OUR BATTING FAILURES.

Let us also admit that Gregory is the fastest, Macdonald the best, and Armstrong the steadiest bowler in the modern cricket field. Does that fact or those facts excuse or explain the batting failures of so many of our best men in the Test matches, in which we have been so easily and so deservedly routed? No recognised judge of Australian cricket will rank the present Australian bowlers with Spofforth, Turner, Trumble or even perhaps with Palmer, Boyle, Jones, and others. Yet their unbroken successes against the best English batsmen in the last seven or eight months are without a parallel in cricket history. “Are we funking it?” the man in the ring is asking. “And, if so, why are we funking it?” I for one cannot answer him.

Surely to-day we might take our courage in our hands and risk a little counter-attack. The other thing has paid badly enough. Always have we let the Australians call the tune, and very tamely and obediently have we danced to it. We are not strong in forcing batsmen, but those we have I hope will not hesitate to play their own game. Woolley, we know, can play two games, and so can Philip Mead for the matter of that, though most people do not seem to think him capable of anything beyond relentless stone-walling. Lionel Tennyson is a hitter and P. G. H. Fender is about the fiercest hitter we have. It seems to me essential at least to try and rattle the Australian bowlers. You will never tire them out, for Armstrong is far too astute to let you do so. He can always bowl a faultless length himself for a few hours at a time if the situation demands it, and he has Hendry, who can keep up end without (unless the batsmen are definitely enterprising) proving expensive. Our chance then seems to lie in policy rather than in the hope of our men being individually better than the Australians.