“Nurse Him, Garge”

Sun (Auckland), Volume 1, Issue 97, 15 July 1927, Page 10

“Nurse Him , Garge”

“KIDDING” THE BOWLER The English cricket writer, Nevil Cardus, tells an entertaining story about George Hirst, the famous Yorkshire cricketer: “Everybody who has even enjoyed a chat with Hirst knows him to be a shrewd, rather a ratiocinative man,” writes Mr. Cardus. “How beautifully this shrewdness was expressed in Hirst’s cricket may be understood from a certain episode which I select from the great man’s life and works. Yorkshire were once playing Derbyshire, and Derbyshire were giving a trial to a useful, but harmless, length bowler. When Hirst came in to bat. David Denton was round about 50; he went down the wicket and spoke to Hirst. “ ’Garge,’ he said, ‘this lad’s a reight bowler’ (pronounced to rhyme with ‘howler’), ’treat him respectable like. Let’s keep him on, Garge; nurse him, tlia knows.’ “And here followed a prodigious wink. The young Derbyshire bowler was duly ‘flattered’; Hirst and Denton tapped him here and there for judicious runs; but every now and then they allowed him to achieve a maiden. Thus, for half an hour, one end of the Derbyshire attack was rendered comfortable—for Yorkshire . . . Suddenly Hirst banged the young bowler for four boundaries in an over, each stroke fierce and thunderous. At the end of the over Denton walked down the pitch with a reproachful look on his face. “ ’Garge,’ said he, ‘tha’s busted t’ contract! What were t’ thinkin’ of? .They’ll take him off now. That’s done it, reight enough! ’ “ ’lt’s all right,’ responded George. ’Tha needn’s fret thissel? Ah heard as that ’were going to be his last over before he bowled it!’” About Fast Bowlers M. L. Page, of the New Zealand cricket team, writing to friends on the match with Cambridge, in which he scored a century:—“The ide'a of all the fast bowlers here (in England) is to make the ball jump, and M. J. C. Allon is looked on as a coming England bowler. It is hard work batting against him. He will bump about your face, and the next ball, pitching in the same place, will be of nice height to play. You have no idea how popular the team is here with the players and the supporters.”