Peter Petherick tries ‘other’ bowling

Press, 10 January 1986, Page 21

Peter Petherick tries ‘other’ bowling

By

DAVID LEGGAT

When Peter Petherick casts his mind back to the greatest moment in his seven-test cricket career, he also thinks of Geoffrey Howarth. For it was Howarth, then still a relative fledgling in international cricket, who sprung forward at silly midoff to clutch the ball inches from the ground to give Petherick, in his first test, a hat-trick. The opponent was Pakistan, the venue Lahore, and the incident etched the off-spinner’s name in the record books for all time. He was the seventeenth bowler to take a test hattrick, the only New Zealander to do so, and no one else has performed the feat in his initial test appearance. And all this at the age of 33. Petherick, who is in Christchurch for the national bowls championships, displayed an understandably clear recollection of his finest moment in a career which began at the

unusually late age of 33. “Before it happened, we’d been bowling for four and a half hours at the same batsmen, Javed Miandad and Asif Iqbal, and that was after having Pakistan 55 for four.

“I had none for 90 and I must admit in Lahore I felt what the heck am I doing here. We really had our work cut out. Then Miandad played a tired pull shot and got a top edge. It wasn’t a very good ball but Richard Hadlee caught him at square leg. “That gave me a bit of encouragement. I must admit feeling a bit sorry for the next batsman, Wasim Raja. He’d been in the pavilion all that time with his pads on. He bit the first ball back to me about waist high.

“I’m always in debt to Geoff Howarth for the third

one. Intakhab was the batsman and I bowled the ball a little shorter than normal. For once, the ball bounced a bit and got the glove. Geoff dived forward and it really was a brilliant catch.

“I buy him a beer every time I see him,” quipped Petherick. The achievement did not sink in immediately, he admitted. “I went down to fine leg for the next over, and the crowd started clapping, which was unusual for them. But then in the pavilion every bugger was staring at me, calling me a freak, that sort of thing,” he added.

On that tour of Pakistan and India, Petherick took more wickets in the six tests, 16, than any other New Zealand bowler, except Hadlee, with 23. Petherick was always among the slower of spin bowlers, a fact he felt did not help in

the sub-continent, where quick turn and bounce was a stronger asset than flight. Defensive bowling did not fit into Peter Petherick’s conception of an offspinner’s role in cricket. “I was a bit costly, but I was always an attacking bowler. I don’t believe an offspinner should bowl to defensive fields. You’ve got to attack.”

On his return, Petherick was dropped from the first test team to play the visiting Australians. He was “a little annoyed,” but quickly pointed out the outstanding qualities of the spinner selected, Hedley Howarth. When Otago played Australia before the second test team was named, Petherick, determined to prove himself worthy of a place, took seven for 65 in the first innings. But the two. spinners bowled just nine overs between them in the match, as New Zealand, with far too few runs to bowl at, tumbled to a 10-

wicket defeat. That was the end of Petherick’s test career. He made himself unavailable for the England tour of 1978. Work commitments and his age persuaded him to stay at home — “if I had been younger I’d certainly have gone, but I probably made the right decision.”

Last year, Petherick turned to a similarly sedate type of bowling, with the Palmerston North bowling club and he has had a highly satisfying first national tournament. He qualified for post section play in all three classes; made the last 32 in the pairs with Bob Fowles, winning eight games before being knocked out; and survived the singles until bowing out to the beaten finalist, Morgan Moffat, 21-12.

“Kevin Wing encouraged me to take it up, I knew a few people at the bowling club and I thought it wasn’t a bad sort of game. It’s a~ touch game, a bit similar to

bowling spinners.” And even though he has played just two years, Petherick has already shown considerable ability. He is part of a four which has made its mark on more than just the bowling green. Wing, three times a national title runner-up, played 25 times for Manawatu as a full-back and wing from 1958 until 1961, scoring nine tries. He played in Manawatu’s 9-8 loss to Taranaki in its Ranfurly Shield challenge of 1958.

The second, Dave Trainor, was an Otago swimming and water polo representative, and was a loose forward for Southern in Dunedin senior rugby for several seasons.

Bob Fowles, the third, played rugby for Taranaki in the early 19605, selected and coached the Taranaki colts for three years in the mid-1970s as well as winning provincial belt titles in surf life-saving. Truly a sporting quartet.