Slow Scoring

Press, Volume XCVIII, Issue 28794, 15 January 1959, Page 11

Slow Scoring

In 1954-55, Rabone led New Zealand again in two tests against England, and his 18 in three hours at Dunedin established a slowscoring record for test matches. Playing Plunket Shield cricket for Auckland, not always regularly, Rabone has stayed near the top in New Zealand cricket, with many good scores and bowling performances. In 1956-57, against lan Craig’s Australian team, he took eight for 66 for Auckland in one innings, and it was a thousand pities he was not able to tour England last year. Against a background of Plunket Shield cricket, Rabone always looked efficient, if rather lacking in some of the cricketing graces. But he came into his own in the martial atmosphere of a test match. In these games he averaged 31, and of those who played five tests or more for New Zealand, only four players had better figures. In all, Rabone scored 3257 runs at an average of 28, captured 169 wickets for 27 runs each, and took 76 catches. Off the field. Rabone was hardly recognisable as the warrior at the wicket. Urbane, amusing, with a delicious sense of humour, he won friends and admirers everywhere. If, as he says, he may continue to play club cricket until he is 50, his final retirement will still come too soon.

r PHE Australian tennis player, A Bob Howe, who won the New Zealand singles title for the second year in succession at Wilding Park last Saturday, has had an extraordinary career in tennis, and is one of the game’s most travelled players. He is also one of the few who have appeared in Moscow. After last week’s tournament, the 33-year-old schoolteacher will be remembered as a tall and slim and certainly amusing figure when he had his distinctive little white hat on; it looked something like a boy’s bonnet. Although his play was patchy throughout the tournament—dose of influenza helped little—he was without doubt superior to any of the New Zealanders he met.