FREAKS OF CRICKET

Dominion, Volume 37, Issue 115, 10 February 1944, Page 3

FREAKS OF CRICKET

286 Runs Off One Ball The nine runs scored off one ball in a. recent senior cricket match at Palmerston North was certainly a beginning, but only a beginning. Ohl hands will perhaps hark back to that quaint match at Bunbury, Western Australia, in 1893, when 28fi runs were scored off one hit. It must be admitted that the batsmen were nearly blown at the end. The first ball of the match was skied into a threepronged branch of a jarrab tree, tall and unclimbablc. , The umpire ruled it was not a case of lost ball as the ball was in sight. While the batsmen kept on running the fielding team went off for an axe. Nobody could find an axe but they found a rifle. The fieldsmen took it in turns to shoot the ball down. After a long time someone scored a hit on the ball—a most irregular hit. It came tumbling down from the tree. The fieldsmen tried to catch it as it fell, but so many tried they all mi.£§ecl. Meanwhile the comfortable total of 286 had been run. The side declared and won the match.

Another spectacular hit occurred during a friendly game in Kent in the SO.’s The pitch was sited on top of a hill. A batsman hit the ball over the edge and it ran down the hill. Relays of fieldsmen did their best to get the ball back to the wicket. Each time it dodged them and rolled back down the hill. Eventually a .snigrt fieldsman put the ball in his pocket, ran up the hill and delivered it to the waiting wicket-keeper. By that time the batsmen had run 47. As the opposing team bad made 46, the match was over. Tn more recent times a curious incident occurred at Lord's. Leyland seat a ball over the ropes among the crowd. The spectators 1 obligingly helped the team to look for the bull, but it was nowhere to be found. Eventually a spectator who had been having a nap put his hand, in bis pocket for his' pipe and found a cricket ball. It had fallen into his pocket without waking him. A few seasons before the war a batsman at Colchester, in Essex. England went one better. He hit a ball right out of the ground. It landed in a goods train and was not fielded till the train stopped at London. Can anyone beat that?