The Plunket Shield

Press, Volume CV, Issue 30971, 29 January 1966, Page 14

The Plunket Shield

Whatever misgivings there have been about the quality of the cricket, there has been no lack of excitement in the Plunket Shield competition this summer. Of the 11 matches played so far, five have provided the tense finishes which cricket literature records as being particularly damaging to umbrellas' one English gentleman, in the stress of an agonising finish, gnawed through the handle of his umbrella, and at Lord's, after F. C. Cobden’s famous over in the universities’ match of 1870, another umbrella was smashed against the pavilion brick-work—a bint of the deep stresses cricket sometimes imposes on its devotees.

The final stages of an intensely interesting Plunket Shield competition will begin at Hamilton on Monday, when Wellington meets Northern Districts. Later in the week Wellington will complete its programme with its match against Auckland. If Wellington should take full points from both these games, it will have won the shield. But Auckland still has an interest in the competition, and so have Canterbury and Otago. The final match of the series, between the southern provinces, at Christchurch on February 10, could well be the deciding one. Canterbury, with this one match to play leads Wellington by six points, so that anything short of two outright victories for Wellington will give Canterbury a chance to win the Plunket Shield in consecutive seasons for the first time.

In most of its matches, Canterbury has lost the battles and won the wars. The team, and its supporters, have somehow survived long periods of inefficient batting, regular failures in the field. But the team has contributed handsomely to Canterbury’s lively cricket story: Hastings’ men should go into this final match with an urgent desire to win outright, to attack at every opportunity. If the team does that, the result will be of little consequence.