CRICKET AT SEVENTY

Waikato Times, Volume 121, Issue 20266, 7 August 1937, Page 27 (Supplement)

CRICKET AT SEVENTY

AUSTRALIAN VETERAN. PLAYB IN THE COMPETITIONS. SOME OLD ENGLISH CRICKETERS. Cricketers who take the field at the age of three score and ten are rare anywhere, and more particularly in Australia, where 90 per cent of club games are played on Saturdays and holidays, and are keenly competitive In spirit. Victoria, however, possesses at least one septuagenarian cricketer in the person of Mr Jonathan Taylor, of Ninyeunook, whose side won their district premiership for the 1936-37 season. Most men, either through flagging keenness or waning ability, drop out of the game at about 40, while the player of 50 Is quite a phenomenon. It is, therefore, all the more pleasant to hear of a man who is still able to retain his place in a premiership side at an age when most veterans are content to tell their grandsons that the game isn't what it used to be. In England men continue to play olub cricket long after they would have given It up in Australia. That is because English clubs make the most of their short summer, and arrange fixtures not only for Saturdays and Sundays, but for most week days as well, so that veterans who have plenty of time to spare from business or have retired altogether can still get plenty of cricket. English Veterans. Among notable players who have carried on into their seventies can be numbered the great Lord Harris, captain of Kent and England in the early ’eighties. Lord Harris continued to turn out for the Marylebone Club almost up to the time of his death a year or two ago. (He played against the West Indians when he was in his 70th year. A. B. Newton, veteran Somerset amateur, kept wickets for the Somerset Stragglers until he was over seventy. Brigadier-General Challenor and Major E. G. Wynyard are two others who defied time to shift them from the wicket. Nevertheless, the septuagenarian cricketer is far from common; it would not be surprising to learn that Mr Taylor, of Ninyeunook. is the only one In Australia.