TEST CAPTAIN

Timaru Herald, Volume CXLIII, Issue 20894, 25 November 1937, Page 8

TEST CAPTAIN

HAMMOND LIKELY CANDIDATE AUSTRALIAN COMMENT News that Walter Hammond, England’s great batsman and champion all-rounder, may become an amateur, and be eligible to captain England in the Tests next year, is ot extreme interest to Australians, says an exchange. For a long time there has been talk of him as captain, but the fact that he is a professional has been a bar. Should be become an amateur, however, that bar will be removed. Hammond, as a fact, began his career with Gloucestershire as an amateur, but became a professional after only a few games. Like Bradman he is a man with a wonderful cricket brain, and he has shown time and again when captaining professional teams, and occasionally when he has acted in an emergency as leader of the Gloucestershire side, that he is well fitted for leadership. When he first came to Australia in 1928-29 he stated that on his return to England he would

enter upon a business career and become an amateur. The change did not come about, however, and he has continued to play as a professional. There has been a good deal of talk recently about the possibility of him forsaking the professional ranks, .and he has been discussed as England’s probable captain. There can be no doubt about his fitness for the position. Had he not been a professional it seems likely that he would have been captain of Gloucestershire years ago, and perhaps also of England. But the ideal is that an amateur should lead county and test teams, although we have found professionals leading sides in the absence of a captain who was the only amateur in the team, and in I'‘26 Jack Hobbs had the honour of leading England when A. W. Carr, the official captain, became ill soon after tie start of a test against Australia. But an amateur captain has always been the rule if possible. Some of the early English teams in Australia had professionals as leaders, but they were privately organised sides, comprised mostly, and in some cases, entirely, men who were professionals. There is no special process by which a professional changes to an amateur in England. All Hammond will have to do is to announce that he intends to play as an amateur, and he is an amateur. There are several instances in England of men making the change. There are even instances of men changing their status more than once, and in one case a professional who changed to amateurism became captain of Lancashire. Should Hammond make the change, and become captain of England, Australians will welcome him in the position, for they respect him, and realise in him not only a wonderful cricketer, but a man who should prove a brainy leader.