CRICKET Reid’s Opinion Of N.Z. Touring Teain

Press, Volume C, Issue 29616, 12 September 1961, Page 14

CRICKET Reid’s Opinion Of N.Z. Touring Teain

“1 am sure this will be the best team I have played in since 1949. I think it will have a better attack than the 1949 team, and will be comparable with it in the field.” In these terms J. R. Reid, captain of the New Zealand cricket team which will leave next month for a tour of South Africa, expressed his confidence in his side, when he arrived in Christchurch last evening to begin a three-weeks lecture tour.

On his lecture tour Reid will talk about various aspects of the South African tour and the selection of the New Zealand team. After speaking in Christchurch this evening, he will leave tomor. row for Timaru. Later he will speak at Dunedin. Invercargill. Wellington. Palmerston North, Hutt Valley, Nelson, Auckland. Hamilton. Rotorua, and Napier. Particularly satisfactory. Reid said, was the fitness of the players when they assembled for team talks and lectures in Wellington last week-end. Since the selection of the team early this year, the players had been using exercises specially set for them by Mr Lance Whatman, of the Christchurch Teachers’ College, to compensate for the six months of the offseason. Reid said that when the players met at Wellington, he had expected that a few

might not be fully Gt. He had asked a physical fitness expert to make a special check of each player, and had been pleased to find that every one of them had made an excellent effort. The fitness expert. in his turn, had been agreeably surprised to find cricketers at a peak of fitness more generally required of footballers. The Wellington meeting had been anything but a social gathering, said Reid. There had been nearly four hours of real cricket at Nae Nae, with every player having 10 minutes’ batting against four bowlers, while fielding, in four different aspects. was carried out by the others. In 20 minutes of high catching, only once had the ball gone to the ground. That practice, he said, had really been the start of the tour. Reid’s tour has been arranged by courtesy of BP (New Zealand), Ltd.