A Great Day’s Cricket

Sun (Auckland), Volume III, Issue 880, 25 January 1930, Page 6

A Great Day’s Cricket

RECORD FIRST-WICKET PARTNERSHIP

N.Z’s. Fine Start in Second Test

Special to THE SUN WELLINGTON, Friday. A SPLENDID exhibition of batting, in which a record firstwicket partnership for New Zealand Test cricket of 276 runs gave the home team a wonderful start, delighted the big crowd of spectators at the Basin Reserve today. Here was the batting of the New Zealand team which toured England in 1927, and it showed how utterly false was the apparent form of the New Zealand side in the first Test at Christchurch. In making their centuries, Dempster (136) and Mills (117) showed cricket that had won warm approval in England.

Besides the fine start which was given in the play before lunch, when the score was 113 for no wickets, there was also the fact that the run of the game in fielding today was for New Zealand. In the Christchurch test, some almost impossible catches had been taken, but this time improbable catches were not made certainties. There was one very smart catch by Duleepsinhji today, but it was not the “flying machine” kind of catch that had dismissed Dempster in Christchurch. The fine weather before the game had left the wicket hard and rather fast, and it played truly. So, again, was New Zealand’s luck in when Lowry won the toss. What a contrast there was between the New Zealand batting in the Christchurch test with the M.C.C. team, and the start which the side got in its first innings today! Mills made with Dempster the opening partnership that was needed. Th'is patient, graceful left-hander was the steadying influence that was needed. Here was not the nibble, nibble, nibble, at flying off theory that one saw when Foley, the Wellington lefthander, was playing in Mills’s place in tho first test. Instead, Mills got well behind the fast stuff, and left alone the dangerous stuff going past the off stump. The good ball on the wicket was played with a straight bat, and an ease of movement that almost from the start made one expect a good score from him. There was, too, the patience with which he played himself in. His early scoring was slow, because he was rightly content to stay there until he saw the ball properly. When he was set, though, he scored with beautiful and seemingly effortless strokes, chiefly on the leg side, but varied occasionally with fine off shots. The great feature of Mills’s batting, in contrast with much of what had been seen in Christchurch, was the way in which, after he had settled down, he got square to high, bumping balls on the wicket from Nichols, and pulled them to leg or brought them round to fine leg. In one over this morning he scored 11 runs from Nichols with such strokes. Moreover, his placings of these shots was very good. Mills took 220 minutes to reach an even hundred, and in all he was batting for 260 minutes. He made a few uppish strokes in making his century, but the only actual chance he gave in that period was when, at 17, he raised a late. cut off Barratt, who then was swinging a bit from the leg to the off to the left-hander. Nichols at third slip jumped to it, and got one hand on the ball, but could not hold it. At 65, too, Mills gave Nichols in slips a very hot chance off Worthington. When he was 102, Mills mistimed a ball from Worthington, and put it up to Gilligan, who was fielding a little forward of square leg. The sun was shining right in Gilligan’s eyes, though, and the English captain showed his chagrin when he utterly failed to get his hands under the descending ball. HUGH TRUMBLE IMPRESSED Mills eventually was bowled by Woolley when he was trying to force the pace a little. He had hit 13 fours, 11 of these being hit in getting to three figures. His had been a splendid knock that greatly impressed Hugh Trumble, the old Australian cricketer of wide repute. Dempster played good, enterprising cricket for the greater part of his innings. He was scoring at a faster rate than Mills was, but he was also getting more of the bowling in the earlier part of the innings. Dempster’s lack of inches made fast, high, rising bowling rather difficult to him, and caused his batting to look less clean than that of the taller Mills, but Dempster, too, was .getting well behind the fast stuff. The fact that three or four times his bat was knocked out of his hands by fast balls was due to his bringing his bat well up to stop “bumpers,” and to these hitting his bat well up by the shoulder. Still, though his strokes against the fast, bowling had no great power, they wqre generally neat. They were mostly in front of slips, or just in front of square leg. There was more variety in his strokes against bowling that was below express speed, and some of his driving on both sides of the wicket, and his square and late cutting, were both neat and effective. He took 205 minutes to reach his century. Included in the 100 runs were six fours, three threes and 14 twos. For some time after Dempster got to 96 he had little of the bowling. Mills was 93 when Dempster reached treble figures, and curiously enough lie, in turn, had to see more of the bowling going down to his partner.

However, a nice three to the on off Woolley’s first over brought Mills to 99, and soon after that, he got the needed single. When he was 27, Dempster gave a sham chance at the wickets off Barrat) but Cornford dropped the ball. There was also an over from Nichols in. which Dempster, then 59, had some luck. A scoop over his head went out of fine leg’s reach, and then he uppishly cut the ball just behind Allom at third man. Allom’s height enabled him to make a chance of it, but he could not get his left hand properly round the ball. In that part of his innings, which was played after tea, Dempster was delightfully free, but he was smartly stumped by Cornford, off Woolley, when he had been at the wickets for 275 minutes for his 136 runs, included in which were eight fours, six of which were made in his first hundred. GILLIGAN WORRIED At the tea adjournment, when the score was 227 for no wickets, Dempster having 106 and Mills being exactly 100, with extras 21, Gilligan looked a worried man. He had had to rely chiefly on his fast and fastmedium bowlers. Nichols had been unable to overcome Mills’s steadiness and Dempster’s alertness. Allom had not been able to make - the ball come up so sharply, and so often as in Christchurch, and Barratt and Worthington had not troubled the batsmen very often. The wicket up to that stage at least had not been suitable for slow bowling. The first change from fast and fast-medium attack had been made at 161, when Bowley was put on to bowl with the wind behind him. But Bowley had not thrown off the results of his severe attack of sciatica, and was short of practice. A total of 32 runs were hit off five overs from him, and he was retired then. WOOLLEY COMES ON Occasionally Gilligan had consulted Woolley, and just before tea Woolley had bowled one over for three runs. He bowled again after tea against the wind. By this time the nip had been wo,rn off the pitch, and Woolley, taking a shorter run to the crease than usual, was able to spin the ball’ well. It was he who got the three wickets that fell in the afternon. Mills was bowled, Dempster stumped, and Lowry caught by Duleepsinhji at second slip. , Woolley got his first wicket in his eighth over. He had gone on when the total was 223, and when he bowled Mills, only 22 runs had been hit off him. Three runs came off his ninth over, and -the next two overs were maidens, with a wicket in the second of them. In his twelfth over he got his third victim at a cost of 27 .runs for the three, and at the end of the day he had bowled 17 overs, off which 48 runs had been hit. Lowry had gone in at the 'fall of the first wicket, but had seemed desirous of forcing the pace, and had made a curious uppish stroke to fine leg before he was dismissed for his six runs. Page, who followed him, batted both aggresively and soundly. He started by putting Barratt very nicely just behind point for four, and not long afterward he swung right round, to send that bowler to the fine leg boundary. There were four boundary hits in the 32 he had scored at stumps. Once, at 25, he had played off Woolley a rather uppish stroke that might have seemed lucky, but really it had been quite well placed between the two slips, who were not close together. Immediately afterward he put the ball in the sameplace, but this time he kept it down on the ground, and it went to the boundary. Blunt was a bit inclined at first to flick at rising balls on the off from Barratt, and one stroke by which ho took his score from live to nine dropped not so very far in front of the slips before it shot past them, but the way in which Blunt swung Woolley to the leg boundary was classic. He had scored 15 at the end of the day. BOWLING ANALYSED Bowling figures at the end of this great day’s cricket were interesting. They were as follow: Nichols, 14 overs, 3 maidens, 55 runs, no wickets; Allom, 21, 5, 48, 0; Barratt, 27, 3, 69, 0; Bowley, 5,0, 32', 0; and W'oolley, 17, 2, 48, 3. New Zealand’s 339 runs for the day were scored in 320 minutes’ batting time. The English fielding was keen, but not as clean and crisp on the whole as it had been in Christchurch. It was occasionally a rather bustled field, too, for Dempster and Mills gave a fine exhibition of smart running between the wickets, and were always alert to steal singles.