COURAGE OF YOUTH.

Poverty Bay Herald, Volume LII, Issue 17088, 17 July 1926, Page 3

COURAGE OF YOUTH.

CHAPM W'S BOYISH 7A->V. Writ in:; in the Daily Mail on the men available for England's Pest team, 11. .1. Henley paid a tribiife to Hie courage and youthful zest with whick A. P. P. Chapman enters into the game. The player's participation in the just-eoneluded Test makes the common! highly interesting at the moment.

Most people are agreed thai sonu live or six players are "certainties' for England's Test mulch tenia, (wrote Mr. Henlev >.

Those same people disagree upon ihe question of who should fill the remaining places. Among the "possibles"—even the "probables" —is a tall, long-limbed. pink-checked, curly-haired, blue-eyed, left-handed youth who has scored his hundred against ihe Players at Lord's, and who two seasons ago gathered sixty rims in twenty-live minutes against the might of Yorkshire's bowling. 1 mean, of course. A. I'. P. Chapman. He hug now reached the age of -5, but one still regards him as :i boy. He smile- like a boy, lie walks like a boy. and he puts a boyish zest into everything —especially when he, bats.

There ore tho.se w?io say. with solemn faces, that he "nibbles" at the fast ball outside the off-stump. Possibly lie would 'be condemned for this crime if a jury of those solemn-faced ones wcrv allowed to sit in judgment upon his Test tnatch chances. But there are worst sins than that of flicking at a fast off-ball. It is better to flick ai such a bail than to run away towards square-leg, as some of our Test-match players did in 1021, when they apparently considered .1. M. Gregory and R. A. McDonald to be entirely composed of lire and bfimstonfe. Chapman may not have the finest defence in the world, but he can hit a half-volley. They say—those severe critics—that lie lacks judgment. But it is surely no more a sign of a lack of judgment to gample on scoring a four than to gamble on slopping a ball by means of a panic-stricken back shot?. When Chapman is "really going" he is a joy to see. Ho, has uoi Woolley's grace of movement, nor the sheer power of P. G. J. Ford —two other left-handers of fame whom in some ways he resembles —but. he litis as good an eye, and as long and as quick a swing with his bat,, and as line a pair of wrists. Seeing him hit. one thinks instinctively id' those lines which Harold Begb'ie wrote 'of a mythical batsman—-" The brain is king of the muscles' swing, and lord of the eager limbs.'' But if Chapman did not score a run he would be no "passenger" in any side. He saves more runs than he makes. He can adorrl any position iii the field. He is as brilliant at coverpoint as he is at. slip, and as brilliant at slip as he is in the "deep." Even better than his .speed and his throwing and his adhesive hands is his power to divine the flight of .the ball as it leaves the bat. So niuch bv way of eulogy. Bui it is a pitv that lie flicks at that fast off-ball!