HAWKE CUP

Manawatu Times, Volume LIV, Issue 6867, 23 March 1929, Page 8

HAWKE CUP

LETTER FROM N.Z. COUNCIL TO MANAWATU. In connection with the recent dispute which has arisen over Hawke’s Bay’s right to challenge for the Hawke Cup, the following letter which has been received by tho Manawatu Cricket Council from the New Zealand Council is of interest: “I have not seen Mr. Winsor, our secretary, since speaking to Mr. Ongley on the telephone the other evening. I am very glad, indeed, that your inability to meet Hawke’s Bay was due to the impossibility of getting a team together and not to your refusal to play. Knowing your officers as I do, 1 felt certain that Hawke’s Bay must have misunderstood some of the hurried communications between you and obtained a wrong impression of your views on the matter. However, when Hawke’s Bay telegraphed us that you had refused to play, I was very anxious indeed to clear the matter up, because I am sure you will recognise that, if you had so refused, our position would have been a difficult one indeed. I have not seen your file of correspondence (such was being forwarded to Christchurch after Monday night’s meeting of the Palmerston North Association) but will write you again after we have had a meeting, and after we have heard from Hawke’s Bay. “I also recognise that your association has met its engagements up to the present in a thoroughly satisfactory way and has helped the council in a very difficult task of making the Hawke Cup fixtures. I can quite understand, also, that your association feels dissatisfied at being asked to play Hawke’s Bay again. However, if there had been sufficient time to assemble your team I am quite certain that you would have met the council on this occasion as you have in the past and played the match, even though you may havo considered that Hawke’s Bay was not entitled to a second match.

“As your officers know,, tho arranging of the Hawke Cup fixtures is one of our most difficult “problems. We are constantly confronted with associations forfeiting engagements at short notice, just as Waiapu did the other day. We can only do the best we can. We havo never claimed that we are able to run the Hawke Cup competition satisfactorily because, owing to the number of the associations and the circumstances surrounding the wholo competition, we cannot make a fixture list which meets every case. You will remember that the minor associations themselves, at their own meeting when the conference was held, were unable to agree as to the best method of running the competition and left the matter in the hands of the management committee to do the best we could.”