CRICKET IN PRESIDENT’S GRADE HAS DISTINCTIVE FEATURES

Press, Volume XCIII, Issue 27920, 17 March 1956, Page 3

CRICKET IN PRESIDENT’S GRADE HAS DISTINCTIVE FEATURES

A number eleven batsman in a New Zealand test team is usually assured of two innings in a match, often two in one day, but in the President’s grade in Christchurch this season, many have not been nearer the wickets than square leg umpire. But they have seen their teams making more runs in two hours than the test teams make in a day—the best this season, University A making 248 for three in 119 minutes. This is one of the distinctive features of a grade which, year by year, is attracting more of the older cricketers who used once to retire when they had to leave regular cricket. Up to about five years ago the grade provided pleasant and not necessarily regular Saturday afternoon games for players whose wives considered them too old for the two-day grades. There was an upper .stratum of talent, edged out of

seniors by wives and younger players of rising reputations, and a lower stratum of plain rabbits who loved cricket but were embarrassingly outshone by 18-year-olds in the fourth grade. In those days everyone batted. Everyone bowled, too, if he could not persuade his skipper he was not a bowler. Someone always made 30 or 40 (no-one knew who it would be, only who it would not be) while some rabbit, or ferrets if they were of an even lower denomination, and came in after the rabbits, hung grimly on. A score of 130 gave a team the right to feel it had the game under control. For if the boundaries were short by test standards, and the glorious uncertainties of the fieldsmen helped the batsman, the pitches helped the bowlers.

But it was not poor cricket. The practice lacked, perhaps, the Weekes or Ramadhin touch, but the theory reached Cardusian heights. Long before Atkinson trapped Miller, President’s skippers had a deep square leg to pick up catches off the full tosses. r*

Seniors who miss one day of a match can play the other day in President’s, and it remains a challenge to them. They usually fail to shine on their first appearance. They have much to learn. There was the day when R. C. Shand, fresh from Plunket Shield successes, played his first ball in the grade. An innocuous ball, two feet outside the off stump. Right foot back and across, and bat over shoulder, he watched it go by. But it didn’t. It

nipped in smartly off a daisy and took the off stump. Lesser batsmen, President’s veterans, had to make runs that day. But the following week Shand made 150 not out, and is still playing in President’s.

The Canterbury bowler E. Mulcock, the man who bowled W. R. Hammond neck and crop, will not forget the day he bowled well on a helpful pitch at Sydenham Park. Defied by determined and incredibly lucky openers for an hour, he was hit all over the ground by a hitter with a reasonably straight bat. He didn’t take a wicket. Next week: 8 for 16.

Today there is a regular core of former test, provinical and senior players, as well as a sprinkling of seniors up for the day. The seniors do not worry their President’s captains. As batsmen their they-can’t-tie-me-down-for-three-successive-maidens approach is usually fatal early in their innings.

As bowlers they usually bowl too well to batsmen who would get out if only they could get a ball at which to play a stroke. But the President’s grade digests them all. It has become accustomed to the fact that J. L. Kerr and D. T. Ager (West Christchurch), I. A. Baxter (Old Boys), J. Jacobs (Riccarton), W. O. and W. E. Mappiebeck (Lancaster Park). C. V. Walter, R. O’Connor and A. Riddolls (University), and others of similar calibre, have to be dismissed before the plain ordinary veteran President’s batsmen who have made runs for years can be reached. There is hardly a player in the grade, too, who is not completely convinced that Canterbury, perhaps New Zealand, would be greatly strengthened by the left-hand bowling of H. R. Escott (Old Boys). Where every other bowler gets hit sooner or later by clock-chas-ing teams, Escott does not. Even C. V. Walter, whose beautifully flighted slows —which don’t turn an inch—once brought him 9 for 59 in seniors, has taken more than 50 wickets this season.

The cricket in President’s is good, and enjoyable, with a challenge in a friendly atmosphere. Should Ramadhin and Valentine be sent there, someone would probably flog them on grounds where the lofted drive is a 6 by two yards.