RANDOM REMINDER

Press, Volume CXI, Issue 32700, 1 September 1971, Page 21

RANDOM REMINDER

FADS AND FOIBLES

The majority of people, it seems, have their own little idiosyncracies as they go through life, some more so than others. Quaint mannerisms in a person, we are told by those qualified to know, boil down to a question of genes and hereditary influences. Pure hypothesis? It is difficult for the lay person to answer the question one way or the other.. But it makes a most absorbing study. Overlooking for a moment the relatively small quota of ambidextrous folk in our midst, it is a peculiar fact that most men, normally righthanded, invariably carry their handkerchiefs in their left hand trouser pocket and utilise that hand when airing their linen. Then there are those men, putting their best foot forward who dress for work each morning and without fail put their

left shoe on first 999 times oUt of a thousand. There is not, apparently, either rhyme or reason for it. But it is in the sporting realm more than others that personal eccentricities are strikingly evident. Take, as an example, a rotund member of one of our local golf clubs whose handicap apart from his girth is, and has been for a number of years, a seemingly irreducible 24. We draw no allusion to his dietary habits in suggesting that it is the greens that seem to prove something of a nemesis for him. Before putting it is his habit to first raise his left heel and pat it three times on the turf followed by the same ritual with his right. About the only ones he sinks with any degree of confidence are those at the nineteenth. Then there is the lower grade cricketer we look forward to encountering

again in the forthcoming season. And so do those with whom he plays. He has seen more summers than most of them and certainly bowled more overs. A slow bowler, his run up is characterised by a rolling gait not unlike that of a deckhand making his way to lunch during a storm at sea. . If his approach to the wicket is eye-arresting, his delivery and follow-through deserve the attention they earn. He bowls in a pronounced round-arm style and simultaneously places his open palmed left hand on his forehead, much in the manner of a man shading his eyes from the sun. It is little wonder then, that to his team, mates and others he readily answers to the nickname bestowed on him—that of Captain Cook. He has made his own discovery; that old habits die hard.