Was Dempster Out?

Sun (Auckland), Volume III, Issue 847, 16 December 1929, Page 11

Was Dempster Out?

UMPIRE COBCROFT SAYS “NO”

English Cricket Captain’s Appeal DECISION GIVEN BY WRONG MAN WELLINGTUN. Gaturday. HIGH lights of Saturday’s dour tussle between the M.C.C. cricketers and the home eleven were Wellington’s great light for runs on a bowler's wicket, and a sensational incident in which. New Zealand’s leading batsman, C. S. Dempster, was given out “bowled,” on an appeal by the English captain to the square-leg umpire. The main point in the controversy was that the appeal should have been made to the umpire at the bowler’s end. This official. Mr. L. T. Cobcroft, the ex-N.S.W. and N.Z. representative player, told The Sun's speeial reporter after the match that no appeal was made to him, and, in his opinion, Dempster should have stayed where he was.

Dempster’s dismissal arose in a most extraordinary way. After a ball had been bowled bj r Nichols, Dempster was taking - strike again when an appeal was made by the Englishmen on the ground, that the previous ball, which had been touched by Dempster, had hit the wicket, but without knocking the bails off. The Englishmen claimed that a bail had been displaced, and that Dempster was out. An appeal was made to the square leg umpire, who gave Dempster out. Interviewed after the match, umpire Cobcroft indignantly denied that he had ever been approached as to whether Dempster was out. When

he played a ball from Nichols gently on to his wicket, the bails were not displaced, and there was quite a controversy over the whole affair.

“Neither the bowler nor I had the slightest idea that there was anything the matter,” said Mr. Cobcroft. “The bowler did not appeal. There was a half-hearted appeal from Gilligan, and after that the wicket was touched by one of the M.C.C. players, who had no right to touch it. “Then Dempster walked away. He should have stayed where he was. It was a repetition of the Kippax incident in Australia last year.”