CRICKET

Hawera Star, Volume XLV, 13 February 1926, Page 12

CRICKET

The competitions are in a very interesting position in South Taranaki, for Excelsior lead from Stratford and Okaiawa, who are level for second place All have three matches to play. Excelsior meeting Midlands today, Okaiawa the following week -and after that Stratford. It looks likely that between these two. Excelsior and Stratford lies the decision, for Okaiawa Jb.£tv© to meet tlieni lx>tii 3 aJicl Iy Eltham, while Stratford’s third match is with Manaia. With Lambert back in the Stratford team the odds are perhaps a little in favour of that team. But cricket is still pre-eminently the glorious game of chance, and not until the last ball is bowled on February 27 is any team beaten. That fact has been, proved many times and oft, and that featuie is still one of the charms of the game. One of the North juniors, of the team that played last Saturday, who showed exceptional keenness and ability in the field, is a Maori boy munec. Watson, of Waitara. In primary school cricket he on one occasion scored a double century unbeaten. Ho shaped well all round, but did not get going in his batting. The wicket-keeping of Pope, the northern junior rep., was very smart and much admired by spectators. -H-is work in disposing of Rudkin was really excellent. Entwistle-, of Hawera, also took the eye behind the sticks, he stands up to the bowling well, and has a good, sure pair of hands. An amusing story is told qv an Alton settler about one of their own teams many years ago. This team was called Alton Firsts, and they went into Hawera, in response to an invitation, to play the local team tins was in the days of George Bayly Kiddiford, Moore and company. When they returned, not much comment was made, but one of the players saic.: “Every player in the team is a bowler but there actually is not a bowler in the whole team.” That was evidence enough of the way they were treated in the field. Thorndon Club, in Wellington, last Saturday made almost a record small score in their senior match. t ne side was all out for 32. and of these 25 were made by three of the batsmen Phillips; who used to plav with Okaiawa, is one of the team. He was out, caught for a duck, but this season he has put up some very good ta The S ’report that Maurice Tate, the famous Sussex and All England bowler, on whom the team against the Australians will rely bo much, was coming to New Zealand was apparently too Sod to be true. The report has fume been firmly denied. It v oiild have been, however, a fine thing for the cause of cricket in the Dominion.

WHAT IS THE SECRET ? Discussing in the Referee the rearson for the success of the Australians, H. Strudwiick, the famous English wicket-keeper, concludes thus an interesting article: ‘ ‘ I saw no despair when Hobbs and Sutcliffe batted all day in that second Test match at Melbourne. No! You simply squared your jaws the more and got on your toes. I have been asked scores of times how it was that the Australians’ tail made so many runs. What is the secret? It seems to me that there are three reasons why they are so successful: (1) They really love the game; (2) they never get tired of practising, and put their heart and soul into their work; (3) they play all their matches to a finish. You may think that third reason is an insignificant one, but, as a matter of fact, it is a vital one. When matches are played to a finish every run saved is a run less to get. This makes your fielding what _we know it to be —very smart and reliable.”

ENGLAND’S NEXT VISIT

MAY BE TO AUSTRALIA IN SEASON 1928-9. Cricketers are already asking when the next visit by an English team will be made to this country. It 'will probably be in 1928-9, that is, two years from November next. It is what the M.C.C- proposes, and cannot very well be altered, that is, brought nearer. The M.C.C. has forwarded to the new-ly-formed South African Board of Control for overseas tours for the next five years: 1926, Australia, in England; 1926-7, England, in South Africfc; 1928, South Africa, in England; 1928-9, England, in Australia; and 1930, Australia, in England. The .Imperial Cricket Conference will deal with the last four suggested tours this year-, Australia to be represented at the conference

South Africa contemplated inviting Australia- to play a short list of fixtures, on their way “home” after next English season, as they did in 1921, but Australia is not keen on the visit to South Africa just yet. There is a likelihood of the team returning to Australia via America, though this will not be determined until the men have been in England some time. It is to be left to the team. They are not to play any cricket on the way hack this time, so no matches will be carried out in New Zealand or America.

TRAINING THE YOUNGSTERS. George Giffen, the former South Australian and Australian Eleven all-round champion, who recently retired from the South Australian Government service on reaching the age of sixty-five, is as keen as ever on tho game, and never misses a match on the Adelaide Oval if he can help it. While in Adelaide recently I had a talk with him, and found him as alert and entertaining ns ever (says a writer in the Melbourne Sporting Globe). His delight now is to get among the boys in the park opposite bis home and coach them in the art of bating and howling, and the boys are as keen to learn as he is to teach. They look upon him more in the light of a father than as an instructor, and delight in doing thenbest to please him, and in benefiting by his teaching. . “I go out at 5.30 every evening and teach the boys to play opposite my house in the park,” said Giffen. “I have been doiiicr this for the last sixteen years. Sometimes there are so many that we have to put two wickets up. It is one of the greatest pleasures of my life to teach the rising generation cricket.”

PLiUNKET SHIELD

THE LAST MATCH

Wellington, by its disastrous defeat by Otago, when apparently in a. winning position, threw away wliat would have put them level with Auckland and with a good chance of being actually first for the season. Now, However, she is a win behind and will have to beat Auckland to have a chance. 11 slut achieves that, the final result will go on averages and it is estimated that, with the overwhelming defeat of Canterbury to her credit, .she will stand a very good chance of holding the shield for 1926.

But now all depends on the match with Auckland at Wellington next week. The cry against the last Wellington representative team was “too many ‘old ’ ims, ’ ” and critics strongly suggest a-t least five new men, leaving m Hkldlestoii, Brice, MoGirr, Badcock, McLeod and Deinpser, and -picking mole active men who can do better in the field. X. Tucker, the sole selector, was last week given an extra few days to see- more- of the play of the youngsters. Lambert is suggested, but he, of course, will not now be available.

Alark Nicholls is rapidy making his mark in club cricket in Wellington. He -plays for Petone—his Rugby team also—and has made over 50 and over 100 in his- last two knocks. His father, the great Captain Sid Nicholls, was also one of Wellington’s best all-rounders thirty odd years ago. A GREAT FAMILY. No fewer than six brothers of the famous Studd cricket family have appeared in the Eton XI., while a halfbrother, the late ‘E.J.C.,” played for Cheltenham. The youngest of the halfdozen, Sir R. A. Studd, is fifty-two. He played in the Eton teams of 1890 and two following years, but never on the winning side, and gained a place under W. G. Druce in the Cambridge XI. of 1895 when the Light Blues -were victorious by 134 runs. That year lie was a member of Mr. Frank Mitchell’s team in America, and also assisted Hampshire. In addition to being a good early-wicket batsman, he was also a useful change bowler.

THE “UMP.” A CRICKET ANOMALY. DICTATOR AND I NONENTITY. OUR BULWARK OF FAIR PLAY. The subject of these few remarks is not a disease, and has no relation to the classic colloquialism. “It fair gives one the ’ump.” He is the great British institution known originally as the umpire, who is of the game of cricket, but not in it. In these days of- democracy the umpire holds an anomalous position, in that he is Czar and dictator whom no man may dispute. Fur. ther, he is both dictator and nonentity. In the days of old, when knights were bowled and barons used to play, the umpire, in full armour and lord of all he surveyed, was quite in the picture as an autocrat, With the decline of the feudal system and the rise of cricket as a merry rustic sport, the umpire was retained chiefly as comic relief. The history of cricket in its emergence from the stage of a village green sport, and development first into a national game, and finally into an Imperial game, is crowded with stories of the umpire as jester, martyr, and dictator

To-day the umpire, wearing the white coat of a blameless judgment, holds in the hollow of his band the fate of a nation’s fame. At a nod he may tumble famous batsmen from their high estate, and with a swing of the arm no-ball invincible bowlers into ineffectiveness, and turn the scale of Test matches. The white-coated policeman of the cricket field, the umpire stands for the law; be draws the line between liberty and license; he decides a doubtful delivery, a doubtful catch, a doubtful hit, a doubtful dismissal; he has to watch' questionable tactics without allowing personal distaste for them to bring a prejudiced decision until they reach the domain of actual unfairness. TO FAME UNKNOWN.

However great an umpire may be, it is rarely his destiny to be famous in the measure, that actual players of the game are of world-wide repute. For instance, there are few of the general public here who wiil ‘not instantly recognise such names as Hobbs, Sutcliffe, Tate, W. G. Grace, Ranjitsinbji, and Fry as being those of great English, cricketers, but how many of the public can call to mind the name of a great English umpire ? Local repute for a brief year or two lias been the portion of a few notably just and hardy spirits who have umpired in various parts of tho Empire, but probably the only umpires who have attained to anything like international repute have been two Australians, in Bob Crockett and Major Phillipps. It is really a superhuman task which is allotted to the umpire, who has to stand in the field throughout the whole playing time, and to watch closely and critically every ball that is howled, every hit that is made, every attempt at a catch, and every return from the fieldsmen. He is of the game, but not in it—except when he gives an unpopular decision, and then he is “in” the game in the most undesirable fashion. For some reason lie is not counted by the public until then Tho public do not know him by name; they don’t want to know him until the incident happens, and then they can find names enough for him without reference to any baptismal certificate. With the public he is either a nonentity, when things are going as they judge right, or. when his decision is displeasing, he is anathema undeserving of any decent name. BLUFFING THE “UMP.” Not only is the umpire placed in this anomalous position by the public, but he has to meet covert hostility from the players. Captains of sanguine and forceful personality, even such as Grace and MacLaren, have been known to bring the pressure of their personalities on the umpire at tense moments. The responsibility and power given to the umpire b.v the M.C.C. law, “the referee’s decision is final,” did not end arguments. Tricky wicketkeepers and bowlers almost welcomed this dictum, for there were some who had made a practice of waiting for an unexpected turn which just failed to get the batsman napping, and thundering an appeal in an effort to “jump” or bluff the umpire into an unthinking snap decision that he could not reverse. Sometimes a team was trained into making such appeals into a chorus, for greater effect. As a matter of fact these tactics succeeded so often that the law was altered, empowering an umpire to change his decision immediately, if he found that he had been led into a wrong snap de-

cision. “Bluffing the ump” has consequently just about gone from the game. THE GREATEST AMATEUR. The fact remains that the game could not go on satisfactorily without the umpire. He is a necessity. He must be keen, alert, firm, honest, possessed of a full practical knowledge of tlie game arid a special theoretical knowledge. The player has all the thrill of the actual contest and the exercise of personal prowess, with moments of rare triumph; the spectator sees all the beauties of a game he loves, and can combine his thrills with incidental arguments and discussions. Brit the umpire undertakes the fatigue of standing all day in isolation, knowing, that it is liis part to be at best just a nonentity, with always a chance that he may be turned into an object of public derision. Sure. ]y he is the greatest amateur of them all, the bulwark of British fair play.

As was mentioned above, one can think at the moment of only two umpires who are famous in Australasia, yet such is the lack of appreciation of the work of the- umpire that their names will not appear in that monument of cricketers, “Wisden’s,” until they are dead. \