CRICKET CELEBRATIONS

Wairarapa Times-Age, 15 August 1938, Page 2

CRICKET CELEBRATIONS

GREAT ALL-ROUNDERS. To such a degree has specialisation invaded modern cricket that certain batsmen are now nominated for fixed positions in the battipg order, as though it were impossible for them to make runs unless they bat in the place the newspaper critics have ordained. By starting the bowling with O’Reilly at Lords, Bradman did something to upset the “opening bowler” fetish, which of late years has allowed so many batsmen to get well set against indifferent medium-paced bowling before the real wicket-tak-ers come on. In the midst of this acute specialisation the all-round cricketer has practically disappeared, never, perhaps, to return.. So rare a bird has he become that any batsman who can take art occasional wicket, or any bowler who can knock up forty or so, is now referred to as an “allrounder.” It is not long since Clarrie Grimmett —a useful batsman at a pinch, certainly—was styled an “allrounder” by some of the newspapers (writes “Old Sport” in The Australian Journal). Even Hammond, great cricketer as he undoubtedly is, is scarcely an all-rounder in the tradition of say, Armstrong or J. N. Crawford. He is, at best, a magnificent batsman and fieldsman, who bowls a fair ball. In England last season, while making 3,252 runs, he bagged 48 wickets at an average of 22.7 a. Superb batting, but only useful bowling. At present Australia’s nearest approach to all-rounders are McCabe and Chipperfield, on neither of whom has the mantle of Giffen or Noble descended. Yet at one time we possessed some remarkable all-rounders, men capable of making a hundred and taking eight or ten wickets in the same first-class match, and doing it with some regularity. Nor is there any need to go back to 1865 or thereabouts to find them. In the twenty years between 1894 and the War there were Harry and Albert Trott, George Giffen, Hugh Trumble, Warwick Armstrong, C. McLeod, Frank Laver. M. A. Noble, A. J. Hopkins, C. G. Macartney, Sid Redgrave, Norman Claxton, Jack Crawford (Surrey and South Australia), T. J. Matthews and C. E. Kelleway. In the first ten years after the War (1918-1928) we had, apart from the survivors of the pre-war era. Jack Gregory, Jack Ryder, Arthur Richardson, R. K. Oxenham, and Alan Fairfax, not to mention lesser lights such as Liddicutt, Hendry and Hartkopf. But what about the last decade, since 1928?