CRICKET.

Gisborne Times, Volume LXVIII, Issue 10752, 24 November 1928, Page 9

CRICKET.

A MIGHTY BOWLER. e. McDonald in Lancashire. A PERFECT DELIVERY. LONDON. Oct. 1. There are. those who think that Lancashire have re-ascended to the summit of the county cricket chart, and threaten to be champions for the third successive season, by the virtues of their batsmen. Not so—the greatest power in their advance to, and retention of, the premiership, has been McDonald, the Australian ! owlet. If any one man has ever won this event he is McDonald, of tho ferocious countenance. As he was born at Hobart he is a. Tasmanian. At the Zoological Gardens whan we were young we saw a fierce creature called a Tasmanian devil. Now AloDonald brings the name of this terrifying marsupial to mind. If I were a novelist, or a writer of fiction, I would describe McDonald as "a beautiful white devil.” As I am not, I will call him a beautiful howler (says an English writer). PACE AND GUILE. Never have 1 seen, in an experience extending over fifty years, any cricketer with such a. perfect delivery. His run to the crease costs him little energy, but a graceful advance, full of harmony, fluency and rhythm. The motion made by relatively short steps for a full man, is never checked. There is the power of a silent, river flowing along. At the crease, with a magical whirl of the wrist, as if he were putting either an imp or a charm into the ball, he releases the crimson hall with tire shining face of an apple burnished by the sun. There is pace and gitile in the ball when it- leaves his long and strong fingers. Even at half .the speed he can produce, McDonald is full of. danger. He can bowl at a medium rate a deadly delivery. No man-can howl with such picturesque action, no man can be so full of peril, and no mart-knows so much about the technique of howling. He is the host howler in the world, and in a day when men are still arguing about whether ‘Demon’ Spo/Torth was superior to Sydney Barnes, I would like to link McDonald, at liis best, as in the summer of 1921 in England, with the other two. There have been several famous fast bowlers, right-hand medium, and left-hand slow howlers—all honored in cricket story—but Spofforth, Barnes and .McDonald rank as great howlers comprehensively embracing the whole art of attack, and not any particular branch of it.

AN ACQUISITION. When the Australians under “Admiral” Armstrong arrived Jit this country, everyone was full ’of praise for Jack Gregory. At the practice net at 'Lord’s McDonald was bowling. A man well-known in the world of cricket asked his name. An Australia n gave the answer. “Dashed good howler!” said the man. The inquirer replied with an element of surprise in liis tone and a shrug of the shoulders: “Call that chap a. bowler!” Well, all England was soon calling him a bowler. The fact was that McDonald, like Spofforth, Hugh frumble and j. V. Saunders, was a better howler in England than in Australia, Conditions mean a. lot to a man. who is really a bowler and not a .mere machine, a human catapult. Yet, with all McDonald’s efficiency, there is a superfine elegance. Ho is a loose-limbed man of six feet., well proportioned in thow and sinew, but with no encumbrance to spoil an athletic figure.