TOURISTS DEFEAT AUCKLAND Batsmen Fail Before Australian Spinners

Press, Volume CVI, Issue 31306, 28 February 1967, Page 19

TOURISTS DEFEAT AUCKLAND Batsmen Fail Before Australian Spinners

(New Zealand Press Association)

AUCKLAND.

After once again tying up the Auckland batsmen with their four-man spinning squad, the touring Australians needed only one ball of their second innings to defeat Auckland with 10 wickets and 80 minutes to spare at Eden Park yesterday.

The Auckland first innings was completed at 214 after only seven minutes of play yesterday morning and only a valiant last-wicket stand of 21 enabled Auckland to score 196 in their second innings and make the Australians bat again—needing four runs for victory-.

The tail-ender, R. Bitmead. hit the first ball, bowled by the test opening batsman, T. W. Jarvis, for four, and the game was over. The Australians, in their first innings, scored 407 for seven declared. Apart from a typically boisterous 63 by R. M. Harris, a couple of uneasy 20’s by J. T. Sparling and M. G. Burgess and 26 not out by H. J. Howarth at the end, the Auckland innings failed against the mixed spin of J. W. Gleeson, four for 53, and the leg-spin of G. R. Davies, four for 20. In the Aucklanders’ defence, batting was not always easy on the drying pitch, which took more turn and gave the occasional low bounce. But in any conditions they would have had problems trying to pick Gleeson’s turn, and he may become the danger man in the coming tests. Turned Ball Three Aucklanders, Sparling, Burgess and J. Kasper were all dismissed by Gleeson “wrong uns” which, at least from the sideline, looked the easiest of his deliveries to pick. Davies, the 20-year-old batting hero of the Australian

he eventually lost his wicket to him. Poor Rehearsal Jarvis had a poor rehearsal for the first test when he was out for 2, leg-before to a

innings, turned the ball an 1 alarming amount and looked 1 rather more dangerous than P. I. Philpott, whose length was erratic. R. Bitmead, the left-arm spinner, seemed less of a problem and Harris s played him well, even though i

Limped Along

shooter from E. Freeman, the only wicket he took in the match and, with the one taken by A. Connolly in the first innings, the only two which did not fall to the spinners. Harris drove and cut Freeman for three fours in one over and with R. W. Morgan regaining something of his old form. Auckland went to 71 before Davies, in a brief spell, bowled Morgan. Harris reached 50 in 83 minutes with five fours, but then was out at 63 trying to hit Bitmead to the fence.

Thereafter the Auckland innings limped along. Sparling and Burgess scored runs without ever looking convincing, and Gleeson hed Sparling leg-before at 128 and bowled Burgess at 137. His googly removed Kasper at 151 and he bowled R. S. Cunis for nought in the same over.

Davies followed up with the wickets of G. E. Vivian and R. E. Sutton, and at 175 for nine Auckland seemed sure to lose by an innings. However, Howarth and Harford—both of them left-hand-ers—were safer than the righthands, and they forced Australia to bat again, if only for one ball.