TEST MATCH COMEDY.

Waikato Times, Volume 106, Issue 17837, 9 October 1929, Page 8

TEST MATCH COMEDY.

A SMALL BAT. NEW ZEALAND’S TROPHY. MR G. V. EDGE’S LUCK. (From a Correspondent.) LONDON, August 23. At the conclusion of the last test match at the Oval, on August 20, the South Africans made a rush to become possessed of single stumps as souvenirs. Mr Clyde Foster, who was present, writes in the Evening Standard: “This was a thing I had never witnessed before. It took the crowd aback to see such levity in the stately national game.” But there was much more to come. “We —want —Deane!” shouted the British public when the popular South African captain had disappeared with his men inside the pavilion. ‘ One t w o—three 1 We —want —Deane— Deane!” The captain courageously stepped out on the framework of the awning and addressed the crowd, and I heard a great point made of the kindness that had been shown him and his men during their wonderful tour of the English counties. When the “Deane din” had quietened came “Carr —Carr —Carr 1 We want—Carr!” The English captain, dressed in mufti, briefly addressed the crowd and I heard this: “You have to-day seen the most brilliant fielding in your lives." That sentiment was declaimed with a thunderclap of applause. A White Bat. Then came what nobody anticipated. Mr Deane reappeared with a small white cricket bat in Ids hand. What it meant he soon let us know. Before flinging the bat upon the uplifted heads below he shouted: “Here is a souvenir for you. Whoever catches the bat can have it." As the symbol of cricket hurtled through the air there was a grand struggle to catch it and hold it, till it seemed as though the handle might be sundered from the blade. “Fair play!” shouted those behind the vortex of arms and heads. “Let the man have It who made the catch.” It took some tactful suasion by diplomats in blue to establish the real ownership, and this being done the proud possessor was surrounded by men and boys reading the signatures of both teams written in ink on the bat. , , . The ultimate owner—for I could hear offers being made —wrote his name and address on a sheet of paper for me. He was G. V. Edge, of Bluff, New.- Zealand, "the farthest travelled spectator on the ground,” as he called himself. The last I saw of Mr Edge was “edging” his way out of the ground, with a number of boys hanging on to him begging to read the names on the most interesting little bat in the world. Some desired Mr Edge to write his own name in an autograph book, and one enterprising youth would be, he said, “awfully much obliged" if he could photograph this bat and the names written on it.