Dowling’s dilemma: heads or tails?

Press, Volume CXII, Issue 32860, 8 March 1972, Page 14

Dowling’s dilemma: heads or tails?

(By

R. T. BRITTENDEN)

Whenever a national sports team is struggling for success, there is a tendency to look keenly about for basic faults. And there is no-one more vulnerable, as a rule, than the captain of the side.

The New Zealand cricket team in the West Indies is struggling, and if it is not because the captain, G. T. Dowling, is getting out leg before wicket all the time, it is because he cannot win a toss.

Dowling has had a hard row to hoe, with his tosses. He has led New Zealand in 35 matches, but the vast majority of them have been on tour, where the custom is for the home captain to spin the coin and the visiting skipper to call. So if there is criticism of Dowling, it is surely not of his inability to manipulate the coin profitably, but of his lack of success in reading the other man’s mind.

But if Dowling has, very often, been the innocent bystander while others have performed feats of legerdemain, his reputation as a loser of tosses is as unfounded as his alleged habit of getting out leg before wicket.

Dowling has won 17 tosses of the 35, and in tests, has a pass mark too —■' nine out of 18. One could not really question his ability as a tosser, for he has shown splendid form for Canterbury in this role, and it needs only for him to become fully acclimatised in the West Indies for him to reel off a succession of winning calls.

In his Plunket Shield career, Dowling has led Canterbury 40 times, and has won the toss on 29 occasions—nothing less than 72.5 per cent. Twice he performed the rare feat of winning all five tosses in a shield series, and if that is not form, what is? One has to remember

that in the West Indies, the coins are strange, and must take some getting used to. Dowling has already won one toss in three there,

which is by no means a bad start, and when he really settles down, he should pull his weight, and more. But it had better start soon.