CRICKET

Wanganui Chronicle, Volume 79, Issue 237, 7 October 1936, Page 12

CRICKET

-BOY MARVEL” FOUND LANCASHIRE PRODIGY. COACH IMPRESSED. The boy cricket marvel has come to Old Trafford, seen and conquered. Thirteen-year-old Ivor Hale, of Worcester, was given a trial over the week-end, writes “Adjutant” in The London Daily Mirror of August 5. This is what Cecil Parkin, England cricketer and Lancashire’s bowling coach, says of him:— “I did not believe half I was told about the lad; it seemed absurd. But it was all true, and more. There can never have been a boy cricketer like him at his age. The whole ground staff was there to see him. They could not leave: they were fascinated. He can spin them both ways and bowl a googlie. "You should just see him "Hight' the ball and send it down with that little flick of the wrist. How on earth he does it with a hand hardly big enough to grip the ball. I don't know. After half an hour I said he nad had enough, and then his father said let him have a good left hand. And the very first ball was a fizzer. "Yes he can bowl left as well as right, though he is better right. The other day he took seven wickets for one run—and against men like you and me. And he can bat, as well. Harry Makepeace took him in hand for that, gave him a top or two, and he took them right away, never did a thing wrong again. He has a cricketer’s brain. What the future has in store for him I don't know, but he has three more years at school first." Cecil Parkin might have been watching another Victor Trumper, ‘comments "Not Out” in The Sydney Referee). When Victor was a small lad, cricketers often gathered at the practice nets to wattch his wonderful batting, and marvel at his leg-break bowling and fielding. It would be a grand thing for England to develop a Trumper or a Bradman of its own. Provided, of course, it does not wait until he reaches 30 years of age before giving him Test match eminence.