DOMINION CRICKETERS.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXIV, Issue 19777, 26 October 1927, Page 8

DOMINION CRICKETERS.

tWALES AND SCARBOROUGH. PROWESS OF THE BATSMEN. STILL ON "THEIR TOP NOTE." PLAYING AGAINST BARNES. B V COLONEL PHILIF TBETOB. LONDON, Sept. 18. In spite of their batting failure in their first innings the New Zealand cricketers would have beaten Wales had time permitted. and' in all probability with some ease. This particular match they will remember for one particular reason. It gave them the opportunity of meeting and playing against Sidney Barnes. It would indeed have been a pity if they had left the British Isles without getting on a cricket field first-hand knowledge of the greatest bowler of the present century. Barnes, on this occasion, took four wickets at a cost of 47 runs. That in itself was not a very remarkable performance, but it was sufficiently good to draw attention to the man who was responsible for it. Now there are enthusiastic folk in Wales who wili have it that Barnes—now well over 50 years of age —is as good a bowler to-day as ever he was. Be that as it may, this much can with truth be said. Barnes bowls well enough to-day to make any intelligent batsman who plays against him understand how finely he used to bowl. I have called Barnes the greatest bowler of the century. It may be that history will rank him even higher than that. His claim to greatness lies in the fact that though he introduced no new ingredient into the bowler's pie he so mixed the various existing ingredients that the concoction when he had finished it surpassed in value—though not in apeparance—all other pies. Barnes had every one of the bowler's arts, not merely at his disposal, but actually at his command. Therein lay the secret of his success. Flight, diiection, length, change of pace without change of action, spin (off and leg) and, up to a point, swerve. He could and did make the ball do very- much what he wanted .it to do on the best of wickets. Story o! an Australian Tour., ' Exactly 20 years ago 1 went out to Australia as manager of the M.C.C. team which, under the captaincy of the late A. O. Jones, toured that country in the winter of 1907-1908. Barnes, who wa£ a member of that team, was not even then in his first youth, nor was that trip the first he had made to Australia as a member of a cricket team. Besides A. 0. Jones, we had two other brilliant slip fieldsmen in that side—Kenneth Hutchings and Braund. The best of the Australian judges have long since endorsed my opinion that in Jones, Hatchings and Braund England had the strongest combination in the slips that has ever been seen. We were not over strong in batting in that team, and we knew that much, if not everything, would depend upon how Barnes and Fielden were supported in the slips. Our captain decided to get to work at once and on the voyage he ordered slip practice at 11 o'clock every morning. A part of the deck was netted off and this compulsory deck practice affected only six persons—the three slip fieldsmen, Barnes and Fielden, and Ernie Hayes, who was selected to hold the bat and astutely to use its edge in order to give catches in the slips. It should have affected our wicket keeper, Joe Humphries, too. but unfortunately the wicket-keeping gloves had been stowed away in the hold and for the first two or three days we could not get at them. Well, 1 was not going to ajlow Joe to run the risk of hurting his hands before our arrival in Australia, so I undertook to do what I could behind the stumps until wicket-keeping gloves were available. Barnes and the Spinning Ball. I had never seen Barnes bowl before, and the incident of the missing wicketkeeping gloves was the means of providing me with som« priceless inside information Of course, Fielden, though he did not then "stretch himself," bowled much faster than Barnes—and now comes the point of the story. Naturally, 1 had a good many balls to take. To my amazement, FteSden never hurt my hands and Barnes did practically every tune I had to take a ball bowled by him. I realised then what his spin was—for, of course, it is the spinning bail which hurts a fieldsman's hands. After the first practice "Jonah" (A. O. Jones) said to me: "Well, what d'you think of him?" I told him of the handhurting, and 1 said: "If he can make the ball spin off the smooth polished surface of a ship's deck, what's he going to do with it on the turf?" - "Jonah" agreed that the deck evidence was conclusive. So accurately had Ernie Hayes, sacrificing himself in the good cause, learnt to play with the edge of the bat that not for weeks after we landed could he hit the ball with the middle. Scarborough Crowd Delighted. The match against the Cygnets was a holiday affair and when it was over—or rather, left drawn—the tourists went to Scarborough to wind up the festival there with a match against H. D. G. Leveson Gower's. eleven. That match is not yet over, but the New Zealanders are already more than safe from defeat In batting they are ending as they ' began—ou their top note. To the delight of the Soarborough crowd, which has always been an essentially cricket-loving crowd—and a • discriminating one at that —they knocked the bowling all over the place and scored at a fine pace. Those inveterate century-getters, Blunt and Mills, were at it again, and it was fine value that the public got for their money. I am pleased that in September 1 have not to stand in a white sheet and cry "Peccavi." Aftei the first match of tho tour at Maidenhead I said: "These fellows will knock our best bowling aLi over the place, and will go on doing that." Even weathor, of which they had no experience, has not daunted them. For the rest, I can leave batting statistics to speak for themselves.