ONE-DAY CRICKET

Evening Star, Issue 22465, 9 October 1936, Page 15

ONE-DAY CRICKET

"ADDS ZEST TO GAME" WELLINGTON PLAYER’S VIEW In Christchurch last season several well-known cricketers urged that a change to one-day matches would produce many benefits, not the least of which would be the restoration of public interest in the game.. Nothing has been done in the meantime, but it is known that a number of officials are coming round to the same way of thinking. The subject is sure to crop up again this season. Just returned to Wellington from a business visit to the Old Country is Gerald Rotherham, a prominent Lower Hutt player and a man with considerable knowledge of the game. Mr Rotherham has now been a resident of New Zealand for 10 years. Prior to that, he was a member of the Warwickshire County Eleven for three years, and a Cambridge Blue in 1919. His father was a Warwickshire cricketer before him.

In an interview last week in Wellington Mr Rotherham touched on various topics connected with the game, and made one particular point plain. He is a staunch, believer, in one-day cricket, and he, too, considers that it would be of benefit to New Zealand cricket if the principle were adopted. His reasons? That, for batting, the effort to make scores quickly would result in the batsman having to use all manner of _ strokes, a direct contrast, in his opinion, to the present method, where batsmen are so .keen on making scores that they are frightened to use the full range of strokes. For bowling t there is the incentive that the other side must be dismissed quickly, leading to the adoption of a bitterer hostility—not the bodyline kind, but the genuine, honest-to-goodness attempt by the bowler to get the batsman out. And Mr Rotherham disposes of the objection that a short afternoon would not allow of the best four or five batsmen of a team being used week after week by quoting from London experience. . If the batsmen up to No. 6 went in one week, and the others were left in the stand, the opening batsman and possibly No. 3 would bo used again tbe next week, but Nos. 7 and 11 would follow immediately after. Whatever happened and whatever the position of the score-board, all men of tho team batted at least once a fortnight. And out here, as be says, their appearances at times are no more frequent than that.