Salt back in action

Press, 30 August 1980, Page 60

Salt back in action

The senior cricket career of Brian Salt will have a second flowering this season. Salt, aged 46, is one of the personalities of Canterbury cricket. He played for the senior Sydenham side from 1951-52 to 1973-74, with considerable success as a useful late-order batsman and accurate off-spinner. He then descended to the lower grades, still doing a good job as an all-rounder and as a captain for his club. Last season, in the second grade B team, he took 43 wickets at only- 16 runs It might have been the time for Salt to slip into the President’s grade for a few more summers with Sydenham, but the management of the Sydenham club, unhappy about the senior side’s results in the last two seasons, has brought him back to lead the top team in the coming summer. The committee hopes that Salt, a doughty fighter, will provide the senior side with a sense of discipline and a will to win.

At 46, he might, seem a little mature to be playing senior cricket, but he is a low youth compared with lan Cromb and Walter Hadlee. Cromb was the East

Christchurch captain when he was 51; Hadlee retired from senior cricket at that age, but 10 years later played in his 299th senior match, filling a second-day gap. Salt has a good senior record — more than,-4000 runs, 423 wickets, arid 90 catches — but it is clearly his assertive approach that the committee wants. Too much cannot be expected of him- in terms of runs and wickets. .

The club’s public relations officer, Stuart Burns,' said that it was felt. Salt would do a particularly good job in looking after the progress of the several young players in the club’s senior squad of 17.- ■ ■ • Sydenham is obviously making a big effort to improve its senior ; standing. The squad is undergoing a strenuous' physical fitness programme, and the players will have to ! pass regular checks ■on their progress. Moreover, selection for the senior team will be determined, at. least in part, by the regularity of practice attendances. .

The appointment of Salt as captain must also have been aimed partly at releasing last season’s skipper, John Larter, fom the strain

of leadership. Larter is a very fine, free-scoring batsman, but last season was by far the worst in his career. If able to concentrate on his batting, Larter could very well regain his fine form of the previous five seasons, when his aggressive methods brought him more than 2300 runs.

Salt’s return, when the season opens, will also be the attainment of a personal milestone. When he first goes out to bat, he will be playing his 300th senior innings.

He said that his main aim was to get Sydenham off the bottom of the championship table. To do this, he hopes for more application, the building of team spirit, and the total involvement of the players. He wants them to find confidence in themselves.

Already, he said, Sydenham had practised for five weeks, and throughout September there would also be two-hour fielding practices on Saturday mornings.

He welcomes the return of first-innings points in the senior championship. “It will give the players from one to 11 the chance to learn to bat again, and it will help to get slow}? bowlers back into the game,” he said.