A CRICKET MEDLEY.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXVI, Issue 20152, 12 January 1929, Page 1 (Supplement)

A CRICKET MEDLEY.

BY KOTABE.

SOME MEMORIES.

My claims to distinction on the cricket field are not unlike Barrie's. He has summed up his sole appearance in a university match in the following pregnant sentence: "In the first innings I made one run; in the second innings I was not so fortunate." My great cricket achievement was even more interesting. I played in a famous game when our side, alas, was dismissed for the impressive total cf 22. There is nothing record-breaking about that; even Australian and English teams have approached as nearly to zero. But our highest scorer made 22, and the other ten made no runs between them. I should have said " between us;" for, such was the unkindness of fate, my own contribution was a " duck." Man is a queer animal. My chief cricket prize to-day is in that duck. My only title to cricket fame rests upon it. Had I scored one, I should have spoiled a record that is possibly unique. Shame would mantle my cheek to think that I had ruined a perfect thing. So I boast of my share in those ten ducks as others glory in their centuries. , Besides, the law of relativity holds in cricket as in other things. It is not always a worthy achievement to score a century. A match has often been lost by the perseverance of the century-maker. In the last Test match of the 1921 series England lost her chance of winning, her last chance iu the bad year when Armstrong and his men galloped through from victory to victory, becauso Mead scored 182 runs, the record for an English Test match, and took five hours about it. The runs scored were not worth the time spent. And English critics were very sore about it. If they can condemn one man's century, then let them praise my most admirable duck. It upset no one's plans and played its part in producing a memorable and symmetrical whole. Surprises.

The chief charm about cricket is that anything may happen. A. A. Milne tells how Tomkins raised his average —his batting average, be it understood —to 2.

Every position has its special charm You go in first and find as a reward

The wicket at its best; you go in later And find tho fielders slack, the bowline loose. Tomkins, who went in iust above the b.ves. Found one of them had slipped into his

score. 'Tis wise to take the good the gods nrovide

you— And Tomkins has an average of two.

It is usually the other way—we are sure that someone else has been credited with our best stroke; or we find our neat snick to the boundary has been included among the byes. Milne blithely celebrates another wellknown curiosity of cricket. Perhaps it better illustrates the cussedness of human nature; but you can expect that in cricket as in anything else. He addresses an old bat.

Do you rnemember. too. the game One August somewhere down in Dorset When, being told to force the same We straightway started in to force it For half-an-hour or so we saw it through And scratched a priceless two;

Or how the prayer to play for keeps Aud hang the runs, we didn't need 'cm. So stirred us. we collected heaps With rather more than usual freedom: Fifteen in fourteen minutes—till a catch Abruptly closed the match? Reminiscence. Pleasant memories; twin brothers of many you and I could tell when the glamour of old games is on us. For cricket moro than any other game lends itself to reminiscence, often to the grievous discomfort of the unfortunate audience, when the ancient cricketer fixes them with his glittering eye and • has strange power of speech. Football lives for the instant. It is impossible to recapture the first fine careless rapture. Its emotions are vehement, but their very vehemence makes them transient. They grow feebler and feebler in retrospect. But cricket emotions, like violins or old port, mellow with age. They stand any amount of handling and take ever new and more delightful shapes as their occasion recedes into the mist of the years. Who reads the reminiscences of old footballers? Yes I find myself turning again and again to the unliterary pages of George Giffen's " With Bat and Ball." I often hunt up Giffen's account of the most famous of Australian Test matches, the most remarkable match ever played, Giffeu hazards. It was the memory of that game that made Chapman bat again in the first Test, when an innings victory seemed easily within his grasp. Australia made 586, and England was out for 325. She followed on and in a great fighting innings made 437. Australia was left with fourth use of the wicket and only 177 to win. And her total was still ten runs short when the last wicket fell. A glorious fight that will be fought over afid over again while cricket endures. The memory of that influenced the last contest between Auckland and Wellington, when Wellington elected to bat again, with a lead of some four or five hundred runs. I saw that match and thrilled with pride over Auckland's magnificent fight. Dacre and Bowley were the heroes of tho last day. So manfully did they set about their tremendous task that it seemed they might accomplish the impossible. Dacre knocked up 150 in a couple of hours or so and looked like winning the match off his own bat. CI. L. Weir held his end up for a great part of Dacre's innings, resisted all the wiles of the Wellington attack, ran to give Dacre the bowling, and effaced himself for the glory of his side. It was great cricket. Interest. And it was fast and brilliant cricket, too, the sort that would draw the crowds to Eden Park in summer as they flock there in winter if we could have more of it. As things are, the tendency to safe play, sound as it is in theory, is not going to popularise the game with the public. The most interesting game I have seen this year was played by girl students. In three hours they knocked up over 300 runs, all run out, on the central ground of the Domain. In Scotland, where cricket is far from the English standard, they still have the carefree style of other days. In their best matches they score anything from 100 to 150 runs an hour on the average. I suppose that English club cricket still keeps to the old free-scoring traditions. But seriousness has descended like a cloak of gloom on the game in its higher developments. The perfection of the wickets has given the batsman a tremendous advantage; and it is now a miracle that the great batsmen are ever out at all. I have been looking over some old New Zealand cricket records, and I find that where the bowlers were not supreme, the batsmen knocked off their runs at a prodigious rate. In the Ota go-Canterbury match of 1896 Canterbury scored 27 and 49, Otago 59 and 47, and Downes, the Otago bowler, took 12 wickets for 30 runs. In the same season, in a two-day match—two days were usually enough for a representative match—Wellington made 401 for eight wickets and Canterbury replied with 348 for six wickets. It will be a 'bad day for New Zealand cricket if we ever reach the Australian standard of play and surrender the fun of the game in becoming efficient.