CRICKET

Southland Times, Issue 21820, 24 September 1932, Page 14

CRICKET

(By

“Onlooker.”)

NOTES AND NEWS.

Reported pre-seasonal “re-shuffles” among the clubs include the transfer of T. Riddell and J. Milne from Marist to Appleby. Provided Old Boys are lifted to senior rank this season, Jack Scandrett and Alex. Pickard, two useful members of the High School team last year, intend throwing in their lot with Old Boys. W. E. Merritt, who has completed a season in English county cricket, is expected to return to Christchurch en October 15. He will get into harness immediately he returns. Jack Fraser, a member of St. Albans (Christchurch) first eleven last season, is now in Invercargill and will probably link up with the Invercargill Club.

Marist will be badly hit with the loss of T. Riddell and J. Milne, their opening batsmen last season. In addition the Greens will be poorer by the death of Dick Ryan, one of their stock bowlers. Dick was very popular among local cricketers and the sympathy of all goes out to his relatives and the club.

lan Hamilton, Canterbury, South Canterbury and New Zealand representative, is being transferred from Timaru to Ashburton.

A. W. Carr, captain of the Notts cricket eleven, and former captain of England, has offered to take a team of Notts and Yorkshire players to South Africa, for an unofficial tour, at the end of the year. It is reported that T. C. Lowry, Wellington and New Zealand representative cricket captain, does not intend playing this season. For one reason, he is about to be married. Another is the fact that station life does not provide the opportunities for the practice that is necessary for a man like Tom Lowry to keep in form. It looks as if cricket in England is developing still further a fine batsman for Australia in Test cricket of the future. B. W. Hone, who finished in sixth place in the first-class batting averages in England, with 53.83, has thus obtained a better average than he had in his last two seasons in Australia. When he returns to the South Australian team this Rhodes Scholar should be a very accomplished batsman. Arthur Mailey’s team of Australian cricketers played 48 matches in America. In only three they lost their full ten wickets in an innings. They played fifteens as a rule, and over 200 runs were made against them only three times. They scored 35 centuries—Bradman 18, McCabe 8, Kippax 3, and two each by Richardson, Nutt, and Tolhurst. Bradman made close on 4000 runs, with an average of three figures. “W. E. Merritt practically beat Nelson by himself,” says a North of England cricket critic, in referring to the New Zealander’s fine performance for the. Rishton Club against Nelson, leader in the Lancashire Cricket League’s competition, at Rishton a few weeks ago. Rishton batted first and scored 143, of which 15 came from extras. Of the 128 runs off the bat, Merritt, who went in first wicket down, scored 85 in as many minutes, before he was stumped. Then Merritt took five wickets for 19 runs. P. Nixon, an amateur spin bowler, took the other five for 30 runs, and Nelson was out for 49, there being no extras in this innings. L. N. Constantine was Nelson’s best scorer, with 14 runs, but the famous West Indian had not taken a wicket in Rishton’s innings. So Nelson suffered its first defeat of the season, and its lead for the league championship was reduced to one point. After it had seemed, for a while, as if Herb. McGirr would have to yield his place in Wellington’s representative cricket team to a younger player, the “old war-horse” established himself again in the side by taking four wickets for 50 runs and four for 61 against Auckland, last season, and then taking three for 34 and one for 45, and scoring 54 runs, against Canterbury, says a Christchurch writer. So cricketers in NeW' Zealand generally are regretful that, on medical advice, McGirr has to give up the game. McGirr was an excellent all-rounder, with his medium-paced right-hand bowling and his sound and sometimes forceful batting, which brought him several centuries and other big scores in club and representative matches. He was a very useful member of the New Zealand team in England in 1927, when, in first-class matches, he took 49 wickets at 27.67 runs each and scored 737 runs at an average of 24.56. In all matches in that tour he took 69 wickets at 23.98 runs each, and scored 809 runs at an average of 21.86. McGirr will be 41 years of age on November 5.. William Eric Bowes, the M.C.C. and Yorkshire fast bowler who has been added to D. R. Jardine’s team for Australia and New Zealand, wears spectacles when he is playing, and he has given “spectacles” to not a few batsmen. He is tall and rather loosely built. He is not as fast as H. Larwood, but, with a high action, he makes the ball "lift” a good deal, and he gets pace off a hard wicket. He swerves the ball, either way, when it- is new. Bowes played in the Yorkshire equivalent of league cricket after he left West Leeds High School, and in 1928 he was engaged by the M.C.C. for the ground staff at Lord’s. He was 20 years of age then. He bowled so well in matches for the M.C.C. that he was given a nineyear agreement with the club. Subsequently the club has allowed him to

play for Yorkshire when circumstances permitted, and he has been Very useful in the county in the past two seasons. Yorkshire people have often regretted that it was not the county club that first recognized Bowes’s merit as a bowler. “WILD MAN OF WICKET” PET NAME FOR BRADMAN. AMERICANS GET GAY. Arthur Mailey’s cricketers in Canada and the United States have had a great trip, a “wonderful time and good gates,” according to a letter from the organiser of the tour, dated Chicago, July 25 (says the Sydney “Sun”). From newspaper clippings sent with the letter it is evident the sporting writers in America did their best to ridicule cricket, but that did not worry the Australians. A barrage of amusing questions has been fired at the cricketers by hall porters, maids, politicians, train porters, taxi-drivers—-“D’yer play cricket on horseback?” “Whadder yer use the paddles for?” “Say, what’s the guy doing with the nightdress on?” (meaning umpire). Time luncheon adjournment: “Who won that session?” Some of the newspaper comments are amusing, all the same, while others show an utter lack of knowledge of the game. Thus John Kiernan, in the New York Times: “Don Bradman, the Wild Man of the Wicket, famous from the lonely coast of New South Wales to Piccadilly Circus and back again, is to lead his Australian cohort of cricketers into town this evening from a northerly direction. Within the next week we will have big-time cricket on the hearth, or words to that effect. “‘Babe’ Ruth once knocked 60 home runs in a season. What’s that to Daring Don Bradman, the ring-tailed wallaby of the cricket crease! He has scored 452 runs (not out) in an afternoon. According to the evidence submitted by interested parties, he makes so many runs that the score-keepers no longer go intd details. “They merely ring a bell as he passes each century. He simply keeps hitting and running until some sensible person in the stands suggests a spot of tea, whereupon all hands take time out for tiffin, with the score standing: All England 358; Don Bradman 405 (not out).”

Fleetwood-Smith is described as “the man who put out the entire South African XI twice in Australia last winter. The first time he put them out he forgot to lock the door, and they came back in again.” “Fleetwood-Smith is called a googlie trundler because of his underhand bowling, which he does with either hand and from various trick positions.” Another extract is: “The average baseball game is confined to two hours or less, and the first cricket match with the international flavour will last at least three days. There is no hurry about ja cricket match, no loss of meals and no loss of sleep. The players do not become peevish with one another, and they do not rag the umpires. Cricket has much to commend itself.” And how’s this? “Bradman says the hardest ball to hit in the game is the leg right, a pitch which is similar to the cross-fire in baseball.”

Again: “McCabe also bowled with devastating effect, bowling out eight wickets that scored only 23 runs in 11 overs, a spectacular feat indeed.”