CRICKET

Northern Advocate, 16 March 1929, Page 12

CRICKET

NEWS AND NOTES

W. A. Oldfield, Australia’s wicketkeeper, is to be married a week after

the fifth test match ends. His bride-to-be is Miss Luth Hunter,

It was the last day of the Adelaide test match. “How many witnesses have you got?” asked Judge Moule, of a barrister, in the Melbourne County Court. “Eight wickets for 336,” replied the barrister, absent-mindedly. Judge Moule, an old international cricketer, smiled..

America, intensely preoccupied with baseball, knows very little of cricket, and an American periodical has made an effort to tell its readers what the game is like. “The procedure of scoring,” says the article, “does not greatly differ from that used in ‘two-old-cat,’ but cricket is unique among all games for profound, untechnieal and subtle reasons. Its rhythm, the pace at which climaxes are reached, and which they disappear, is slower than anything; except the growth arid decay of empires;.”

Roger Rlunt*s 221 against Canterbury was 1 his fourth three-figure score in five , r it is also the effoft-%;aH' Otago batsmen in Plunket Shield matches, and within 35 of the best of any player in that competition. During this latest big innings Blunt also passed the 2000 mark, the only other player to have achieved this distinction being' J. S. Hiddlestoh, of Otago and Wellington. Blunt heads the list of Otago batsmen in Plunket Shield matches this season, his average being 67.33. On the other hand, he can, as- a bowler, claim but one wicket, which has cost him something like 175 runs.

An unusual happening in cricket has been the request to the selectors of L. O’Connor, the Queensland ’keeper, to be relieved of his' job of Aunt Sally (says the Bulletin). O’Connor intends carrying on with the game, but wants to figure in the outfield. His reason is that he will have a better chance of test selection ,if he can satisfy the selectors that he is a useful man away from the sticks as well as behind them. There is little doubt that O’Connor’s ability as ah opening babsmari would have secured him serious consideration for the third and fourth tests but for the fact that there was no room for him as a ’keeper. A few years ago, when J. Farquhar was the noithern custodian, O’Connor played in the outfield on rdore than one occasion.

' Jackson and Bradman are not the youngest cricketers to play in a test. The youngest of them all, as he later became one of the greatest, was Tom Garrett, of New South Wales, who was eighteen and a ' half when he played in the first of all the tests against Lilywhite’s side of 1877. The youthful bowler collected a couple of wickets for 22 in the first. English innings, one of them being Hari’y Jupp, then one of the best of English batsmen. With the bat, the veteran, who is still alive and flourishing in Sydney, made 19 not out and 0.

It was Otagote misfortune to strike bad weather in all three of its Plunket Shield games. Rain robbed the province of a good chance of a win against Wellington and of a win against Canterbury, though it would no doubt have been beaten by Auckland. -

Rupert de R. ■ Worker, the wellknown Hawke’s Bay batsman, has been awarded an autograph bat sent from England by Len McKenzie, for the most useful player in the Wellington team during this season’s Plunket Shield matches (states an exchange). Worker was able to play only in the Auckland match, as during the previous holidays he had' joined the happy band of benedicts, and was not'available for selection. He, however, put up a very fine performance in the only match . he played in, scoring 151 and 73, two excellent hits which had a very material part in giving Wellington the victory.

-* « . * ■.« Ho'bbs and, Sutcliffe have now been associated in nine first-wicket century partnerships against Australia. Hobbs , has taken part altogether in 14 such partnerships, four of the other five being with W. Rhodes and one with C. B. Fry. These records are unapproached in test cricket.

R. H. Bettington, the New South Wales cricketer, who was spoken 1 of some time ago as haying a good chance of being included in an Australian test side against the Englishmen, arrived in Auckland recently. He is to marry Miss Marion Lowry, of Hawke’s Bay, early ,in April. Miss Lowry is a sister of T. C. Lowry, the Wellington and New Zealand cricket captain.

* * If ■ <1 They didn’t wait until a bowler was grey-headed before they gave him a trial in test cricket in the old days. Jack Ferris, immortal lefthanded partner of G. T. B. Turner; was under twenty when he was stacked up against England in Sydney against Shrewbury’s team . in 1887, one of the most powerful batting sides Australia ever saw. The youngster took nine wickets for 103 in the match.