Cricketing Autumn: E. MULCOCK

Press, Volume CI, Issue 29964, 27 October 1962, Page 9

Cricketing Autumn: E. MULCOCK

Cricketers are not all like old soldiers. They do, eventually, die; but at Hagley Park on Saturday there is ample evidence that they most certainly do not fade away.

Yet there are many who can evade the swiftlyexpanding waistline which causes slips fieldsmen to look hopefully at point when a ball has fled between their feet and is racing towards the boundary. Some cricketers seem almost ageless; R. J. Read was a notable example, for he played senior cricket for 40 years or so and bowled the same immaculate length all the while. W. “Chattel” Hayes, who is now well into his seventies, was one of the first out at practice when this season started. In the president’s grade he still makes his runs and keeps wickets, although he was a Canterbury representative 50 years ago.

Hayes is but one of the many cricketers whose love of the game has them turning out summer after summer. Among them is the former Canterbury representative bowler, E. Mulcock, who is in the president’s grade now, and whose senior cricket started in 1929-30. It was good to watch Mulcock bowl, and it still is. for he has always been among the most graceful, as well as effective, of bowlers.

It is easy to remember mm at Lancaster Park, with ms loping run up. his full delivery stride, his left-arm thrust high, his right hand swinging up from far beJJjJMI hU back. Mulcock is oft 3in, and he always has made the most of his height with his straight right arm brushing his ear as he delivered his late in-swinger.

Today Mulcock is as brown and lean as ever, and the strict command of length and direction which brought him some 550 wickets in the senior grade wins him consistent success. At the Christchurch Boys’ High School—where he never played higher than the third eleven—he did what most young bowlers did; the natural thing was

to pick up the ball with the seam between the first two fingers and run it away towards slips. In those days he liked to bowl into a breeze, and to toy with flight. He was barely able to bowl a recognisable offbreak or in-swinger. But after a while, he found that if he slackened his wrist, held the ball back a shade, and flicked it away, it swung in very sharply. He was made.

Mulcock caused devastation among senior batsmen for many seasons. But this was after a tentative start in senior cricket, and an absence from Christchurch of five years on country teaching assignments. When he returned to Christchurch for the 1935-36 season, Mulcock’s accuracy and late

movement brought him 65 wickets in championship matches; in his first full five years, he took almost 300 wickets. He played for Canterbury—but only for three seasons, because he was one whose career was halted by the war. And in those days of three-match Plunket Shield programmes. Mulcock played in only nine shield games. But he did a hat-trick, and he took eight for 61 in an innings against Otago. On three other occasions he took five or more wickets in a shield innings, and he played for a CanterburyOtago team against the M.C.C. and there it is in the records: W. R. Hammond. b Mulcock 17—a triumph indeed for the bowler, if a bitter disappointment to the spectators.

In club cricket, Mulcock took five or more wickets in an innings no fewer than 33 times, with a best performance of nine for 35 for St. Albans against Lancaster Park. His close-packed leg field may not have been an innovation, but it was startling at the time. Some will recall the fierce hitting of G. L. Weir, of Auckland, on one of the very few occasions Mulcock was severely punished. Weir, out of form at the time, decided to take the bull by the horns and one crashing pull very nearly decapitated C. J. Oliver, in the leg trap. Mulcock, a truly

gentle man, and at that time inexperienced in representative cricket, was clearly worried. He abandoned his basic attack and tried bowling outside the off-stump— to a leg field, ■with disastrous results. Two years later he should have had his revenge, but twice Weir was dropped from him in one over.

Slow of speech, considered in his judgment, Mulcock is a staunch ally, a chivalrous foe. May he continue to swing up to the wicket with that easy stride, and may his command of length and direction never falter.

This is the first of a series of articles on cricketers of darability; players who achieved a measure of prominence in their youth, and who still lend their skills and enthusiasm to the game, week by week, season by season. There are many of them in Christchurch, familiar figures to the older spectators, only names, perhaps, to cricket’s many young students, no more than elderly gentlemen to others. Th’e game has been the better for them.