Mailey’s Tribute: Hadlee's Day

Evening Star, Issue 25745, 19 March 1946, Page 6

Mailey’s Tribute: Hadlee's Day

STRONG ATTACK MADE IMPOTENT By ARTHUR MAILEY for the 'Star'— . Copyright—Yaffa Newspaper Service. On the mound near where I was sitting yesterday wee John Cameron was peacefully slumbering on his mother s lap. Suddenly a terrific round of applause awoke baby John, who cried bitterly. ' ** Hush, darling. Don't cry, my sweet,” his mother said. “ Mr Hadlee had made a century and ’tis not often we make a century against the Australians.” The six-months-old bairn stopped crying immediately. Now please don’t tell me again that New Zealanders are not cricket minded. On Saturday the attendance was approximately one-sixth of the city s population. If the same ratio attended a cricket match in Sydney the crowd would number oVer 200,000! Yesterday was Hadlee’s day. Players drifted to and fro, like actors in the mob scene, but Hadlee held the stage all day.

Hostile Bowling It may be remembered that we described Hadlee’s first innings of 2t)-odd as a “ classic in miniature.” One doesn’t have to paint a 12ft canvas to prove himself an artist, and' it was really Hadlee’s rather modest attempt in the first innings that whetted my appetite, at least for a larger helping of runs. Of course, I didn’t exipect 169. Nobody did. And l few people who left the ground on Saturday thought something dramatic, something sensational may happen before the match finished. And now, at the start of play on this Tuesday morning, we find' that Dunedin is 50 odd runs ahead—of the visitors’ total, with two wickets to fall. Had Australia’s bowling been loose and carelessly directed, the richness of Hadlee's innings would have been minimised, but I don’t think at any time the Australians’ bowling fell below its usual standard. We must simply face up to the position and say that the Otago and New Zealand captain played an innings that rendered our attack as impotent as certain brands of New Zealand beer. My opinion of Australian bowling is based on personal knowledge—-on the local beverage, merely hearsay. Lindwall, I thought, bowled much faster than he did during Otago’s first innings, while O’Reilly was also undoubtedly more i hostile. All the Same to Hadlee But it seemed to matter little to Hadlee who bowled or how they bowled. Had Hadlee crumpled up and lost a certain amount of zest after he had been hit under the heart by Lindwall, it would have been expected by some, but this episode appeared to infuse more enthusiasm, more determination to take the sting out of the Australian attack. Although .this objective was not completely obtained, we must admit /that to Hadlee, at least, the opposition battery was where he wanted it. His superioritv was proved by the fact that out of 302 runs Hadlee had scored 169. Some say comparisons are odious. I find them, if backed by knowledge, and, without bias, interesting and entertaining.'! don.’t think anybody in the Australian team could have, against Australian bowling, played a better innings than Hadlee did. In saying this I have in mind Brown, Barnes, Hassett, Meuleman, Miller, and Hamence, the leading Australian batsmen. Hadlee, against a stronger attack, made less mistakes than the Australians did against weaker bowling. Comparisons can only be made with a certain amount of correctness when all the circumstances are taken into consideration. It was Hadlee’s dominating presence which allowed bis team mates to assess the opposing attack at its true value.

become loose, although under Hadlee’s dominance a little lack of length or direction might have been overlooked. But this was not so. Lindwall kept his pace throughout the day, and might have embarrassed batsmen with more glamorous reputations than Mills, Smith, and Co. The bumping ball is quite an easy missile to handle from the Press box, but -not so easy to negotiate 22yds away from its source of velocity. O’Reilly flighted and changed his pace with excellent judgment, and he never bowled better than he did while Hadlee was in the gay ’nineties. He was like a tiger trying to make a kill before his prey could escape up a tree or somewhere. Critical Moment I am sure that this relentless attack forced Hadlee into a state of desperation when, having been pinned down at. 07. he swung viciously at a well-pitched hall and lofted it into the hands of a uiau in the off-side midfield. While the ball was in the air the batsmen had almost finished their second run. hut. wheti Johnson fumbled and dropped it the batsmen scampered .down the

pitch and scored the run which told the world that the Australians had had a century scored against them. It was a dramatic anti-climax to an event which brought vocal expressions from five or six thousand people, including, of course, wee John Cameron. i could read disgust in lan Johnson’s face after he had dropped the ball, and could almost hear him croon our housemaid’s theme song : “ I lost the gladness which turned into sadness, when I dropped you.” (The last line is slightly tampered with, but the text of the lament remains.l Sid Barnes. Australia’s champion partnership breaker, was again brought into the firing line when things looked rather black, and did in a couple of overs what his mates had been trying to do all day. Brown had made much better use of this under-rated bowler than any previous captain I have known, and although there were times when I felt Barnes should be more in circulation ns a bowler I may be overlooking the fact that familiarity breeds contempt, and, incidentally, many runs, when bowlers are over worked. Fielding Lapses The Australian fielding was again patchy, and hardly worthy of players who individually are experts in the field. Enthusiasm, perhaps, combined with indiscretion, was probably responsible for spasms of fielding—so undignified that even the local commercial travellers’ cricket team would be ashamed of it. (And it takes a lot to shame com . Any how, we’ll let it go at that.)

Fine Support In all modesty, some of these batsmen felt that if their captain could hit O’Reilly for 4 they, too, could hit him for 4, and, further, hit him for a bigger 6, as Freeman did when he landed one on the roof of the main stand. Mills and Smith were overshadowed by their captain, but, nevertheless, played brie cricket. Either or both would, I feel, be an asset to New Zealand’s test team. I noticed that as the innings progressed the batsmen ignored passing trains. Shirley, in particular, batted while three trains passed behind his line of vision. The last one belched clouds of smoke, squirted steam, and created a terrible confusion while O’Reilly was attacking Shirley, but that batsman hit the bowler hard through the covers, and played several fine shots. The next over the railroad was deserted—no belching smoke, no steam, no confusion, just tranquillity. The only noise I heard was made by a ball from O’Reilly crashing into Shirley’s stumps. Here is a lesson to those batsmen who are sensitive to offground activities. The Australian bowlers fought hard all day. At no time did the bowling