RANDOM REMINDER

Press, Volume CVI, Issue 31206, 2 November 1966, Page 32

RANDOM REMINDER

CAUSE AND EFFECT

The opening of the cricket season is an occasion fraught with peril for those who have left the lean lissom years of youth even a little way behind. Wives and children have learned to accept the probability of domestic tragedy, but only through long years of practice. On opening day, those with a sense of history find a reminder of Agincourt in the twanging of muscles. And there is all that fearful business about having to prepare foot baths to soothe weary feet, and rub liniment on aching backs, and, next morning, having to help husbands who are as stiff and straight as those who are put into trances for the entertainment of theatre audiences.

This year, the opening day of the cricket competitions was set down for October 8, but rain during the preceding days made it necessary to cancel these arrangements. Among the most disappointed disciples of the summer game was an expatriated Yorkshireman, who performs in a grade of modest achievement with all the determination and enthusiasm one can expect from the county of the white rose. His wife, of course, was delighted: a reprieve of a week, at least, from the annual agony. What is more, the postponement allowed certain other domestic arrangements to proceed. They were at the time in the process of shifting house from one Christchurch suburb to

another, but that trifling business had, of course, been put aside for the cricket opening day. With the postponement, however, there was a chance for them to drive over to look over their new house.

So off they went And they were motoring along, she very happy, he dreaming little dreams of just how devastating his bowling would have been on that damp pitch, when he sneezed. That is all. Sneezed. But a combination of circumstances—his

cramped driving position, the suddenness of the sneeze—led to him doing himself grievous bodily harm. A badly torn stomach muscle. He blames it all on the Canterbury Cricket Association.