RANDOM REMINDER

Press, Volume CIII, Issue 30389, 13 March 1964, Page 19

RANDOM REMINDER

UNDER COVERS MEN

Whoever was responsible for the attack with picks on the approaches to the cricket pitch used for the first test between South Africa and New Zealand did not make a very satisfactory job of it. The game dragged out a very weary course, in bitterly cold weather, and many people might have been saved much anguish if the intruders had brought a rotary hoe with them. More than half a century earlier, a pitch had been dug up at the same Wellington ground, so the thing is becoming a habit. It would be dreadful, wouldn’t it, to see

sport being sabotaged all the time. There was all that trouble in England with the anti-fox hunt saboteurs. Perhaps some day the evil will spread south from Wellington, and some strong objector to the Ranfurly Shield system will enter Lancaster Park in the dead of night and saw the goal posts most of the way through, so that when the ball hits a post or a scrum collapses against it the whole thing will come down. No doubt the Rugby Union would be prepared to sacrifice some of its older bootlaces to help erect a sort of jury rig. It would not be easy to get at racing shells in

the hours of darkness and hole them, although if it could be achieved, and evidence of the work covered properly, it would present a diverting spectacle—the rowers pulling still, for all their worth, while their craft submerged because of the row of gurgling little fountains along its length. Hockey in Christchurch, according to some of its critics, is played on extremely long and coarse grass, so it might be possible to fit a field out with trip wires and tennis racquets are quite vulnerable to razor blades. Golfers should be left alone. They have enough grief of their own.