THE N.Z. CRICKET TEAM

Dominion, Volume 20, Issue 47, 19 November 1926, Page 12

THE N.Z. CRICKET TEAM

Sir, —In appointing selectors the first step towards picking the team to represent New Zealand has now been taken. It is not to be expected for an instant that these selectors will in any way be governed by the opinion of the general cricketing public, but will arrive at a result influenced by their own vast experience within the playing area. Yet one cannot help but hope that the final selection will be typical of the country it represents, i.e., young, virile, sound, and enterprising. No crooks, if you please It is a lamentable fact that eelectors—who generally are of the middleaged, slow-moving type—are very prone to choose their contemporaries: brothers-in-arms as it were, who also are their friends and companions, and leave the young men to achieve representation only by, in turn, acquiring the hoary head and stiff joints. Australia, realising this, has been most drastic in chopping away the’ gnarled and knotted limbs cloying the natural growth of the young shoots, but it inquired the unedifying spectacle of, a team of veterans, animated by nothing nobler than the staving off of defeat, and leaving behind them a record of inexpressible dreariness, to rouse young Australia to this same drastic action. Now, it is not expected here that New Zealand can find a team equal in batting or even in bowling qualities to that of Australia, but she can find a team greatly superior in the Held. lor itis only the young and active who are able to 'infuse'dash and spirit into this department of the game during a long, hot a \Ve have, without the shadow of a doubt, enterprising batsmen, useful bowlers, and in the field—if the right team is chosen—it should beseeond to none in the world. Suppose, for instance, that the following eleven were deputed to do battle on our behalf: Blunt, Hiddleston, Worker, Dacre, Dempster. Cunningham. Allcott, Dickinson, Roilings or McGirr, Lowry. James: Who is there to say that such a team would not command respect and call forth admiration by reason of their fielding qualities, for with perhaps a single exception thev are fleet of root, sure of head, and able to return the ball accurately from any distance. And the one exception is a splendid bat and a very good close in-field. Such a team could be trusted to symbolise a voting and virile Country, and such a team would administer a number of rude shocks to many of the English counties, who would find themselves inferior in every department of the game, and the prevalent idea that the New Zealand cricketer has difficulty in discerning the difference between the blade and the handle of a bat would be effoctiially shattered. Ono can only hope that . destinv will turn the eyes of selectors towards those whose birth ante-dated their own by a decade or. so. but one fears so much the many influences at work running counter to such a desirable end.—-I am. etc., SUSPENSE.