CRICKET.

Hawera Star, Volume XLVI, 6 May 1926, Page 3

CRICKET.

ESSEX 'I KAM 'lO M EiEIT vAITSTRALI.A.XS. LONDON, .May 5. Til© Essex team. lor to-day .s match i.s p'enrin, Freeman, O’Oohnor, .Rmsel, Claud Ashton, NicholJs, Hipdcin, Eastman , Palmer, Cdt-nune and another to be chosen. O.ving .to the 1 rain there was no play belt re lunch. Morris, who originally completed t.lie Essex team, was co mm an dee-red by the War Office

NOTE'S ON THE ESSEX TEAM. Essex liave been a famous team and included many famous cricketers in the years agone. Last year they were seventli in t.lie championship. They lia<l the bad lack to play no less than twelve drawn games, in live of which they led oil the first innings. One piece of bad luck was the fact that their capable skipper, J. W. H. 'l'. Douglas, 'suffered a lapse from both his previous batting and bowling, but, says Wisden, “lie captained flic team as zealously as ever and set an example of unflagging perseverance, no matter what the state of the game.’’ A. G. Russell, hero of many a great match in England and in/ Australia, easily headed the batting averages with 48.5 for 43 innings and an aggregate of nearly 2000 runs. P. Perrin, one of the All England selectors, played 2!1 innings at 37.24 runs each. He is now 41). and has played no less than 60 innings of over a hundred. Douglas had an average of 27.40, and Cut mo re, a junior, of 25. A. G 4. Russell secured seven centuries in t.lie season. In'the howling. Linden, Eastman, llipkin, Nicliolls, and Douglas, with 51, 54, 78. 51, and 61 wickets respectively, were the leading bowlers. They are also a good fielding side and all triers.

THE LEICESTER MATCH. There were several promising young players on the Leicester team which played the Australians this week. Berry, a youngster of twenty, had his first season in 1925. and scored over 1000 runs. Major Fowlce, the skipper, is a horn leader, cheerful and tireless; A still and Geary were last year called the foremost cricketers of the season for the county, the former scoring over

1000 runs and getting over 100 wickets for the fifth oonsesutive time, and the latter, although handicapped by a strained arm incurred in South Africa, look 90 wickets at 16:8 apiece. These two, with Bale and Skelding, are the stock county bowlers. The county has been famed more for attack than batting, and Skelding is noted by Wisden as a bowler “with few superiors 'in the country to open attack on firm turf.” The county bowling was responsible for Yorkshire and Surrey being almost beaten during the season of 1926.