Not All Cricket

New Zealand Listener, Volume 20, Issue 506, 4 March 1949, Page 18

Not All Cricket

WAS IT ALL CRICKET? By Daniel Reese. Introduction by Sir Pelham Warner. George sa and Unwin, London. English price, / 46 NOT OUT. By R. C. Robertson-Glasgow. Hollis and Carter, London. Our copy through the British Council. English price, 10/6. se GRACES (E.M., W.G., and G.F.). By A. G. Powell and S. Canynge Caple. The Cricket Book Society, England. Our copy 7 Rigas the British eke: English price, WO of these three books are divided between cricket and ; the other businesses of life, such as earning a living and travel. In the third there are*a few mentions of the fact that W. G. Grace and his two famous brothers were doctors, and one again wonders how "E.M." and "W.G." managed to combine cricket with medicine so assiduously and for so long, but the book is about cricket and little else. "W.G." was the greatest cricketer the game has produced anywhere. Daniel Reese was the best allrounder in New ‘Zealand cricket history. When Dan Reese (no one ever thinks of him as Daniel) was a young man, he played in Grace’s London County side, and his accounts of the games and his

picture of the Old Man are among the many attractive things in his book, In one respect he is "W.G.’s" superior. He writes much better than Grace did, There has been nothing in New Zealand cricket to equal Dan Reese’s career. At fifteen he played for a senior Christchurch side visiting Wellington, and did the hat trick. At sixteen he played for Canterbury, and kept his place in the side. At nineteen he was chosen for the first New Zealand team to visit Australia, in 1898. Out of his engineering apprenticeship, he went to Melbourne for more training and played in the Melbourne Club’s first eleven, which brought him into close contact with ‘Hugh Trumble and other giants of the game. Back in New Zealand he scored two centuries against Warner’s team. After working his passage to England as an engineer, he played with Grace and W. L. Murdoch, the famous Australian batsman of the ‘eighties. Following more service at sea in pursuit of his chief’s ticket, he was included in the Essex county side. Established in his own country, he captained all New Zealand elevens from 1907 to 1914, and —

played in many interprovincial matches in that period and later. In the second tour of Australia, he headed both the batting and ‘bowling averages. For more than twenty years he was a member of the Management. Committee of the New Zealand Cricket Council. It is not only that Rees played so much, in so many countries, and among

so many players. He was liked by those he met, and won their confidence. Either he kept a diary, or has a very good memory, or both, for he re-plays many matches of long ago in detail, and tells us not only what players did, but what they said. These recallings of "old happy far-off things and battles long ago," cover some historic struggles for the Plunket

Shield. There is much here to hold the veteran and profit the young player. Reese considers our bowling was better 50 years ago, when Fisher and Downes, Frankish and Upham were playing. The left-handers failed in Australia in 1898 because conditions were ,unfavourable, but English conditions would have suited them. The lesson thats stands out in the book for the young cricketer is practice-more practice-and still more practice, The book is too long. There is even a little too much cricket--the cricket in which Reese himself is not involved. He writes competently and brightly, though not with distinction, but much of the travel record belongs. to the Tourist-writing-home class. There is, however, real value in his working experiences at sea. We don’t hear enough about the men of the Merchant Navy, and the engineers get less notice than the deck officers. Reese's first ship from England was a small tramp going to the Far East. There was no refrigeration for food and no electric light. In this record of his voyages below the water-line there is something of the interest that has made "A Surgeon’s Log" a classic of the Red Ensign.