BOWLER HAD INTENDED TO RETIRE Taylor took advice, now bowling at peak

Press, Volume CXII, Issue 32874, 24 March 1972, Page 20

BOWLER HAD INTENDED TO RETIRE Taylor took advice, now bowling at peak

(Special Correspondent N.Z.P.A.) BRIDGETOWN (Barbados). Had it not been for some friendly advice from two Wellingtonians, B. R. Taylor, the New Zealand medium*fast bowler, might now be mowing the lawn at home instead of mowing down West Indian wickets at the astonishing rate of the last three matches.

Taylor was dropped from the first test, took time to find his form, but in the last three matches — against. Trinidad, in the second test, and against Barbados — has taken 18 wickets for 294 runs.

His tour figures now ; stand at 22 wickets for 433 runs, an average : 19.68, and these are marvellous figures for a bowler of his type on West Indian pitches. Yet only five months ago he wanted to retire from first-class cricket "I had been trying to bowl off the usual long run, but my ankle was playing up and my form was awful," Taylor said yesterday on the eve of the third test. This ankle injury troubled him last season when he was dropped from the test against England. “By the end of last November, I decided to give first-class cricket away.” Then came the advice, first from Taylor’s wife, Pat who is tremendously keen on her husband’s cricket and then from Trevor McMahon, the former New Zealand wicketkeeper and now a Wellington selector. “They both told me to go back to the short run I had used before. I did so, tried it in a club game in Wellington, and took nine wickets in an innings. “So rather than give big cricket away I decided to continue with the short run. i I have not lost much of my i old speed, but I am bowling

much straighter and that is important over here.” Taylor was upset at the time when he missed the first test, but he now thinks that it might have been to his ad* vantage. "By not playing I was able to watch how their batsmen played, and how our bowlers bowled to them. Perhaps if I had played I might have had none for a 100, and that could have set me back. “Watching the West Indies batsmen I realised that you have to bowl straight. You can’t afford to give them room, especially on the offside, or they will slash you. You have to try to bowl into them, to try to restrict them, so they do not have room to play their shots. "Mind you,” said Taylor, "they are not all the same. With some you might try to concentrate on the offstump; others you try to work on their leg-stump. "Watching the West Indies quickies showed me that they bowled just short of a length, to make scoring difficult, or bowled very short.” Taylor has moulded this approach into his mediumfast bowling on tour, with remarkable success in the last three games. "I have been able to get some movement off the pitch, especially against Barbados when the ball was still moV-

ing both ways on the last day. So you bowl just short of a length and wait for them to hit across the line—and that is where the catches come on these pitches.”