Brilliance of Hammond

Manawatu Times, Volume LIV, Issue 6815, 19 January 1929, Page 4

Brilliance of Hammond

GLOUCESTERSHIRES PRIZE

A Great All-Round Cricketer

ONE OF THE most brilliant all-round cricketers that England has produced for meny years is W. R. Hammond, who has just scored 251 runs for England against Australia, at Sydney—the secondhighest individual score in all the long series of Test matches between the two countries. Still young, Hammond has not yet developed consistency of performance, but when he is good he is very, very good. He has crowded a great deal of incident into what is yet a comparatively short career in first-class cricket.

Walter Reginald Hammond started ftfs career in first-class cricket as an amateur, and then became a professional. Although he is only in his 26th year he has played cricket in five different areas of the ■world. He was born at Dover (which is in Kent), but while he was still a child he was taken to China. At the age of eight or nine he was playing cricket in Malta. . Returning to England in 1914. he went to Cirencester Grammar School, in Gloucestershire, and remained there until 1920. Just after he left school, at the age of 17, Hammond played for Gloucestershire, bnt he had only four innings for the

•county that season, and in them he totalled only 27 runs, with a highest score of 18. Still, he showed such promise that he was asked to play for Kent under the birth qualification. When hs declined IBflt invitation his qualification. for Gloucestershire was questioned, al-_ though he had been at school in the

county for six . , years! Hammond then dropped out of first-class cricket for two years, in which time he made his residential qualification for Gloucestershire watertight. _ Modest Reappearance, In his four innings for Gloucestershire before he temporarily dropped out of county competition cricket Hammond had played as an amateur. To put in his two years of qualifying beyond doubt for the county he become a professional. Reappearing in firstclass cricket late in the 1922 season, he played only nine innings that year, and averaged hut 9.77, with a highest score of 32. He bowled only one over. ■ In those figures alone there was nothing to demonstrate that Gloucestershire had a Test match player of th« near future. But the county's, cricket authorities had great faith in the .young fellow, who had not. reached his 21st birthday when the 1923 season started, and they made him an opening batsman. In his very first match that year, against Surrey, Hammond scored 110 and 92. He was not matured enough to maintain such form throughout the season, but he reached 1313 runs, with *u average of 28.54. For Plovers against the Gentlemen, at the Oval, he scored 46 and 19. Hammond did' not start the following Season so well, but his general f6rm was much about the same as in 1923. He finished with 1085 runs for the county, and an average of 29.32. He played.a very fine innings for 174 not out against Middlesex, and scored 120 against Somerset. He wns brilliant but inconsistent in the 1925 season. An. innines of 250 not out against Lancashire, at Manchester, was one of the most sparkling gems of the year at Home. His only other century that season was 121 against Kent. His aggregate was 1571, for 51 innings (twice not outVand his A average was 32.06. As usual, A. 15. Dipper headed Gloucestershire’s batting averages. Since 1923 Hammond generally had gone in first or second wicket down. His howling had improved, and in 1925 he took 61 wickets' for 27.78 runs apiece, but he was,'of course, only a change bowler. His fielding .had become brilliant, and he had stamped himself as one of the best all-rounders in England. At the end of the 1925 season Hammond went to the West Indies with a team sent out by the M.C.C., and. he came second to P. Holmes in the side's batting averages, with 45.81, and third in'the bowling with 22 wickets, at 26.40 runs apiece. But in the representative matches of that tour he topped the batting averages with the splendid average of 87.00 for five innings (once not out),a score of 238 against West Indies helping him considerably. But he contracted illness in that tour, and for the whole of the English summer of 1926 he was in a nursing home. That was the season in which H, L. Collins’s Australian team was in England.

Equalling a Grace Record. 'After spending some months in South 'Africa, which enabled him to throw off the effects of his illness, Hammond returned to Gloucestershire in splendid form for the 1927 season. He opened with 135 anainst Yorkshire, scored 128

and 187 In his nest two innings (against Surrey), continued gaily throughout May, and finished the month with a sparkling innings against Hampshire. J. A. Newman, coach to the Canterbury Cricket Association, should remember that match, for he was one of the bowlers off whom Hammond scored 192 out of 247 in 148 minutes. There were fix sixes and 27 fours in the innings. That brought Hammond’s aggregate to 1028, and so equalled W. G. Grace’s record of scoring a thousand runs in the first month of the season—a record which had stood for over 30 years. In all. Hammond scored 2522 runs for Gloucestershire that season, at an average of 72.05. He scored 11 centuries for the county, and one for Players against Gentlemen. He did not have to do so much bowling that season. The English winter of 1927-28 was spent by Hammond in South Africa, as a member of the M.C.C. team, which was captained by R. T. Stnnyforth. He scored two centuries ia that tour, but had to be content with thin! place in the Test match batting averages, with 40.12, and fifth place in the general batting averages, with 48.70. Occasionally he was very successful with the ball, especially in the first Test, in which he took five for 36 in South Africa’s second innings. In first-class cricket in England in the 1928 season Hammond scored 2825 runs (highest score 244), at an average of 65.69 for each completed innings. He took 84 wickets at a cost of 23.10 runs apiece. Sensational Performances.

In Gloucestershire’s match with Surrey at Cheltenham Hammond put up a record for first-class cricket, by making 10 catches in the one game—four in Surrey’s first innings and six in the second. Hanimond usually takes from 50 to 60 catches in the slips in a season, and he is of particular assistance to C. Parker, Gloucestershire’s slow left-hand spin bowler. .. On the day after that match with Surrey was finished Hamomnd gave another remarkable display of his allround qualities. On a wicket affected by heavy dew he dismissed Worcestershire, practically by. himself, in an hour, 'Worcestershire scoring only 37runs. . Getting a decided swerve, and making the ball gather pace from the pitch, he took'nine wickets for 23 runs. Then he caught the tenth man off Parker’s bowling. He followed that up by scoring 80 runs. Truly a great day’s work! Hammond’s big score in Sydney '• the third three-figure innings that tl '■ Gloucestershire man has played in thn tour. He scored 145 against South Aus tralia, and 225 against New South Wale. He was run out in the New South Wales match. A Self-Taught Cricketer.

Hammond is a self-taught cricketer. There was no systematic coaching at Cirencester Grammar School, but the head master gave him what cricket advice he could. Incidentally it may be remarked that while he was at school Hammond hit up a score of 365. in a boarders’ match. Even when he joined up with the Gloucestershire Cricket Club he could not obtain regular coaching, for the county did not have a “nursery” until 1927, but he got many valuable hints from Geonge Dennett, the old Gloucestershire slow howler. “Wisden’s,” that great repository of cricket lore to which every writer on the game is indebted, thus describes Hammond in it 9 1928 edition: “Beautifully built and loose-limbed, with strong and pliant wrists, Hammond is essentially a stylist in method, and, ■ moreover, a firm believer in making the bat hit the ball. For the most part he is a forward player, and even in making a defensive stroke in thiio fe® comes down harder on the ball than does the average man. He employs all the modern means of scoring, and can cut and can turn the ball to leg with equal skill, but, above everything else, his driving is superb. With a new ball he can be most deceptive with his medium-paced ’ bowling, obtaining swerve in flight, and imparting spin to get life off the pitch. A beautiful fielder, he is particularly brilliant in the slips or anywhere on the off-side." Hammond is to become an amateur again. As soon as the M.C.C. team returns to’"'England he will marry the daughter of-a Bradford woollen manufacturer and enter his father-in-law’s business.