval crowd announced that their favourite Maurice Read was coming in next. Spofforth ran up to bowl. The applause had hardly subsided when amid further terrific excitement it was seen that the wicket was broken and that Read was on his way back to the pavilion, clean bowled first ball. That was 70 for 7.
Defeat now stared England in the face, yet there was still some batting to come, enough surely to knock off a paltry 15 runs. Lucas was well set, Barnes was in next, Studd had been held in reserve, and even Peate had been known to make a few runs. If they kept their heads they must still win.
Spofforth tried a fast yorker on Barnes first ball, but Barnes came down on it hard and drove it to the on for two. It was the first score off Spofforth for ten overs. Next ball Spofforth for the first time beat not only the batsman but the wicketkeeper as well, and the ball ran down towards the sight-screen for three byes. That was five runs off two balls – nine to tie, ten to win.
It was the first time Blackham had faltered. The nerve of these two men, bowler and wicketkeeper, in ignoring the narrow margin of runs and going all out for a win, scorning to play for safety, amazed the crowd. There was no one to cover Blackham, yet apart from Spofforth’s first over he had stood right up over the bails the whole time, a constant nagging threat to each batsman.
Lucas had batted for an hour on a wicket that was taking more and more spin. Earlier in the innings Spofforth had sometimes turned the ball six inches. Now he was sometimes turning a foot.
If Murdoch was frightened of anything it was that someone would have a go at Boyle. It wanted only two or three hits to finish the game. But the medium-pacer, bowling round the wicket and running across the batsman from leg to off, was extremely hard to attack. Murdoch felt anyway that there was nothing he could do now but leave things as they were, and he breathed again when Boyle bowled a maiden to Barnes.
Spofforth had now become virtually unplayable. In his last six balls he had got rid of Lyttelton, Steel and Read. Each wicket had freshened him, giving him new energy and life. He ran up to bowl to Lucas. Somehow Lucas scrambled the first three balls away, but the last one turned from outside the off stump and Lucas could only deflect it into his wicket. England were 75 for 8.
C. T. Studd was next, the man whom Hornby had kept back for this moment. He divested himself of his blanket and strode briskly out to the wicket, nervous undoubtedly but glad of the chance to get to grips with the situation at last and warm himself up. For the moment, though, he was deprived of the strike. Over had been called, and Boyle was now bowling to Barnes.
Boyle was one of the great length bowlers, with a genuine movement from leg. Although he had taken only one wicket, his contribution had been almost as important as Spofforth’s. Indeed he had been even more economical, bowling 19 overs for 17 runs. And even now, when he might have been forgiven for keeping the ball outside the off stump, he went on attacking the wicket. His second ball was right on a length, and straight. Barnes had to play at it, it lifted, and he was caught by Murdoch at point off his glove. 75 for 9.
Peate, the last man in, was sipping a glass of champagne in anticipation of victory. When he saw that Barnes was out and that it would be up to him he drained his glass and made his way out to the wicket.
‘Leave it to Mr Studd,’ called Hornby. The advice was echoed on all sides. But Peate was a character, with ideas of his own about batting, and he was determined to finish the match in true tail-ender’s fashion with the minimum of hits. With his first shot he horrified the crowd and sent them into ecstasies at the same time by hitting right across the line and pulling Boyle to leg for two. If he had caught hold of it properly it would have been six. For good measure he darted out of his crease again, trying to persuade Studd to attempt a suicidal third run. Studd stayed where he was. One more ball and they would have to face Spofforth.
7 to tie, 8 to win. It could be done in two hits.
In vain did Hornby and the other England players exhort Peate, from the vast inaudibility of the pavilion, to keep his end up and let Studd do it. The last ball of Boyle’s over was just right – well up, and straight. Like all hitters, Peate liked them straight. He swung massively – and missed. An awful groan swept round the Oval when it was seen that Peate had been bowled.
The black horde of spectators remained for a moment immobile, half-paralysed into complete, incredulous, stunned silence. Even the press were too overcome to write or telegraph their copy. One hardened Oval habitué lay slumped over the back of his seat. Alcock, the Surrey secretary, thought he had another death on his hands, and he shook the man by the arm. The man stared up with a glazed look, then slumped back. ‘I don’t know whether to cry’, he said, ‘or be sick.’
C. T. Studd, scorer of two centuries that year against the Australians, had been left stranded. He had not faced a single ball.
It was nearly a quarter of a minute before the crowd recovered and burst on to the field like the fragments of a bomb to intercept and cheer the Australians. All day the crowd had been strictly partisan. Now they forgot their intense disappointment in their wild enthusiasm for the victors, and especially for one man. Spofforth had taken 7 wickets for 44 runs and 14 for 90 in the match and the crowd chaired him off the field and up the steps into the pavilion. Such scenes have been repeated at the Oval many times, but no one who saw this one ever forgot it.
The inquests have gone on for eighty-odd years and no doubt th
ey will go on for ever. Certainly Australia had the best of the conditions on the second day. For the first hour the bowlers had trouble with their footholds, the wicket was easy and the ball was greasy. Some thought Hornby should have tried to delay the start still further. But the point is that Hugh Massie took full advantage of the conditions and played a great innings. Australia’s subsequent misfortunes, and especially the dismissal of Jones and Murdoch, wiped out their advantage, and the game seemed all over when England were set only 85 to win.
Spofforth said afterwards that the wicket could not have suited him better; but he thought that if England had chanced their arm they must have won. Murdoch thought the same. It was a case of too much batting, with no one accustomed to going in at a crisis at 8, 9 and 10. All the England players agreed that they should have won. ‘Well, well,’ piped Grace, extracting a morsel of glee from the gloom, ‘I left six men to get 30-odd runs and they couldn’t do it!’
The final comment came from Peate, the Yorkshire left-hander. When asked why he hadn’t concentrated on defence and left the scoring to his illustrious partner, he made the priceless remark that reeks of Yorkshire and characterizes Peate for all time.
‘Ah knew ah could play old Spoff,’ he said, ‘but ah couldn’t trust Mr Stood.’
⋆ ⋆ ⋆
Neville Cardus reported and wrote on the game for thirty years. The match he chose as his ‘ideal’ was played between the old enemies on the most sacred of grounds. It showcased attacking batsmanship, skilful slow bowling, and superb fielding. An Indian prince made a dazzling debut for England; an Australian commoner coolly put that effort in the shade. Bradman himself thought his 254 to be the best of all his innings. Before the summer began, esteemed judges had predicted that he would be an utter failure on English wickets – you see, he played with a cross bat.
NEVILLE CARDUS
The Ideal Cricket Match (1956)
FIRST DAY
If some good fairy were to ask me to pick out one match of all I have seen, to relive it as I lived it at the time when it happened, my choice would be easy: England v. Australia at Lord’s in June 1930. I was at the prime of forty years then, fulfilled in work and happy in home, love and health, the mind still unstaled, yet critical enough. This game could be laid up in heaven, a Platonic idea of cricket in perfection. It was limited to four days and finished at five o’clock on the closing afternoon; 1,601 runs were scored and 29 wickets fell. Bradman batted in a Test match at Lord’s for the first time, scoring 254 in his first innings. England batted first and made 425, but lost by 7 wickets. Glorious sunshine blessed every moment’s play. London was at its most handsome; 1914 forgotten and 1939 not yet casting a shadow for all to see. I can still catch the warmth and the animation of the scene, feel the mind’s and the senses’ satisfaction. I can see Grimmett bowling, his arm as low as my grandfather’s, his artfulness as acute; and I can still see Chapman as he played one of the most gallant and dazzling and precarious innings which has ever cocked a snook at an Australian team ready and impatient to put to rout and ruin an England team apparently in the last ditch, the ghost about to be given up.
In the two teams were some of the greatest players of history, names already classic or legendary: Hobbs, Woolley, Hammond, Duleepsinhji, Hendren, Tate, Woodfull, Ponsford, Bradman, Kippax, McCabe, Victor Richardson, Oldfield and Grimmett. From one of the boxes near the grandstand, K. S. Ranjitsinhji looked on; and the fact that he was present in the flesh relates the match more even than the heroism and splendour of the actual cricket to the realm of the fabulous past. Only twenty-six years ago? It is hard to believe. Every department of cricket was seen at its best during this match; fast bowling, slow bowling, spin; all varieties of batsmen from Woodfull and Bradman to Duleepsinhji; with wonderful fielding everywhere.
Sutcliffe was unable to play, and when Chapman had won the toss and England’s first innings was about to begin, the vast crowd saw Woolley walking to the wicket with Hobbs. Not since 1921 had Woolley gone in first for England, though he had taken part in thirty Test matches against Australia. And how he opened the England innings now! – the cricket at once seemed as though ignited by the radiant sun. Woolley’s strokes were as brilliant, as much a matter of nature as the rays dazzling the field from the blue sky. Wall attacked at a superb pace, supported by the virile dangerous fast-medium swing (both ways) of Fairfax, from whose bowling Hobbs was soon and most courteously caught by Oldfield, a wicketkeeper who, judging by his quiet charm of manner, might well and always have kept wicket in the kid gloves in which he was married. The overthrow of Hobbs cast no gloom over the morning’s sheen as Woolley cut and pulled, combining power, poise and felicity. He scored 41 in half an hour; his strokes changed Lord’s and a Test match into Canterbury with all the tents and bunting and white wine.
Fairfax changed over to the pavilion end. His first ball rose to cutting height. Woolley lay back, lifted up his tallness and cut hard. We looked to the boundary, and the fieldsman at third man ran in in anticipation; but Wall at backward point scooped up a catch, though the impact of the ball against his hand sent him reeling back. This, though we did not know it yet, was the match’s leitmotif; we shall see how the same kind of catch marked the great climax of the last afternoon. Duleepsinhji and Hammond batted for England with the scoreboard announcing the loss of Hobbs and Woolley for a mere 50. Though Hammond was forced to the defensive and Duleepsinhji likewise, none of us suffered anxiety. England were bound to get ample runs on a fast pitch during a dream of a June day.
But on this occasion, at Lord’s in June 1930, Grimmett bowled Hammond, luring him out by flight, defeating him by spin. A few weeks before this, at Trent Bridge, Grimmett on a lovely wicket for batsmen, had shown us spin bowling unparalleled; in half an hour he deceived and drew into his web Hammond, Woolley and Hendren, each put under his influence by hypnotic flight – then the poison of spin performed the dispatch. There has never been a cleverer slow leg-break bowler than Grimmett. He is not really properly described as a leg-break bowler, because the term usually suggests a certain inaccuracy of length. So I shall here call Grimmett a length bowler, a meticulous length bowler, who had control over leg spin and googly: he was a little man, with a shining dome of intellect or cunning, who ran a few nimble steps to deliver the ball, as though on the velvet of a cat’s paws. And his arm, not above the shoulder, could toss the ball along an arch of wicked temptation; or send it along with a subterranean deceit.
This day he cudgelled his brain vainly for hours. Duleepsinhji and Hendren used quick feet, making strokes while the ball was coming to them. In half an hour 50 runs flowed over the field, or cracked and thundered when ‘Patsy’ hooked. This also was a Golden Age. Sunshine and applause, the cricketers’ flannels catching the bloom of the day . . . Ripe and red in the face with contentment, the crowd greeted England’s 200 for 3 wickets, whereat Hendren hit a long hop from Fairfax into young McCabe’s hands at long leg; Hendren greedy for his fifty was out for 48 and came home to the pavilion with his face more or less concealed by the width of his smile. As a fact, England’s innings hereabout suffered unexpected indecision. Chapman and Allen failed, so the score 239 for 6 was not good or safe enough. Tate was next man in and as he walked through the Long Room on the way to the wicket he saw me sitting on a table; at once he flourished his blade, envisaging a scythe-like cut, and said to me, out of the corner of his mouth, as though in confidence, ‘Batsmanship!’ Just that and nothing more. He went forth, splay-footed, to join the elegant Duleepsinhji and lost no time before he was driving and heaving the confident Australian bowlers all over the place. He and ‘Duleep’ added 98 in 70 minutes, Tate’s share 54. As England’s total arrived at the full tide of 400, Duleepsinhji allowed his freedom of stroke play to run to licentiousness; and towards six o’clock he was caught by Bradman from a reckless hit to the off side. He had made 173 in his first Test match. He was in a position to enjoy himself, wasn’t he? When we review the match as a whole, seeing the end in the begin
ning, ‘Duleep’s’ impetuousness, so near to close of play, must be counted as a major contribution to England’s defeat. His illustrious uncle the Jam Sahib, ‘Ranji’ himself, severely reprimanded him for carelessness when he reported himself to the enpurpled box at the end of the innings. At close of play, England were 405 for 9.
SECOND DAY
Next day, Saturday, the sun outshone the glory of yesterday and the crowd at Lord’s sat in an eternity of content. Woodfull and Ponsford began Australia’s innings with grim protective vigilance. Australia had lost the first match of the rubber at Nottingham; now they went in facing 425 and possibly a wicket inclined to get dusty. Woodfull and Ponsford made only 30 in an hour: ‘Playing for a draw already,’ said more than a few irritated patriots, who naturally wanted Ponsford and Woodfull to get out, or assist in the act of their own downfall. Australia’s score reached 100 just after lunch, for none; the time of day was half past two. At a quarter past three the score was 150 for none, Ponsford 77, Woodfull 70. It was at this point in the proceedings that King George came to Lord’s and was presented on the field of play to the cricketers. From the first over after the King’s departure from the scene, bowled by White, Ponsford was caught by Hammond in the slips. He ‘followed’ a wide ball. There is no doubt that Ponsford’s wicket should really have gone to His Majesty’s credit. At half past three, when Australia were 162 for 1, Bradman walked to the wicket, taking his time. He drove his first ball smack to long off, and when he had finished the stroke he was near enough to the bowler to see the surprised look on White’s face; for until this instant minute no batsman had dreamed of running out to drive White; in fact several very famous English cricketers had assured me that to drive White on the half-volley was an act scarcely comprehensible in terms of skill or common sanity. The advent of Bradman on this Saturday of burning English summer was like the throwing of combustible stuff on fires that had been slumbering with dreadful potentiality. Nearly every ball was scored from. Bradman ran yards out of his ground to White and belaboured him; White was obliged to pitch short and then Bradman cut him to ribbons. After tea a massacre, nothing less. Never before this hour, or two hours until close of play, and never since, has a batsman equalled Bradman’s cool deliberate murder or spifflication of all bowling. Boundaries everywhere – right and left and in front. The bowler helpless and at Bradman’s mercy even as he ran to bowl. He reached 100 in one hour and three-quarters, with 13 fours. At 5.20 Australia’s score was 300 for 1; at 5.30 it passed 350. Tate was wildly cheered when he sent a maiden to Bradman. But the England attack was entirely at a loss; not to get Bradman out – that wild hope had gone long since – but just to stem the flood of his boundaries. There were not enough fieldsmen available; Bradman found gaps and vacancies in nature. Ten minutes before half past six, Woodfull was stumped pushing out to Robins’s spin; and it is a mistake to think that he was a dull, unlovely batsman. His stiff arms and short lift-up of the bat distracted the attention of casual onlookers from the prettiness of his footwork. It is a compliment to Woodfull that he did not sink into anonymity, or invisibility even, while Bradman at the other end of the wicket played the most brilliant and dramatically incisive and murderous innings of his career, and played it without turning a hair. At half past six Australia’s total was 404 for 2; and Bradman, in little more than two hours and a half had made 155, not once exerting himself, every shot dead in the target’s middle, precise and shattering; an innings which was beautiful and yet somehow cruel in its excessive mastery.
The Picador Book of Cricket Page 39
