72 EXTRAS IN INNINGS

Press, Volume XCVII, Issue 28543, 24 March 1958, Page 13

72 EXTRAS IN INNINGS

Record For Local Club Cricket

The most tranquil and unimportant afternoon’s cricket can never~ be trusted not to yield something to set the statisticians aquiver, with Saturday’s senior game between Lancaster Park and Riccarton a case in point. In Lancaster Park’s total of 402 for six wickets, declared, there were 72 extras. This is almost certainly a record for club cricket in Christchurch. The unhappy wicket-keeper was E. P. Fuller, but he was far from entirely responsible for this massive collection of extras. There was some bowling that would have defied the best efforts of an acrobat to intercept, and this helped to bring the byes to 37. There were 15 leg-byes, and there were 20 no-balls. In addition, there were nine no-balls, which yielded runs and were therefore not included in the extras.

The Canterbury bowler R. C. Motz was no-balled 20 times, J. Acland five times, W. Bell four times. Roy Webber, the English statistician, in his “Playfair Book of Cricket Records” says that in the very early days extras sometimes exceeded 100, partly because of the lack of equipment and no doubt the nature of the grounds. So he confines his records tomodern cricket—since 1864. ’ In that period, first-class cricket, at least, cannot offer an example of 72 extras. In 1884, there were 68 extras in Yorkshire’s innings against Cambridge University. In the list of more than 30 matches productive of extras mentioned by Mr Webber, the greatest number of no-balls was 10. In test -cicket. New Zealand yielded most extras —57 against England at Auckland in the 1929-30 season.