Newspaper Article – Lack of Spinner Vital Factor in Cup Match

Cricket

Lack of Spinner Vital Factor In Cup Match

(By F. F. CANE)

AN ENCOURAGING affluence of form on the first day persuaded me to make the trip to Wanganui on the second, and it was an opportunity I am glad I did not miss, for the cricket was full of incident, if the final result did disappoint.

Two factors, to my mind, largely contributed to the result. In order of importance the first was the inability of the earlier batsmen in Hawke’s Bay’s second innings to consolidate and hold themselves intact while the ground was recovering in the warm sun from the soaking it had received before the match and early on the Friday: and secondly the absence from the Hawke’s Bay side of a steady left-hand spinner who could exploit the vagaries of the pitch and take wickets at economical cost.

Time More Valuable

When Hawke’s Bay batted again shortly before lunch on Saturday, time was the essence of the contract. Two batsmen to dig themselves in irrespective of reward was the desperate need of the hour, and might well have been the turning point of the match. A stroke worth two in the morning brought four later in the day, and this was the handicap under which our leading stroke-makers laboured as they strove for a safer margin of ascendancy. In other words, had the side batted two hours later in the day and made precisely the same shots with precisely the same power and precisely the same mistakes, then, at a conservative estimate the total would have been augmented by some 30 or 40 runs, and I believe this would have been sufficient to have turned the tables against the holders.

Totty Disappoints

In the conditions, Totty was undoubtedly the bowler around which the attack should have developed on the second afternoon, but obviously he had no idea how to exploit them. In the first place he bowled far too fast, nor did he possess that control of length, direction and flight which keep the batsmen busily defending.

A spinner of the old school, by concentrating upon a spot, would in the course of half a dozen overs have created for himself a patch off which he would have become quite irresistible, but Totty had neither the capacity nor the intent for such a manoeuvre.

Once again Spence proved himself an ideal big-match cricketer. Nothing seems to perturb him. He is not a great batsman, judged in terms of orthodoxy. Neither in defence nor attack is he a purist. But by dint of courage and determination, and an infinite capacity to concentrate, he gets there all the same and with remarkable persistence.

Nor is he a bad show spin bowler, and if he was not quite the type for the occasion, I believe that a trial might have proved well worth while following Totty’s failure.

Both sides fielded splendidly, Hawke’s Bay excelling in the air, and taking it all in all it was a wonderful contest with the visitors vanquished but certainly not disgraced.