WHAT WE WANT TO SEE.

Although we have lost the rubber, English cricketers all over the world want to see the Australians “stretched”. Personally, I want to see that happen, because I want to know how good they are. As yet, I have only seen them “on velvet”. Once or twice they have been made to break into a gentle canter from an amble, but not yet have they been made to gallop. Our men may take it that their chance will not come to them. They have not to make it. Besides, we cannot be worse beaten than we have been, whatever policy we adopt, and I say definitely that it is galling for us, and infra dig for English cricket, to see our best batsmen match after match painfully struggling to collect singles and twos, and failing ever to achieve anything better. As yet, Armstrong has only relieved a bowler for purely physical reasons. We want to see him made to take him off for technical reasons. I hope then that our men will take the field to-day prepared to attack the Australians, and not merely prepared to resist their attack. One would like to think that in the event of rain and a sticky wicket we should “have them in the cart”. Frankly, I am doubtful of the capacity of our batsmen in such conditions. There would doubtless be smaller scoring, but ours could easily be the lesser of two small scores.

So far as our bowling is concerned, I am hopeful of C. S. Marriott. One can only trust that he will be supported by his fieldsmen. We get back, then, to where we started from. Technically we have no good reasons to expect to win, but pluck is still half the battle in a Test match, and we must hope that our fourth Test eleven will show themselves to be better plucked ’uns than their many predecessors.