Christchurch Link With Otago School Cricket

Press, Volume CIII, Issue 30610, 28 November 1964, Page 11

Christchurch Link With Otago School Cricket

(Specially written for "The Press" by G. GRIFFITHS!

QF all the important South Island schools, only Christ’s College has a longer cricket tradition than that of Otago Boys' High School, and it is fitting that Christ’s College should have a small share in an interesting anniversary occurring in the coming week. One hundred years ago, on November 26,1864, Otago Boys’ High School played Its first organised school cricket match, a year after the school was founded, and two of the boys who took part were old boys of Christ’s College. These two—R. W. Williams and A. C. Smale —with eight other boys and the acting rector, Mr G. P. Abram, challenged the strong Dunedin club, and in spite of trailing on the first innings, managed to achieve a fairly honourable draw with the club’s second eleven.

So began a tradition virtually unbroken from those early days, through the era of A. H. Fisher, to the present, with the school turning out a goodly share of provincial and national representatives. The enthusiastic coaching of Abram, carried on by many highly qualified men, including Harry (“Little Dasher”) Graham, the Australian test player, at the beginning of the century, continues today with the test opening bowler, F. J. Cameron, now a master at the school.

It has always surprised northerners (not least during the present Otago Plunket Shield eclipse) that cricket could ever have taken root in such a Scottish settlement, and this popular view has been supported by the few men, like Bannerman and T. W. Reese, who bothered to delve into the country’s cricket history.

It was not Scottishness which hampered the game at all, for many of the players were themselves Scots, but the lack of leisure, lack of suitable level ground, lack of transport, and unsuitable weather, which held back the growth of the game.

When gold brought money, leisure and better

transport the original Dunedin settlers quickly expanded their cricket and, in the city itself, could beat any team the Victorian migrants brought against them. Several of the boys who played in that first match later became famous. Both Sir Francis Bell and T. W. Hislop became Mayors of Wellington, while Sir Francis Bell held every important office in the New Zealand Cricket Council. C. G. Kettle, son of the surveyor (who himself played in the 1849 game) became a prominent judge. Several of the boys later lived in Christchurch. Smale was a fruit inspector there with the Department of Agriculture; R. W. Brown, an Otago representative cricketer and footballer, was director of the Canterbury Farmers’ Co-operative Insurance Association until

his death in 1934: J. McC. Glasgow was connected with banking in Christchurch before moving to Wellington.

Of the others, Williams became a runholder in Southland while A. Cairns was a leading Otago cricketer after leaving school. These boys, aged between 13 and 15, had to play men a dozen years older than themselves and they made a good showing, although a contemporary report describes how the lads, with “unpadded shins,” could barely stand up to the fast round-arm bowling of the Dunedin dub players. Of these, two are of particular interest to Christchurch. One was Alexander Carrick, manager of the Christchurch branch of the National Insurance Company until his death in 1994: the second was his brother-in-law, W. M. Hodgkins, lawyer, eminent watercolourist and the father of the world-famous New Zealand painter. Francis Hodgkins.