Days at Lancaster Park (x)

Press, Volume CIX, Issue 31981, 7 May 1969, Page 15

Days at Lancaster Park (x)

by

J.H.E.S.]

Otago played Canterbury ‘ at Lancaster Park on Febru•>ry 14, 1936, and took first . innings: not a very success- ‘ ful one, since the side was out for 173. Merritt should be called Canterbury’s man of the match; for in this '■ innings he took 6 for 56 in 16 overs and two balls, « and in the second 7 for 125 in 44 overs (nine maidens). Thirteen fpr 181 in the match was a notable average; but in neither innings 'did he bag Badcock, that master of spin bowling by him or to him. Badcock’s double, opening in both .innings, was a good bite: 39 c Page b Cobden jand 54 ic and b Graham; but I do ? not remember him as quite * the figure he had been playing for Wellington. Anyhow, he took only thrte wickets, one for 39 and two ; for 37, and took two catches, and his galvanic. influence on the Otago field has escaped my memory, if not

my observation in the match. This took an interesting shape when Canterbury followed and crept into a first innings lead of one run and Kerr (b Badcock) did no better than 12 and in the second innings was b Silver for 2. Bellamy, whose period this was, did no better than 1 and 29; Page, no better than 10 and 19, O’Brien reached a good double of 30 and 33; Merritt’s unusual score was a pair of spectacles; but Cromb dignified Canterbury’s first innings score with a very fine 73. This Lancaster Park crowd has its own way, and one of its ways was to take a rather unfriendly view of Cromb. Canterbury is conventional and proper; and perhaps the Lancaster Park embankment typifies Canterbury: It. never liked. Cromb’? tricks, such as putting his foot out to jump the ball into his hand; such as roll-

ing the ball down his arm into his hand; even such as sitting at the bat’s end at the silliest of silly mid-offs —where he held the batsman in fear, and where he was never hurt. (Remember Walter Brearley fielding in this suicide position against R. F. Foster and being warned to get out of the way: “Thee get on with thy laking, Master Foster.”) Its a poor crowd that cannot like a character, as Cromb was. But given an occasion Cromb could show ell the control of a . master, and no nonsense, as when he came in at the end of a bad day for Canterbury and played out time in a beautifully controlled innings of 21 or so, never a shot astray, always on top of the bowlers, never the bowler on top of him. And even the ranks of Tuscany did not forebear to cheer.

Yes. But Otago’s second Innings ran to 350, Badcock’s 54 being followed by double figures from most others, including Uttley on 61, and left Canterbury a mark not reached; and Otago won by 119 runs. Hadlee had not yet reached the status of a Canterbury opener, though he had, for example, taken 92 and 74 not out against Wellington (at number 6) in 1934. This time he batted at number three, following Kerr and Bellamy, and he was not bowled by Silver till he had made 101; and this beautiful innings I regarded as the final proof that Canterbury had a first class batsman, so safe, so well equipped, that he had to be chosen as an opener. I have often wondered whether the selectors were slow in coming to this conclusion because Hadlee batted in spectacles. But I never heard of their being damaged and the proof of the pudding is in the rising ball.