Length of games should not vary

Press, Volume CXI, Issue 32494, 2 January 1971, Page 5

Length of games should not vary

Sunday play in Plunket Shield matches has been accepted, with limitations; Wellington has so far not agreed to it. But its place in Plunket Shield programmes seems assured. Yet until the six associations taking part in the shield series come to agree, the anomaly of matches having varying durations will continue.

This season, there are three Sundays included among the playing days. Canterbury played last Sunday at Carisbrook, and will play Auckland on a Sunday. Northern Districts and Otago play on a Sunday at Rotorua. The playing conditions for Plunket Shield matches stipulate that the playing time shall not exceed 21

hours, but that these hours may be reduced or varied by mutual arrangement between participating associations. So at Wellington, when Central Districts played the home team, the hours were 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. each day, which, ■ with lunch and tea intervals, gave a playing time of the full 21 hours. But at Carisbrook, play on the Sunday began at 1 p.m., and lasted only four hours 40 minutes. So the length of the match was two hours 20 minutes shorter than that at the Basin Reserve; and a similar situation will apply at Auckland and Rotorua later in the series. At Carisbrook, Canterbury would have wel-

corned a match of the full 21 hours, and perhaps Otago would have wanted it too. The fact that some matches are shorter than others seems a little ludicrous; and Auckland’s request to Canterbury that in the match at Eden Park an extra half-hour should be played each day seems reasonable and sensible.

Negotiations about playing hours are, as stated, a matter for the associations concerned. But it would seem sensible for the New Zealand Cricket Council to stipulate that the duration of all matches should be the same, and still leave the organisation of the hours, day to day, to the teams which have agreed to Sunday play.