Well deserved honour for Dowling

Press, Volume CXI, Issue 32563, 24 March 1971, Page 24

Well deserved honour for Dowling

(By

R. T. BRITTENDEN)

’THE award of the Redx path Cup for batting to G. T. Dowling for the 1970-71 season will be a particularly popular one. From the start of his career in 1958-59 he has been a consistently successful batsman, but he has given the game much more than well-made runs.

Now 34 years of age, Dowling is probably at the very peak of a distinguished career. He is batting with an authority he naturally lacked earlier in his career, and his years of experience have converted him from a proficient player into one with the skill and confidence to seek to shape the course of a game. He has become a most capable captain who has won the widest and warmest respect of those who have played under him and toured with him. He leads by example, but not in an assertive way. Courage and application are his, as he has demonstrated on countless occasions. And he has one of the most-needed assets in a modem captain: the imagination and confidence to pursue victory at the risk of defeat. There could be no better example of this than in this season’s Plunket Shield series Three times Dowling declared to open the game up. At Dunedin, Otago clung on for a draw; at Hamilton, Canterbury was beaten; at Auckland, Dowling’s team won a thrilling match by a handful of runs, mainly because he kept baiting his trap with the generous bowling of one of his batsmen:

Dowling has earned every tribute the game can pay him. He is a genuine sportsman, a courteous but determined opponent His batting, in Jeopardy after the loss of a finger in a mishap in Australia, has been as sound and attractive this season as ever before. He is far less diffident than some of his contemporaries about using spin-

ners, and he is still a splendid fieldsman. As a New Zealand captain in 18 tests he has the astonishing record—by New Zealand standards—of four victories

(of the seven New Zealand has had in all) and eight losses. As a batsman he has scored almost 9000 runs, well in excess of all but B. Sutcliffe and J. R. Reid. This season, he played some outstanding innings in Plunket Shield matches and for New Zealand, and his Redpath Cup (his third such award in five seasons) was thoroughly deserved. Dowling today is at the top of his bent; and New Zealand has had fewer better pr more admirable leaders.