but because various circumstances have reduced English representative sides to a lower standard than ever before.

Directly the Australians opened their campaign I hailed Mr. Macartney as the destined successor to Messrs. Giffen, Noble, and Armstrong as the best all-round cricketer in Australia. He and Mr. Armstrong form a tremendously potential pair with the ball, but the measure of the bowling support, apart from the cunning of Mr. Laver, is decidedly moderate. The success enjoyed by Mr. Cotter in the last two Test matches only emphasised the absurdity of England being forced to take the field without a fast bowler. Apart from Mr. Bardsley, there was no batsman of the highest standard on current form when the cool Mr. Armstrong had been dismissed. Mr. Ransford is good, but depends too much on one stroke, and some of the rest, if not as emphatically HaveBeens as most of our English representatives, were not of formidable contemporaneous quality. Adequate wicket-keeping and superb fielding lent invaluable support to the consummate generalship of Mr. Noble. His captaincy was magnificent, but he led one of the weakest sides that ever came from Australia. It was the knowledge of the comparatively low standard attained by our visitors in May that lent such poignancy to the national mortification at our defeats. No one who witnessed our decisive victory at Birmingham could have anticipated the subsequent disasters. There we won not only by ten wickets, but by a general superiority which was obvious to any casual spectator. Mr. MacLaren seemed to be the magnetic leader of a side superbly co-operative in the field, whilst Hobbs showed a command over the Colonial attack which sent everybody away imbued with a spirit of confidence never again felt during the season.

Time and reflection only endorse the unanimous verdict of condemnation that was contemporaneously elicited by the astounding action of the Selection Committee. Already the critic of the Observer had epitomised public opinion when he wrote: "The solemnity of the procedure of Test-team picking savours of farce. There are no awful secrets to give away. Silly rumours only arise from foolish secrecy." Before the season began I had appealed to the Selectors, in the Badminton Magazine, not to persistently snub legitimate public interest in the composition of the national sides. This, however, became a side

issue when those of the Selectors then in England practically presented the second Test match to the Australians. They can be chief mourners at the funeral of our success in Imperial fixtures.

All that was needed, and which would have given general satisfaction, was to have stood down Mr. C. B. Fry and Thompson from the Birmingham team and to have substituted Haywardpreviously indisposed-and a fast bowler, Mr. Brearley, with Barnes coming in for Blythe-then unable to stand the excitement of representative matches. Instead, the Selection Committee gratuitously proceeded to rearrange the English side, producing an eleven that was palpably inadequate. In the words of Lilley, "I can assert as a fact that the general opinion of the Australian players is that, whoever else is chosen, Mr. Jessop is the one man who should never be left out of an English side this year.” Yet to this day it has not been suggested that he was ever asked. Leaving out other matters, with the example of the disaster at Lords in 1899 through taking the field without a fast bowler, this was deliberately done again. Mr. Brearley, it is true, was asked by the English captain, but only on the morning of the match, when the other Selectors were not on the ground, and he declined. Had he been invited in the normal way, it cannot be doubted he would have played. The result of the tampering of the Selection Committee was that they put into the field an English eleven which had less bowling than any single county possessed. Our side played with a lifelessness that was lamentable, for rarely had Colonial bowling been so tamely met, and only Relf and Lilley could look back on this deplorable game with any satisfaction.

It was felt that our chances of success had been flagrantly thrown away, but there was no personal motive in my suggestion of the voluntary resignation of the Selectors, Messrs. C. B. Fry and H. D. G. Leveson-Gower, because they had failed to justify public confidence. There is nothing personal when the electorate demands a change of Government, nor was it any satisfaction to me to find myself in the van of an enthusiastic crusade on behalf of the best interests of the game, which culminated in my laying before the Board of Control certain suggestions, as the outcome of many communications from the public. To some the Board

consented; for instance, to the issue of a statement of the composition of its own executive and of its powers; whilst burial was given to the rumours about the expenses paid to individual amateurs by the astonishing and satisfactory statement that these were limited to first-class railway fares and thirty shillings a day. Nothing could have been more gratifying than the support of the public, whose good sense was shown in the general disgust at the state to which the Mandarins of cricket were reducing the game.

My plea to the Board of Control to recommend the observing of punctuality between the falling of a wicket and the arrival of the next batsman-which is one of the laws of the game-was disregarded, and so was the proposal that invitations to play should be announced as given, acceptances as received. Finally, according to the Daily News, my "very pointed questions are being daily asked by thousands of cricket enthusiasts, and the suggestion that no member of the English Selection Committee should be eligible to play in Test matches comes with peculiar force. Mr. Fry's dual position as Selector and player is causing much dissatisfaction in the country. The point urged against such a state of things is an obvious matter of principle, and a change in this respect would meet with the unanimous approval of the world of cricket." Mr. MacLaren's sporting defence of Mr. Fry personally in no way alters this case of ethical impropriety. Mr. Fry's success in the final Test match only came after he had been persevered with to an extent never equalled in the case of a batsman who had shown so many failures. He also achieved a new record in being selected for his batting in a fifth Test match without having made one century in the season. However, his share in Test matches can now be regarded as concluded, and his achievements in them will become a matter of history, just as those of Mead, Young, Warren, and Tate. There will never again be a Selector eligible for selection.

Considerable dissatisfaction was expressed at the comparative inefficacy of the captaincy of Mr. MacLaren. In the most sporting way he several times wished to resign, and it would have been popular had the Selectors seen their way to fall in with this. A superb judge of the game, he is temperamentally a man affected by luck, and on several occasions Mr. Noble seemed the more con

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summate master. Then came the curiously rapid growth of the opinion that Hirst and Tyldesley were no longer Test match players, in which these two themselves heartily joined. One of the difficulties is that the leading professionals themselves have all had far too much of Test matches, and share neither the excitement nor the enthusiasm of the public. The cry for young blood from the community had some effect on the Selectors, and both Sharp and Mr. Spooner certainly played the best cricket in the later encounters.

The team for Leeds was chosen according to the general views of the community, though one batsman who met with ill-success should not have been on the side. The English débâcle was even more complete than at Lord's, and the way in which our men lost was worse than the actual defeat. It was a case of nerves and rank bad batting; the outcome of the match "was to deal a blow to the popularity of cricket in the West Riding that it will take years to recover from." The exaggerated respect with which the bowling was treated became puerile and irritating; the batsmen were so mortally afraid of getting out that more often than not they did get out. With the Australians thus possessing one victory in hand, they only needed two draws to achieve the rubber, and it is a matter of general knowledge that this is what they accomplished. It is all very well to blame Mr. Noble for his tardy declarations; they deprived the games of all interest, but this policy of safety enabled our visitors to retain their supremacy.

In the face of all that had occurred, it was absolutely amazing to find England twice again taking the field without a fast bowler. The futile folly of such procedure was demonstrated by Mr. MacLaren putting on Sharp in the first quarter of an hour at the Oval. Of course the Selectors retort that we have no fast bowlers of the highest class; but it was their business to take the best they could, and Mr. Brearley was capturing nine Worcestershire wickets for 128 runs for Lancashire whilst England badly needed him. To have retained Jayes and Buckenham in preference to him might be a disputable error of judgment, but it would have been wiser to have played even them rather than let England thus start handicapped whilst the Selectors were wondering which of our bats would best play the fast bowling of Mr. Cotter. It

will be a permanent slur that Mr. J. R. Mason was never chosen ; it became farcical that Mr. P. F. Warner should be included at Manchester after being ignored for his own ground, Lord's; and it was lamentable that a bowler who needs such nursing as Mr. Carr should have been piteously overworked. His delivery is more exhausting to his muscles and nerve than that of any express bowler.

Many of the lessons of these Test matches have been already indicated. The public, which pays the bill, but has no voice in the game, learnt to put no faith in Selectors who seemed to regard new cricketers as intruding on the cherished prerogatives of veterans. One might think cricket was a game at which it was impossible to attain representative honours until youth was gone, whereas the cry for youth must be the chief note of the coming cricket. We have to build up a new England side for the triple contest that is being forced upon us in 1912. Of all who have been wearing the England cap this year, only Mr. Hutchings, Hobbs, and Woolley, with possibly Sharp, Rhodes, and Blythe, will be then considered; for business will have removed that fascinating bat, Mr. Spooner, and anno domini will be wiser than the Selectors with the rest.

There is, however, one tendency to which it is impossible to pay too much attention, and that is the imminent danger of the professionalising of English Test cricket. The "shamateur," who never was a sportsman, will not take the trouble to play in matches which only yield him his railway fare and hotel expenses. The real amateur will devote his leisure hours to the delights of country-house cricket, and resolutely avoid the sternness of national publicity and the grimness of the crowded arena. The concentration of the first-class game into the hands of the paid division will deprive it of its freshness and exhilaration. batsmen will take no risks, the bowlers will aim at keeping the runs down; the whole thing will be reduced to the dreary level of excellence without risk, of skill without dash. English professionals to-day do not care for Test cricket; to-morrow they will play it with dogged mechanical accuracy.

The

Apart from this, the very badness of our cricket will probably stimulate a new effort at excellence. I have made no allusion to the way in which Hobbs, Hayward, Blythe, and Mr. Jessop