Cardus on Rhodes
Uday Rajan
This is an excerpt from an essay by Neville Cardus on Wilfred Rhodes,
called "The Legendary Rhodes", published in Cardus' book "The Summer
Game" (1929). The following chain of thought that led me to revisit this
essay: a few people have mentioned or hinted that the bowling style of
Saqlain Mushtaq is similar to that of Erapalli Prasanna. Pras was a master
of flight; this excerpt mentions Rhodes' mastery over flight.
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...He was to be seen at Bradford only the other Monday, tossing up
the ball in the gentle, insinuating way that he has been tossing it up,
man and boy, for thirty years. The same familiar walk to the bowling
crease, a few quick but easy steps, a little effortless leap, then the
body comes through after a beautiful sidelong swing. No fuss, no waste.
Conservation of energy and perpetual motion. And so inscrutable! --- poor
batsman, what is behind all these curving balls that come to your bat
so invitingly, saying `Hit me, I'm here to be hit'? The curving line of
Rhodes's flight---is there anything in cricket, or in any other game,
more lovely to see? But the beauty is a spell; the monotonous rhythm of
it, as ball after ball comes through the air dropping, dropping, dropping
on the same spot at the same pace --- take heed, batsman, your senses
are being benumbed, minute by minute. The ball does *not* drop on the
same spot; it does *not* come through the air at the same pace. It is
all a delusion and a snare. One ball pitches well up to the bat; it is
played easily, though maybe not for runs, for Rhodes sets his field to
an inch. The next ball also is pitched well up---and the next. The
batsman is sure of it. Yet somehow he does not seem to think he
reached that last one quite so easily as he reached the others! Was it
a tiny bit shorter? The batsman takes off his cap at the over's end,
wipes his brow, and smiles at Wilfred, who smiles back, but says
absolutely nothing.
A matter of skill and science is this slow bowling. Unless it is
certain in technique a schoolboy will play it. The fast bowler can get
his wickets with long hops, full tosses; the unnerving element of pace
helps him. Even your medium-paced bowler owes something to what George
Lohmann called `brute strength'. Slow bowling at its best is all
technique and brains. Rhodes has in his life mastered thousands of
batsmen by nothing but his strategy and cleverness. When he was young,
he could make the ball spin like a top, pitch it on the leg stump, and
cause it to whip away as though imps were inside. A sticky wicket was
needed for the bowling of Rhodes's break-away---and then no stroke in
the practice and science of batsmanship could be trusted not to play
the spin with the edge. In those days `c Tunnicliffe, b Rhodes' was a
phrase known all over the land. One day, in a hot summer, the weather
suddenly changed just as Essex were going down to Bramall Lane to
play Yorkshire. Charles McGahey looked over his shoulder at the
darkening sun. ` 'Ullo!' said he. ` 'Ullo! Caught---Tunnicliffe,
b---Rhodes 0.' And so it was, both innings.
But in the spin of Rhodes, even when he commanded it vitally, did
not reside his own secret. Blythe had as much spin as Rhodes. The truth
is that no great batsman is likely to be bothered by break, save on
unplayable pitches, if he is in no trouble while the ball is coming
through the air. Rhodes gets his men out before the ball pitches; spin
with him is an accessory after the fact of flight---flight which
disguises the ball's length, draws the batsman forward when he ought to
play back, sends him playing back when he ought to come forward, and
generally keeps him in a state of mind so confused that in time he begins
to feel it might be a mercy to get out. Against Rhodes, no long innings
has ever been played that did not in the end find the batsman
intellectually a little worn and weary. In 1903, at Sydney, on a perfect
wicket, hard and polished, the might of Australia's batsmanship passed
processionally along the hot day---Trumper, Armstrong, Duff, Noble,
Hill. Trumper made 185 not out, and Australia's total was nearly 600.
Rhodes bowled forty-eight overs for 94 runs and five wicket---one of
the great bowling performances of all time. On the smooth Sydney turf
he could not, of course, exploit spin. He overthrew some of the most
celebrated batsmen that ever lived, on a cast-iron turf, by subtlety
in the air. Flight---the curving line, now higher, now lower,
tempting, inimical; every other ball like every other ball, yet
somehow unlike; each over in collusion with the rest, part of a plot;
each ball a decoy, a spy sent out to get the lie of the land; some
balls simple, some complex, some easy, some difficult; and one of them
---ah, which?---the master ball.
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