RANDOM REMINDER

Press, Volume CIII, Issue 30405, 2 April 1964, Page 22

RANDOM REMINDER

MAN’S INHUMANITY TO MAN

It may be difficult to break through the stertuous breathing of those training for the football season, but there is just time for a final reference in this column to cricket. Not the drama of the tests, or the leafy serenity of Hagley Oval, or another schoolboy wonder. This incident comes from a match played last month in one of the more remote outposts of Empire in the North Island. Batsman A and batsman B were in together, and they presented a startling contrast in styles, because A was an exciteable, verbose sort of cricketer, given to much talk about almost anything, while B had a much more taciturn personality, and rather tended to look on the

world and all Its works with grave suspicion. So that when A hit a ball somewhere, he set off for a run, while issuing a stream of instructions to his partner. A left the north end of the pitch at a sprint, and arrived a few seconds later, at the south, to discover that B had not budged. There did not seem to be time for a fullscale debate, and it certainly wasn't the place; A set off at a capital speed for the north end again. He duly made his ground, having run two, or its equivalent. But the disorders and indecision of the batsmen were translated into a wild, mad throw by a fieldsman, and the ball went whistling by yards clear of the ’keeper.

So A, shouting shrilly, set off down the pitch again. He met B, still as inscrutable as the Sphinx, and as unmoving, in his ground at the south end. A by now had done three laps, B none. It was this revelation, perhaps, which prompted B to accompany A on the journey back to the north end. They ran along easily together, side by side, each preoccupied with dark thoughts all his own. This imperfect union had to be broken somehow, for there they were, both at the same end again. Of course it was A who set off again, to make the lap score 5-1. And only a ridiculous game like cricket could provide a denouement so cruel and unjust: A was run out by three inches.