Cricketer Of The Week:

Press, Volume XCIV, Issue 28128, 17 November 1956, Page 5

Cricketer Of The Week:

IV. Bell

Right-hand leg-break bowlers are very often the “not-understood“ children of cricket. They have endearing ways, they are far ’more interesting than the next youngsters, but they are utterly wilful. The medium-pace *n-swinger can go on week after week, season after season, with only minor variations in the standard of his pedestrian performance. even when advancing years and the first telling twinges are felt. But the spin bowler is almost a schizophrenic. He may bowl superbly, turning wickedly from a length, for hours, overs, sometimes days at a stretch, but without warning he may descend to ludicrous long hops or the amplest of full tosses.

The leg-break bowler is not to be censured unduly for these human failings. His task is the most difficult a cricketer can undertake, his rewards are of the spirit rather than in such worldly things as the averages. Today, the leg-spin bowler is almost a luxury in representative cricket; he is put on guiltily by his captain, who feels like a spendthrift, because both batting and bowling have become such parsimonious pursuits.

But the leg-break bowler gives cricket much of its entertainment value. There are few things in the game to match the curving leg break which drags the batsman forward and leaves him helpless, or the delightful deceit of the unsuspected googlie. It was therefore a blow struck for the best in cricket when W. Bell, of Riccarton, last Saturday bowled his side to victory against west Christchurch with his eight wickets for 64 runs. For one of his undoubted talents. Bell has had a remarkably unsuccessful career in first-class cricket. He came into the Canterbury side in 1949-

50, his first senior season, and with only one performance of note—six for 41 for St. Albans against Riccarton—to his credit. He was only 18. but he began bowling like a champion. But this was one of Canterbury’s worst displays of fielding, and Bell had several chances missed from him. In the second innings he was kept on too long against a hard-hitting left-hander, L. A. Kent—more chances were missed — and he was dropped for the next game. Bell did not appear in representative cricket again for three years, and then it .was lor Auckland. In four games he toolfll wickets for 310 runs and was chosen for the 1953-54 tour of South Africa and Australia. On that tour he was a failure. Twice he bowled really well, at Port Elizabeth in the second match, and at the same ground in the fifth test, but in general he failed to take wickets because the Port Elizabeth pitch was the only one to help him, and because of immaturity in his methods. Bell did not play first-class cricket the following season, but he was in the Canterbury team last summer. He played in only two matches, however, and against Auckland he received less than the consideration he deserved. Sixteen Games

Although it is six years since he made his debut, and although he has been on an overseas tour. Bell has played only 16 first-class matches for 32 wickets. In club matches in Christchurch since 1949 Bell's full figures are:—sl innings, 10 not otSts, a highest score of 90, an aggregate of 811, and an average of 19.8; 703.4 overs, 113 maidens. 2358 runs. 118 wickets, average 19.9. But for last season and the first four weeks of the present one, he has taken 72 wickets at an average cost of under 17. It is to be hoped that Bell will be given another opportunity to bow! for Canterbury. Last season his magnificent form at the start of the season was lost in mid-season because an official made him change his run-up three days before the first match of the Plunket Shield series. Bell at 25 has much cricket ahead of him, but whatever his bowling failings—and he has them—it is now too late for

him to be treated as a cricketing Eliza Doolittle. Bell is a very useful batsman, with his several excellent strokes somewhat subservient to his eagerness to attack, and he is a splendid fieldsman, with perhaps the longest and strongest throw in the country. Perhaps Bell’s bowling suffers a little from his own modesty, his lack of the brashness of some of the successful Australian players. But he has skill above the ordinary, and notwithstanding the inevitable disappointments of leg-break bowling, ne is well dapable of winning a match for Canterbury this season.