STATISTICAL POSITION.

Auckland Star, Volume LXVII, Issue 292, 9 December 1936, Page 20

STATISTICAL POSITION.

300 EXCEEDED TWICE TO WIN TESTS PLAYED TO FINISH. On 33 previous occasions in tlie\l3s Anglo.-Australian Tests a team had been ' set the task of making piore tlian'3oo runs in the fourth innings to win the matnli, but only twice was the effort successful. The first was when Australia scored 315 for six wickets at Adelaide in 1001-2 (Glem Hill making 97jyaf ter 98 and 99 in his two preceding Test innings against Archie MacLaren's team), and the second when Percy Chapman's side ran up 332 for seven wickets againsi • Australia at Melbourne in 1932-3,. (H. Sutcliffe 135). - t The record score in a fourth innings was 411 by England at Sydney in 1924-25, when Arthur Gilligan's eleven was set 605 "to ' win. This is the only Anglo-Australian Test fourth innings to exceed 400, It is rather remarkable that while i* Test wicket had fallen with the first ball of the match only, twice previously, it should have happened in another innings of the Brisbane game as well as in the opening one (when McCormick got Wortliington's wicket K Arthur Coninghain. the left-armed bowler, who was playing in Wellington over a quarter ot a century ago, got MacLaren caught at point by Harry Trott first ball at Melbourne 'in 1894-5. Warren Bardslev (acting-captain) was caught by Sutcliffe off Maurice Tate's first ball, after A. W. Carr had sent Australia in at Leeds in 1926. Once again this arid all other Tests in Australia will be played, to a finish. The game does not end in a draw if the Australians are not all out by 6 o'clock to-day. Of the 72 previous Tests in Australia, the Commonwealth won 38, England. 32, and two were drawn. These were in 188T.-2, when a four days' limit was set. Australia won the second and third Tests at Sydney easily in 'three days, but Alfred Shaw's team forced a draw in both contests at Melbourne, the opening ad final garde of the four international fixtures arranged.