CRICKET.

New Zealand Graphic, Volume XLIV, Issue 1, 5 January 1910, Page 10

CRICKET.

The Blanket Shield. The first challenge cricket match of the season for the Plunket Shield was played between the Auckland representatives and a Wellington eleven on Monday and Tuesday laut. The result—a - win for Auckland —was not unexpected, but few people expected the loca? men to score a ten wickets’ win. The Wellington men were reputed to be a strong bowling side, a reputation which they failed to justify, and at the wickets they were very much inferior to our men. In their first innings they scored 140 runs, to which the Aucklanders responded with 233, leaving the Wellington men with a deficit’of’93 on the first innings. At first, with ono wicket down for forty and two batsmen, Hickson and Mahoney, going well, they looked like making up the shortage, and putting up sufficient additional score to require Auckland to take their second innings seriously, but when the MohoneyHickson partnership was dissolved at 49, disasters fallowed one another in a series, and the side was out for 108. Auckland required 16 runs for a win, and Hemus e-.a VnooVetl them off without mistakes. The match ended half an hour before the stipulated time for drawing stumps on the second day, the local team having passed the visitors* total with ten wickets in hand.