Old Cricket Rivals At Head Of Supporters Club

Press, Volume CVI, Issue 31209, 5 November 1966, Page 18

Old Cricket Rivals At Head Of Supporters Club

rpWO notable Canterbury cricket personalities whose playing careers were in close co-incidence have done much to foster the growth of the Canterbury Cricket Supporters’ Club, an organisation which has, in its brief life, made a valuable contribution to the game. The new president of the club is Mr S. G. Lester, and the immediate past president is Brigadier J. T. Burrows, and the club could hardly have had better men at the top. Lester and Burrows were opponents as schoolboys, Lester playing for the Christ’s College first XI and Burrows for Christchurch Boys’ High School. They were also opponents, when Old Collegians met Old Boys in senior cricket; and they were members of the Canterbury team in the same period.

Neither was able to devote as long to cricket as supporters of the game would have wished, but Lester totalled 3667 runs in senior club championship matches, scoring two centuries and 18 half-centuries. He took 264 wickets, with five or more in an innings 13 times, and a best performance of 7 for 12 against East Christchurch in 193031. A bowler of better than medium pace who could move the ball, he took 26 wickets in his 16 first-class matches, and made 490 runs with two half-centuries.

Lester was regarded as unlucky not to win a place in the 1931 New Zealand team for its tour of England. In four of his five innings, he scored more than 30, and he averaged 40.7. And in the famous 1930-31 match with Auckland, he took 4 for 21 in the first innings.

Burrows played one match for Canterbury in 1926-27, but appeared a little more regularly from 1929-30. But he had only nine first-class games. The Auckland match

referred to earlier showed him in typical form. The ball coming in to the bat, and the cluster of leg fieldsmen, were not widely used at this time, and the scoring rates were usually clear of the clock. But Burrows, a stock bowler of great tenacity, showed tremendous heart during Auckland’s long second innings, and throughout his first-class career, batsmen averaged little more than two runs an over from him. Burrows, a 1928 AH Black, was as stubborn with the bat as with the ball, if rather less gifted. But he

has the remarkable record of never having been dismissed in first-class cricket He scored 36 runs in 12 not out innings. In these games he took 31 wickets at 22.1 runs each. And he could make runs on occasions: he scored 81 for Old Boys against St. Albans in 1932-33. Both these fine former plavers are contributing handsomely to the well-being of the summer game. Both have won the respect and affection of the cricketing community, and while its affairs are conducted by such as these, the dub will prosper.