THE PLUNKET SHIELD.

Otago Daily Times, Issue 21530, 30 December 1931, Page 6

THE PLUNKET SHIELD.

It was remarked by our Christchurch contemporary, the Press, yesterday morning that, after the wonderful day’s cricket in the match between Canterbury and Otago on Monday the issue seemed relatively unimportant. Cricketers may not be disposed to accept that view, but they will very readily agree that the dramatic developments that -occurred in the match have increased appreciably the interest in the competition this season for the Plunket Shield. In all probability, the selectors of the Otago team, had very little expectation of its success in either of its matches away from home. The team includes only one member —a brilliant member, undoubtedly—of the New Zealand team that visited England this year, and is composed for the most part of young players who have yet to establish a reputation that extends beyond their own provincial district. In its first match it had to meet the Canterbury team, the holder of the Plunket Shield and believed to be stronger at all points this year than it was last season. The opening stages of the match suggested not unexpectedly the likelihood of a decisive victory for Canterbury. Otago was left in a deficit of 311 runs on the first innings. A determined struggle to avoid defeat by an innings seemed to be the best that could be hoped for from it. The foundation of a reasonable second innings score was laid, however, by the first pair of batsmen, and a partnership which yielded 127 runs for the second wicket afforded the promise of a total that might necessitate Canterbury batting a second time. It cannot, however, have been imagined by anyone that Canterbury would be set the task of making 279 runs in order to win. It was not until the fifth Otago wicket had fallen that the innings defeat was, averted’, but a surprising stand which produced 184 runs for the last wicket—a Plunket Shield record for a tenth wicket partnership—brought the total for the innings up to 589 runs. For this performance the credit is mainly due to R. C. Blunt, who played an unfinished innings for 338—the highest score that he has made in his career, and the highest individual score that has been recorded in a Plunket Shield match. The innings was probably the best that Blunt has ever played—it was certainly the best that he has played in New Zealand,——and if there have been better innings of his they have been played in England, where his batting was, both in 1926 and in 1931, much admired. When Blunt went to the wickets on Monday he joined F. T. Badcdek who was batting with delightful freedom and whose score of. 105 must have taken some of the sting out of the bowling. These two shared in very large part the honours of .a meritorious innings. They claimed between them, indeed, four out of every five runs that came from the bat. When the extent to which the Canterbury bowling was mastered by them is taken into account, the batting of the remaining members of the Otago team, with the exception of Hawkesworth, was disappointing. To Hawkesworth, the last man to bat, it was left to keep his wicket intact while Blunt made 146 runs, and most successfully he played his part. The value of his defensive innings can hardly be over-estimated. A team which, in order to win, has to make a score of 279 in the fourth innings of a match on a wicket that must have shown signs of wear, faces no light task, but the Canterbury side includes several batsmen of—according to New Zealand standards—the first rank, and by capturing seven wickets before the winning hit was made Otago emerged with credit from a contest in which after two days’ play it seemed to be almost hopelessly beaten.