Other Cricket
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NZ triple centurions are on odd bunch. Sutcliffe and Turner obviously class. I know bugger all about Roger Blunt. Mark Richardson and Devon Conway, both good, on the cusp of great. But then you have Ken Rutherford, Dean Brownie, Peter Fulton, Michael Papps and now Tom Bruce. All decent players, but none really set the world alight when given the chance at higher honours.
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@Cyclops said in Other Cricket:
NZ triple centurions are on odd bunch. Sutcliffe and Turner obviously class. I know bugger all about Roger Blunt. Mark Richardson and Devon Conway, both good, on the cusp of great. But then you have Ken Rutherford, Dean Brownie, Peter Fulton, Michael Papps and now Tom Bruce. All decent players, but none really set the world alight when given the chance at higher honours.
I'd say the biggest factor there is 4-day FC cricket.
4 of them in the 90 odd years when NZ domestic FC was 3 days. Then 6 in 40 years since it became 4 layers.
Then consider, since about late 90s or 2000 the blackcap schedule that the top batsmen never play Plunket Shield. So it is the more fringe players dominating these fixtures.
Lastly. Quantity of oportunity. Sutcliffe played a Plunket Shield season of only 3 games each. Papps, Brownie etc plated 10 game seasons.
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@Cyclops said in Other Cricket:
NZ triple centurions are on odd bunch. Sutcliffe and Turner obviously class. I know bugger all about Roger Blunt. Mark Richardson and Devon Conway, both good, on the cusp of great. But then you have Ken Rutherford, Dean Brownie, Peter Fulton, Michael Papps and now Tom Bruce. All decent players, but none really set the world alight when given the chance at higher honours.
Tom Bruce has the kind of record that should have got him capped in the longer form by now. What gives ?
A triple ton is still rare as all hell though, only 32 in test history. NONE scored between Lawrence Rowe getting 302 in 1974 until Graham Gooch got 333 in 1990.
It is a massive effort.
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BLUNT, ROGER CHARLES, who died in London on June 22, aged 65, played in nine Test matches for New Zealand between 1929 and 1931, seven against England and two against South Africa. Beginning his career as a leg-break bowler, he developed into a very fine batsman. Against A. H. H. Gilligan's England team in New Zealand in 1929, he headed his country's Test bowling averages with nine wickets for 19 runs each. In the opening Test of that tour, which marked the entry of New Zealand into the top rank of cricket, he not only gained a match analysis of five wickets for 34 runs but, with 45 not out, was top scorer in first innings of 112.
In England in 1931, his 96 helped New Zealand to a highly creditable draw with England at Lord's after being 230 in arrears on the first innings. Until B. Sutcliffe surpassed his 7,769 runs in 1953, he was the highest-scoring New Zealand batsman in first-class cricket. In a dazzling display for Otago against Canterbury at Christchurch in 1931-32, he hit 338 not out, then the highest score ever achieved by a New Zealand cricketer, though Sutcliffe many years later made 355 and 385. Well-known in business circles in England and New Zealand, he was awarded the M.B.E. in 1965.
Roger Blunt
BLUNT, ROGER CHARLES, who died in London on June 22, aged 65, played in nine Test matches for New Zealand between 1929 and 1931, seven against England and two against South Africa
Seems a handy player. I wouldn't put Rigor or Conway anywhere near great.
