Portrait of a Great Cricketer

New Zealand Listener, Volume 29, Issue 735, 14 August 1953, Page 9

Portrait of a Great Cricketer

7/OU couldn’t fault Hobbs," R, C. Robertson-Glasgow has written of the great English batsman. "In his time, 19051934, he met every sort of bowling on every sort of pitch; the baked, concrete-like surface of Australia, the lusher grass «f England, the matting of South Africa, the lightning bowling of a Jack Gregory, the leg-breaks and googlies of South Africa’s Vogler, White and Faulkner, and of Australia’s Hordern, Mailey and Grimmett. And he conquered them all." Though some people may find it hard to think of Hobbs as a man of three score years and ten, he had his 70th birthday last December. Since then he has been knighted, but a few months before that the bearers of famous names in the cricket worid honoured him in a different way. Last January in a programme specially recorded for the BBC .Transcription Service they paid their tribute to him as cricketer and sportsman, and recalled the great days of matches in which he played for Surrey and England against Australia and South Africa. Those taking part in Jack Hobbs: Portrait of a Great English Cricketer, are A. E. Lawton, Sir Pelham Warner, Wilfred Rhodes, Andrew Sandham, P. G. H. Fender, A. E. R. Gilligan, R, C. Robertson-Glasgow, Herbert Sutcliffe. W. M. Woodfull, George Duckworth, Denis Compton, Neville Cardus, Sir Donald Bradman and Leary Constantine. Sir Jack Hobbs himself speaks at the close of the programme, and the narrator is the cricket commentator Rex Alston. This tribute to Sir Jack Hobbs is to be heard from all YA stations next week-from IYA on August 18 at 8.0 pm., 2YA on August 20 at 8.15 p.m. 3YA on August 17 at 7.30 p.m., and 4YA on August 17 at 9.30 p.m,