Cricket

Press, Volume XCIII, Issue 27917, 14 March 1956, Page 12

Cricket

One swallow does not make a summer, and one test match victory in 30 years does not make New Zealand a top-class cricket country. But the result of the fourth international game of the series against the West Indies at Auckland, even though the rubber had already been comfortably won by the visitors, will hearten New Zealand players and delight the game’s many enthusiasts in this country. Usually New Zealand players do not get enough first-class play. This year they have probably had too much: and the results of the earlier games against the West Indies suggested that the programme of 13 test matches in a season, including nine during the tour of Pakistan and India, might have the very opposite of the effect hoped for. There were occasions during that strenuous and exacting tour—as there have been at intervals throughout New Zealand’s far from distinguished history ini international cricket—when the Dominion seemed about to achieve' some sort of cricket maturity. But, I as so often before, the team lacked, the skill and resource, or perhaps the.

relentless application, to drive home its advantages. This was certainly a pity, however much or little there may be in the theory of some students of the game that New Zealand’s unbroken “ duck ” in test matches has been a serious psychological handicap to its players. For however well it may lose or draw its matches, with the best will in the world it is a little difficult to take seriously a team that never wins. The way in which this year’s test team got rid of its “ old man of “ the sea ” was at least as satisfactory as the achievement itself. For the players overcame their staleness or “ nerves ” —or whatever it was that made them appear so inept in the first test match and only slightly better in the second. After two innings defeats, the third test was more closely fought than the margin of nine wickets would suggest; and the margin would certainly have been much smaller if New Zealand had taken all its chances in the field, as it did at Auckland. New Zealand enthusiasts may well find in this victory the same sort of encouragement that England drew from the solitary success of F. R. Brown’s team at the end of the 1950-51 test series in Australia, which ended England’s run of 14 post-war test matches without a single victory and pointed the way to the recovery of the Ashes two years later. New Zealand’s ambitions in international cricket are modest; but its test match status is worth preserving if only because it ensures the exchange of tours with other countries. New Zealand sport, not merely New Zealand cricket, would be the poorer for the loss of such a visit as that of [Denis Atkinson’s West Indians. I whose skill at the game is matched Iby their obvious and infectious joy [in playing it