A MAMMOTH SCORE.

Evening Star, Issue 20987, 29 December 1931, Page 6

A MAMMOTH SCORE.

Ykstekuax Roger Blunt was on his native heath, and showed the Christchurch cricketing public what a batsman they had lost after training him from a schoolboy. However, Canterbury’s loss is Otago’s gain, and for the sake of cricket here it is to bo hoped that Blunt will continue to reside in Dunedin and play fo* Otago. Lancaster Park provides wickets to his liking, but never before has he shown such a clinging affection as he did for the pitch on which this timehonoured Christmas fixture was played. Going in shortly before noon, he had passed his third century before stumps were drawn. That is a feat of endurance as well as of skill, and one suspects that the somewhat slight physique is built of extra tough material. One calls to mind a great solo performance by Clem Hill on the Melbourne Cricket Ground in a test match about thirtyfour years ago. He had to face the bowling of Tom Richardson in his prime —a tireless worker on the hottest Australian day and on the hardest Australian pitch. Hill’s score of 188 was more than that of the aggregate of the rest of the team, and the Melbourne papers made much of the physical exhaustion of the Adelaide youth. But Hill was of exceptionally sturdy build, and as a schoolboy so excelled at the Australian game of football that cricket with him was—at first—more a way of filling in the summer. It may be urged that the bowling Blunt faced was not of the kind which Hill withstood; but both Merritt and Cromb have earned respect and won success frorn the best English batsmen, and on yesterday’s figures they were surpassed at the crease by their confrere Burrows. Blunt’s innings was practically faultless; a hard hot chance to square leg can hardly be termed a mis-hit, oven if pedants would call it a faulty stroke. And, already possessed of a wide variety of seemingly effortless strokes on both sides of the wicket, and behind the wicket as well as in front of it, Blunt appears yesterday to have played himself into such form that he increased an already extensive repertoire and showed the Christchurch public hitherto unsuspected developments of his batting art. That ho scored very fast is obvious, and that he increased his tally by a century while his batting vis-a-vis scored two runs is a point worth bringing under the notice of Mr E. V. Lucas. It is hard to forgive that talented writer and good judge of cricket for dubbing Blunt an obstacle as a batsman on the strength of a stubborn near-century at Lord’s in a test match. Before he left England Blunt played an innings in an important South of England fixture which charmed the critics, not alone by its rate of run-getting, but by the wealth of strokes disclosed. But (so far as we know) Mr Lucas has not retracted. What one hopes is that Blunt will have and will seize the opportunity of compelling him to do so at Lord’s by the same moans as he retrieved Otago’s fortunes yesterday. In Blunt, Vivian, and Dempster New Zealand possesses three batsmen whose exclusion from any team, whether in England, Australia, or here, would bo a matter of great difficulty to the most capable and, conscientious body of selectors*