The Time Pengelly's String Snapped

Press, Volume C, Issue 29712, 4 January 1962, Page 7

The Time Pengelly's String Snapped

[From the London Coneevonaent of "Th. Press"!

“Z"NDD . . . the things one VZ recalls, the silly little unimportant things which remain in your mind,” said Roger Blunt one of the greatest all-rounders produced in New Zealand cricket Blunt, who has been living in England for almost 30 years—he is secretary of the Cake and Biscuit Alliance in London—was speaking to me at a cricketing function about his years as a pupil at Christ’s College.

The name of another cricketing personality, and a contemporary of Blunt at Christ’s College, had entered the conversation: Mr M. F. Pengelly, of Wellington, formerly a leading international umpire.

“I remember Mervyn—l'm sure we called him Mervyn—joining me at the wickets when we were four down for 7 against Otago Boys’ High School. He stayed, and gradually we got some runs . . . a lot of runs in the end, I think, and we won the game quite comfortably. ... I gave him his colours for that

“Pengelly used to play the violin. I remember the time a string snapped while he was playing at the end-of-year school concert—he simply had to pack up, I remember.”

To our light-hearted question as to whether the tunes the infant Pengelly plucked from his fiddle were indescribably foul, Blunt hastened to reply: “My word, no; he played good classical music . . . but it is odd the things you recall. , . .”