LAMENT OVER THE FALLEN

Evening Post, Volume CXXIII, Issue 47, 25 February 1937, Page 11

LAMENT OVER THE FALLEN

(By Telegraph.) (Special to the "Eveninn Post")

AUCKLAND, This Day.

"It can be said safely that the personnel of the New Zealand cricket team to tour England has created a deal of surprise and disappointment," says- the "Auckland Star's" cricket writer. "One prominent old player of Auckland seeing the selection declared at ■ once that four of the chosen players would not get a place in the Auckland representative team. Dunning, Griffiths, Donnelly, and Kerr were the players he named. He argued that Kerr's form this- season, plus a question of failing eyesight, should have disqualified the Canterbury man. He looked on Dunning as an old man in cricket, not as good a bowler as A. M. Matheson, of Auckland, and not half as good.a man as an all-rounder. He considered Griffiths's displays in this year's representative cricket as without merit and Donnelly as a player who had not yet demonstrated fully that he is in interprovincial class. In his opinion Matheson and Whitelaw, of Auckland, Elmes, of Otago, and Gallichan, of Manawatu, would have been better selections.

"The above criticism just about sums up the general view, though some are of the opinion that Parsloe, the Wellington fast bowler, and. Matheson, of Auckland, were the two most unlucky candidates. It has to be remembered that the selectors' main problem was getting.an adequate variety and quality in attack combined with the declared policy of favouring young and improving players of desirable character for such a tour. Obviously the restrictions tied the selectors' hands. They got partly on the way to the solution with Weir and Dunning (though most critics would have preferred Weir and Matheson at this stage) and then had to have a slow spin bowler and a sharp fieldsman, both young. It looks as if at this stage they gambled on Griffiths and Donnelly. It might just as easily have been Lamason, of Wellington, and Sharpe, of Canterbury, and they might have been better selections. If a New Zealand team were selected to play the M.C.C. in New Zealand this week it is almost a certainty that Lamason would be preferred to Kerr and that Whitelaw, Matheson, Parsloe, and perhaps Sharpe, would go down as emergencies before Griffiths, Donnelly, and Dunning."