Enthusiasm is Keynote Of N.Z. Village Cricket

Press, Volume XCVII, Issue 28492, 23 January 1958, Page 13

Enthusiasm is Keynote Of N.Z. Village Cricket

A BOUT one book in every three A written on cricket makes something more than passing reference to the village game: the names change, but the theme is familiar—the clock in the church steeple sounding the quarters, the Old Gaffers downing the pints, the one as regularly as the other; the vicar keeping an anxious eye on his flock while directing operations with fluttering incompetence from the region of coverpoint; the ancient umpire, mainstay of the team for many a year; the stately oaks, the. irregular contours of the outfield, the whole thing positively reeking with honeysuckle. Some day a team like Rodgers and Kammerstein will put it all to music, and it will be shown on the wide screen, with ballets of barmaids. New Zealand has its village cricket, too. In place of the village inn, there is a keg on a truck, the bucolic blacksmith appears as a prosperous farmer, and there are no squires. But village cricket in New Zealand is played with tremendous enthusiasm, and considerable skill, and without it the game would be bankrupt. Home Game , Recently at Le Bons Bay, as sleepy a hamlet as any in New Zealand, the home team met a United Bays eleven. On a lively matting pitch, Le Bons dismissed its opponents for about 90, and when its own ninth wicket fell, it had a lead of nearly 40 runs. At that stage the Le Bons captain declared. .: A visitor, working out some swift little sums dealing with 10-minute intervals and tea breaks, complimented the skipper on his iriithless, Jardinelike leadership, which had given the side a little more playing •time. But it transpired that the declaration had 1)660 made because number eleven, a late arrival at the back of the truck, had no wish to bat.

Some more good bowling, aided

by phenomenally athletic catching, dismissed United a second time, but Le Bons had only 10 minutes to score 50 runs. Although a good two minutes were lost in retrieving the ball from an impossible tangle of bush and . vine, the score at the end of three | eight-ball overs was 52. It was batting which would have sent a Lancaster Park crowd delirious with delight, and it was a magnificent finish, by any standards. Five Teams This game was one in a competition in which only five teams are entered, but the eagerness of the country players is revealing. They start each year on the first Saturday in October, and they go through to. the end of March, stopping for nothing—not for holidays, or test matches, or Shield fixtures. On occasion, a local show may make it necessary for the Saturday match to be played on the Sunday. The hours of play are strictly observed. TMte games begin at 10 a.m. After an hour and a half, when their city cousins are congratulating themselves on having taken the shine from the new ball, the Banks Peninsula teams are sitting down to lunch. Afternoon tea is at 2.40 p.m., and the games end promptly at 4.20 p.m., for the convenience of those who have urgent appointments in the cow bails. But if the games are played in a wonderfully friendly way. they are played with purpose and determination, and the cricket is often of genuine quality. As a rule the need to field eleven men brings one or two unskilled labourers into the business, but the top halves of the teams are good, knowledgeable cricketers, as some city players, appearing with a hint of condescension, have discovered.

Attractive The Le Bons Bay ground would look well in technicolour, too. Huge pines and poplars surround and shelter it, and in the quiet periods of play the sound of the surf 100 yards away provides soothing background music. At the tea interval, a couple of very fat lambs emerged from the bushes and established themselves, like a conference of captains, beside the pitch. In such games, the tea interval is no idle phrase. The cooking for the lunches and afternoon teas is done in a dozen farmhouse kitchens, and it js in the proper country tradition, with plenty of everything. For the wives, it is a social occasion, too; and the visitor is not long in feeling at home. The ground at Le Bons was converted, without the aid of machinery, from heavy rolling sand-hills a good many years ago and it is a credit to those who

undertook so huge a task. The turf is good even if the outfield is more than holding; early in the game, a batsman hit a full toss at hip height with all his strength, backward of the umpire, and called two; he was right, the ball pulling up a foot or so from the string which joins the boundary pegs. Modest

Country cricketers are as modest as they are amiable. A Le Bons bowler who was largely responsible for United’s second moderate, score confessed that his last success had been some years before, at Akaroa, when he took a wicket in an over which included seven wides. A United player, at the most critical stage of the second innings, was so determined not to yield that his crouch took his chin alongside the top of his bat-handle. But with it all there was some driving and hooking, swift running, and brilliant fielding, which would have done credit to almost any team.