CRICKET.

Auckland Star, Volume LVII, Issue 144, 19 June 1926, Page 25

CRICKET.

It lias been truly said that Michael Falcon, the Norfolk captain, who led the Minor Counties against the Australians at Maidenhead, is the finest English player who never played for a first-class county (remarks a London, critic). Falcon, who was a Harrow boy and captained Cambridge in 1910, had a big hand in the sensational defeat of the Australians by an England XL during the 1921 tour at Eastbourne at the end of August—their first defeat. He took eight wickets for 149, while G. A. Faulkner and C. H. Gibson completed the rout. Faulkner scored I">3 in the second innings. In the last twenty-five years there have been only two great bowlers of lobs in English"cricket—D. L. A. Jephson and G. H. Simpson-Hayward —and it is difficult to decide which of the two was the better. Jephson took in all 297 wickets f->r 24.97 runs each, Simpson-Hayward's "bag" being 415 wickets for' 21. So runs each, but the latter never gave a performance equal to Jephson's—six wickets for 21 runs against the Players on a perfect wicket at Lord's in 1399. Simpson-Hayward had such strong fingei- that he could "flick" a cricket ball as other men do billiard balls. A . ,