Cardus on Woolley
Uday Rajan
brought out the best in him (Cardus). He was a tall (little over 6 ft) elegant
left-hander whom David Gower has often been compared to. He was good enough to
play 64 Tests (also bowled well enough to take 83 Test wickets), but his
Test statistics were unremarkable, though acceptable. Anyway, thanks to Cardus,
Woolley tops my "Wish I had seen" list.
Excerpts from an essay on Woolley written in the early '30s:
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
During the quarter of a century which is the length of Woolley's career so
far, the game has gone through many changes. Bowling has had its fashions.
Fast break-backs; slow and medium spin, now from the off, now from the leg;
swerve and googly; this theory and the other -- Woolley has had acquaintance
with the lot of them. Ans while other batsmen have compromised some virtue of
their style so that they might do the proper and expedient thing, Woolley has
gone his ways undisturbed, as though unaware of the ambuscades around him. ...
... Even Hobbs has suffered a change in his play; his bat no longer moves
where the master would have it go; it has for years now been weighted by
circumspection, a doubting, empirical bat. Woolley on the eve of his forty-
seventh birthday made runs as felicitously as he first made them for us
nearly thirty years ago. Never has he compelled a crowd to ask whether cricket
is as good as it used to be; never has he made the pavilion clock seem to go
round with slow, tedious fingers. No other cricketer has served the meadow
game as faithfully as Woolley has done, summer after summer. ..
Cricket belongs entirely to the summer every time that Woolley bats an
innings. His cricket is compounded of soft airs and fresh flavours. The bloom
of the year is on it, making for sweetness. And the very brevity of summer is
in it too, making for loveliness. Woolley, so the statisticians tell us, often
plays a long innings. But Time's a cheat, as the old song sings. Fleeter he
seems in his stay than in his flight. The brevity in Woolley's batting is a
thing of pulse or spirit ... He is always about to lose his wicket; his runs
are thin-spun. His bat is charmed.. There is a miracle happening on every
cricket field when Woolley stays in two or three hours; an innings by him
is almost too unsubstantial for the world... His cricket has no bastions;
it is poised precariously -- at any rate, that is how the rational mind
perceives it. ..
The score-board does not get anywhere near the secret of Woolley. To add
up the runs made by Woolley -- why, it is as though you were to add up the
crochets and quavers written by Mozart. An innings by Woolley begins with the
raw material of cricket, and goes far beyond. We remember it long after we
have forgotten the competitive occasion which prompted the making of it; it
remains in the mind; an evocative memory which stirs in us a sense of a bygone
day's poise and fragrance, of a mood and a delectable shape seen quickly, but
for good and all... we see the shapeliness of his cricket in our minds and
feel it in our hearts.
.. He has made music for cricket in all places -- muted music, for never
is Woolley's cricket assertive, strident. He is the soul of courtesy, of
proportion, as he drives his boundaries... Even the bowlers may well be
deceived, and think that they are not Woolley's adversaries at all, but, at
his own sweet pleasure, his fellows-in-bliss, glad followers of him along an
enchated way.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Uday Rajan
in 1928. Kent lost the match by an innings and 88 runs, being demolished by
Ted Macdonald, the Australian fast bowler, who took 15/154. Woolley scored 151
(out of 277) and 31 (out off 113).
First innings:
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Here was a sight for the gods of the game who sit aloft and watch whenever
greatness is in action on the green earth below. Macdonald, running his silent
way over the grass, his aspect sinister but princely, a Lucifer of his craft,
dealing out fire and evil to all batsmen. And at the wicket's other end we saw
Woolley, calm and chaste, his bat exorcizing all the while the demon out of
Macdonald... Macdonald bowling at Woolley was a sight no less grand than any
ever seen on a cricket field; the mirrors of the cricketers' heaven will
reflect it for ever.
...Tyldesley's... successive balls were put to the boundary with a lack of
effort that would have seemed contemptuous from a batsman of less than
Woolley's inscrutability. Woolley's face is a mask; he seems unaware of the
joyousness of his own cricket; his bat makes its rippling music, but it is
as though it were all done by a player who cannot hear what he plays.
... Woolley went along his felicitous way. There, was of course, sheer force
in his cutting, pulling and driving, but we watchers could scarcely believe it;
his cricket seemed to be at one with the afternoon's soft air and gleaming
sunshine...
... as Woolley left the wicket the summer's sun seemed to go out of the sky.
...let us all understand yet again that he is the greates artist-batsman in
the game at the present time. An England eleven without Woolley is, of course,
a nonsensical conception. He ought to be sent to Australia if only to remind
everybody there that once on a time English cricket was, as they used to say
at Hambledon, an elegant game, the game of all the graces.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Second innings:
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
...Woolley played Macdonald in the old style, putting the full face of the
bat to the ball. He cut in his prettiest and most negligent way... He knows
not the meaning of crisis; cricket is always the carefree meadow game when
Woolley plays...
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Excerpts from a report on a match between Notts (including Larwood and Voce)
and Kent, played in 1928. Kent lost by 9 wickets, Woolley scored 66 (out of
118) and 66 (out of 267).
First innings:
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
...Woolley was playing .. great and beautiful cricket. His strokes were of the
utmost ease, even in the face of Larwood's hurrincane. He turned the ball to
leg with an incline of the body and a sweep of the bat which were courtly. ..
He rose tall as a Grenadier and flicked a rising ball over the slips, his
bat describing a quite negligent movement. ..
...He is still the world's greatest left-handed batsman. To leave so glorious
a cricketer out of the England eleven is rather like leaving Keats out of
an anthology of English poetry. In every innings of Woolley, sweetness cometh
out of strength.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Second innings:
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
...Woolley hit his first ball as though Kent's score were 650 for two...
Woolley, as negligent and inscrutable as ever, toyed with the vehement Notts
attack; in little more than a quarter of an hour he made 30, letting us see
four ravishing hits to the rails... the (Kent) batting challenged the sun's
splendour.
...just before lunch, he fell to a deep-field catch. From one point of view
Woolley was indiscreet in making this hit ... so close to the lunch interval.
But Woolley's genius is above the criticism of the ca'canny: others abide
the championship question; he is free.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
21m...@gw.wmich.edu
>
> Excerpts from a report on a match between Notts (including Larwood and Voce)
> and Kent, played in 1928. Kent lost by 9 wickets, Woolley scored 66 (out of
> 118) and 66 (out of 267).
> First innings:
> ----------------------------------------------------------------------------
> ...Woolley was playing .. great and beautiful cricket. His strokes were of the
> utmost ease, even in the face of Larwood's hurrincane. He turned the ball to
> leg with an incline of the body and a sweep of the bat which were courtly. ..
> He rose tall as a Grenadier and flicked a rising ball over the slips, his
> bat describing a quite negligent movement. ..
> ...He is still the world's greatest left-handed batsman. To leave so glorious
> a cricketer out of the England eleven is rather like leaving Keats out of
> an anthology of English poetry. In every innings of Woolley, sweetness cometh
> out of strength.
> ----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Does not this remind you of the way Gower has been treated by the selectors?
--Aslam Modak
Spaceman Spiff
ura...@leland.Stanford.EDU (Uday Rajan) says:
>
>Frank Woolley seems to have been among Cardus's favorite cricketers, and often
>brought out the best in him (Cardus). He was a tall (little over 6 ft) elegant
>left-hander whom David Gower has often been compared to. He was good enough to
>play 64 Tests (also bowled well enough to take 83 Test wickets), but his
>Test statistics were unremarkable, though acceptable. Anyway, thanks to
woolley once scored 98 in 15 minutes in a 1st class match and was well on his
way to the fastest 100 when he was dismissed.
Stay cool,
Spaceman Spiff
Non illegitimati carborundum Don't let the bastards get you down
mcb...@vax.oxford.ac.uk
>
>
>some wonderful Cardus deleted .. thanks Uday..
Is it only me or could you substitute D Gower for Woolley and much of the
article would hold true?
McBean