CRICKET

New Zealand Times, Volume LXXVII, Issue 5312, 25 June 1904, Page 15

CRICKET

Mr Home Gordon has an article in the “Badminton Magazine’’ for May on the evolution of slip. ‘‘The man who revolutionised slip was,” ho says, “George Lohmann. The catch with which he dismissed Mr A. C. Bannerman in the tost match at the oval was in his own opinion the best ho ever made,- and one of the Australians said tliafc his victim talked of nothing else for the rest of the day. At cover-slip he was- ‘incarnate quicksilver,’ and ho seemed to have an intuition of what the batsman would do. So much was this the case that I remember an eminent amateur telling me he hated playing against Surrey, because the knowledge that Lohmann was in the slips worried him to such an extent as to baulk his play. “On one man has the mantle of Lehmann fallen. I of course refer to Braund. Perhaps ono of the most portentous catches ever made at the oval was brought off by Braund when on the fringe of the Surrey eleven, from which ho was eventually excluded because of the supposed superiority of Henderson and Baldwin. A fast howler—l think Lockwood—was at the pavilion end. and reaching very far forward, the batsman deliberately hit him round late to leg. The ball shot up a bit, and Braund, who was fielding short-slip, actually caught it. How ho divined the batsman’s unexpected intention and had time to start I do not know, but the catch—a sharp one-—was brought off about ten yards to the left of the wicket-keeper, Wood, and a good deal behind him. “The Australians,"' adds Mr Gordon, “have naturally not been less able in this part of the field than elsewhere, but until Mr Hugh Trumhle possibly no one specialised at the place. ThSre has long been a tradition that one colonial fieldsman learnt how to catch by snatching a passing wildfowl on the hank of his native river.

“In tiio opinion of many people, Mr R. E. Foster is the finest short-slip of

the hour. He has learn the trick of starting puickly, and his hands, it photographed, would show that they contract over the ball almost before it is really in his grasp."