CRICKET

Gisborne Times, Volume LXV, Issue 10312, 22 January 1927, Page 9

CRICKET

DOMINION AND OVERSEAS. NOTES AnETcOMMENTS.

(By “Willow.”)

After missing a Saturday owing to the amateur .athletic meeting on the Oval, senior grade matches will he resumed this afternoon,,. At the present stages of the games, School with only three wickets to fall in their second strike require 80 runs to.avoid an innings defeat by Celtic; Gisborne Club with two wickets down are 139 behind United’s first innings totau; Harbor Board, answering 286 by Old Boys, have made only 80 fo reight wickets; and Poverty Bay Club, with three wickets down, are 331 runs behind Cdtv.

Mr. Beale’s Team in Napier. ' Mr. E. C. Beale’s Auckland touring team played a team chosen by Air. E. F. Cane at Napier on their return journey home.' Batting first, Hawke’s Bay made a dismal snowing and were dismissed for 73, to which Auckland responded with 227. Cane’s team did much better in their second strike and hit up 262 (Reaney 81, Gifford 31, All*. “Extras” 31, Pirie 30, AI. Beuth 21 not out, O’Brien 20). Requiring 110 to win, Auckland owe their victory to Alonteith who knocked up 49 in good style. Gee made 24 and -Wells 11 not out, but nobody else reached double figures. Auckland won by three wickets. On both sides the bowling boners were well-divided. The home team were not a particularly strong combination and did surprisingly well to run the Aucklanders so close.

Plunket Shield Positions. Except in the extremely unlikely event of a draw between Auckland and Wellington in their present game, the average system will not be called upon this season to decide the winner of the Plunket Shield. The winner of the Auckland-Wellington game will win the shield. However, it is rather interesting to see how the averages of the four teams stand as a result of the Plunket Shield matches completed to date this season. They are as fellows:—

Helping the Bowlers. “Cricket is a conservative game, and in these days when there seems a veritable' mania for tampering with the basic rules of our national pastimes, it is some consolation,’’ says a London writer, “to know that the rulers of the great summer game are not to be stampeded into hasty and, as a consequence, ill-considered action. The favoring of the adoption of a smaller ball by the Cricket Advisory Committee seems to have pleased most people; certainly a big majority of the best-known players have expressed their approval of such a measure. We shall not, of course, know —assuming that the change actuallv becomes operative—how great an effect on the game a smaller ball will have until it has received a practical test. Assuredly, the bowler will ’find it easier to produce finger-spin, and if the only result is to encourage this tvpe of bowling to the detriment of the ‘swinger,’ it will have done bowling in this country a gieat service.” A special committee was set lit)’ to go into the matter and also to consider the question of less attention being paid to IJ.ie preparation of wickots. Old giants of cricket will not be reconciled to any of the new tangled ’notions about altering the stumps or making the hall smaller or any otliei suggestions which have been put forward to help the bowlers. AI. A. Noble, when asked for his opinion about a reduction of the size of the ball, said he thought that implements of cricket should he le.t well alone. , At the Svdney Cricket Ground Charlie Bannerman was horrified the idea of a smaller hall. “lir my day,” he said, i ‘bowlers didn t complain about the hall being too big. What’s wrong with their hands: Bowlers of the old times didn't have any bigger hands than the men today but they got their fingers round the‘ball all right, and made it spin like a bumming top. If they start monkeying with the laws or material T’ll stop coming out to look at cricket,” he said. Charlie Bannerman holds a few records that will never, can never, he beaten —first century in a test match in New Zealand is ono —and there are others of a like nature.

Notes About Hobbs. . As a lad Hobbs practised with a stump for bat and a tennis ball to n-et himself into the way of playing correct strokes and to improve ins “eve.” His father bowled to him only once and the old professional s advice was burnt into young Jack’s brain —“Don’t draw away!” Says the great batsman himself: “If yon draw'’ awav, vou cannot play with a straight bat.” When he was about eleven years of'age, Jack spent every spare minute in cricket, of one land or another and in watching the game. He used to rise at six a.m. and walk for half an hour to Parker’s Piece to o-et a hit of practice. It cost a team a shilling a match to play on this "round on a prepared pitch. A penny a man it was; and twopence for the captain. Hobbs played betore rehool and after school and never grew tired of the game, and though he has played in many parts ot the world, he is not tired of it yet. In 1901 Hobbs scored 1/is first, century in a club game for Ainsworth against Cambridge Liberals ‘No cricketer ever forgets the thrill of ms first century,” writes Jack, and one remembers that Hobbs is the greatest century-maker of all time. (At a similar age Trumper made 300 against an English County). During Hobbs’ last visit to Australia an Englishman in Melbourne> offered £lO to anyone of the English side makino- a centurv. Hobbs got the An old Surrey member living in Adelaide pronushd Hob s £SO if Jie made a hundred m the third test. Hobbs made. 123, but he did not get the £SO.

feie - • - ; ' ? ' At the beginning of the -Oth centurv the bowlers had the right ot

pitching the wickets. At some unknown date previous to 1830 this right passed to the umpires. The Hambledon Club, the most famous of all clubs prior to the AI.C.C., existed from 1750 to 1791. "The earliest length bowlers were “Lumpy” Stevens, of Surrey, and David Harris, of Hambledon. “Lumpy” was the older. To him we owo the middle stump, which was added in 1775, because “Lumpy” in the match of that year (five-a-side) between England and Hambledon, sent three halls through Small’s wicket without hitting the stumps. (Only two stumps were in vogue then.) The introduction of length howling and a middle stump improved the batting. Confidence is one of the necessary things in a cricketer’s make-up, and judging from the following instances from the “Badminton Book of Cricket” some of the old players had plenty of it. The great William Lillywhite, the first round-arm bowler, who gained official sanction for his style in 1827, used to say: “I bowl the best ball in England and Mr. Harene the next.” The latter was a Harrow boy. Old William Clarke, the most famous of lob bowlers, who opened the Trent Bridge ground at Nottingham in 1838, and founded the All England NI. in 1846, said: “Have me to bowl, Box to keep wicket, Pitch to hit, and you’ll see ci'ickct.” James • Southerton, the famous slow howler of Surrey, said quite frankly in his “Wrinkles on Bowling”: “I always howl every hall with the hope of getting the best of them out!”

The Days of Shaw. It was wonderful what some of the old-time cricketers could do. Take Alfred Shaw as a case in point. The present generation has no idea what a great, bowler he was. .Nottinghamshire threw him on the dust heap, and then 110 was engaged by Lord Sheffield as bis private professional. He did not play in first-class cricket for years. When he was qualified for Sussex, Lord Sheffield gave him leave to do so. Now he was quite an old man—verging on 52, and had not appeared in a big match for seven years —when he. played against Lancashire at Old- Trafford, at the end of Alay, 1894. None of the Lancashire eleven had 1 seen hi pi play in a big match; none had seen him howl; for they were much too young. Frank Sugg, who was a very fine hitter, was credited with the remark —to his pals—that he would knock the cover off the ball tossed up by Air. Alfred Shaw. He dashed out and found that the ball was not there. He tried to “pull” the ball, and, in fact, he tried all he knew, but lie never looked like making runs, and was bowled by Shaw for 14. Shaw bowled over 50 overs, nearly half of which were maidens, and got four wickets for 73 runs. Now it was a batsman’s pitch, and his figures would have been even better had the fielding been more accurate. He had a way of deceiving the batsman, for he seemed to have the power of pulling the ball back when he released it. Instead of bein" well up to the striker, he found the ball pitch shorter than he had anticipated. These old cricketers knew every dodge.

A Cricket Epitaph. If the English grass that 1 walk today Some morrow be over my head, iff Hie men who play when I cease to play Give ever a thought to the dead, I pray thaj my friends will carve me a stone, And grave me a line on its face, And a simple legend, to make it known As a cricketer’s resting place. And those who shall follow—caught, stumped or bowled— However, whenever, they yield, They shall range them round, as they stood of old, And I’ll take my place in the field. And whether the wicket he dry-or wet, The season shall find ns the same— Eleven good fellows, and all well met, In the game that is more than a game. —G. D. M. Random Notches. V. C. Butler celebrated his return from the tour with Dir. E. C. Beale s Auckland team by scoring 97 against North Shore, the Auckland championship winners. E. C. Gee w <l s also in form and hit up 51.

Says C. T. B. Turner in his recently issued book on bowling: “Don’t try to turn the ball with your wrist spinning the ball is the work or the gnfiers’’ And “Don t forget to search lor •i e t'ltsinon s weakness; having round re, play it. ’

Prominent cricketers, and, indeed sportsmen in general, are still being pestered bv youthful autograph hunters. A. E'. R. Gilligan got off a„gooct one when, having signed a young importunist’s hook, he remarked: ;Well what’s the rate of exchange in swops to-day?. Six Gilligans for a Jack Hobbs?”

In knocking up 201 (out of 367) for Thorndon against University at Wellington . last Saturday, B. F. Ivortlang took 180 minutes to score his first hundred, blit reached the 200 mark after batting for a further 50 minutes. Two runs a minute is a great rate of scoring in any senior cricket.

In glancing at the “N.Z. Times” for January 4, I noticed the following: “Poverty Bay (against E. C. Beale’s team)', requiring 17-J- to win, lost nine wickets for 74 . . • • Local players may wonder where the “i” cOmes in. Better inquire of the compositor, hilt do it quickly as the “N.Z. Times” ceases publication very shortly.

It has been said that the-Canter-bury cricket team wants a good pair of opening batsmen, a ..good fast bowler, a good slow bowler, fieldsmen who can be depended upon to take catches, especially in the slins, and a few more batsmen who can be depended upon to make runs. Tn fact, it seems as though Canterbury wanted an almost entirely new tenin. —-Ohristcliurcli “Star."

Two certainties -seem to have plaved themselves cut- of the New Zealand team in the holiday Plunket Shield contests. The two unlucky ones are Dempster and Dickinson. On the other hand. Page (Canterbury) and James (Wellington), who been included in .the list of ‘‘moxSgjß published during the past few weeks in northern napers. have forced them, wnv into the limelight, and presumably -when the amateur selectors again is«n<¥ their. Nveekly bulletins these' two belated “discoveries” "will' be included.—“ Mid-on” in the Dunedin “Star.”

—Wellington.— Runs. Wkts. Av. For 1623 40 40.57 Against ... . 822 40 20.5-5 Net Average . plus 20.02 —Auckland, * Runs. Wkts. Av. For 1081 35 30.8S Against ... 937 40 23.42 Net Average • plus 7.46 —Canterbury.— Runs. Wkts. Av. For , 826 40 20.65 Against ... 1183 35 33.80 Net Average . minus 13.15 —Otago.— Runs. Wkts. Av. For 933 40 '23.32 Against ... 1521 40 38.02 Net Average - minus 14.70