 |
Sports correspondent & historian with |
Cricket is a game measured in big figures.
Since the millennium, the Bay of Plenty has produced two players, in Kane Williamson and Trent Boult, who can stand alongside the greats of the game with similar milestones on their record card.
Williamson has scored more than 19,000 Black Cap runs in all three forms of the game, since he made his Black Cap debut in the 2010 season, with a best of 251.
Boult stands equally as tall in the world-wide game in taking 611 wickets in the Black Cap uniform with top bowling figures of 7/34.
Opportunity is the door to success. In the 1930s, one player who migrated to the Eastern Bay of Plenty, could have been heralded alongside Williamson and Boult - without a shoulder injury and the six years of World War II.
Leicester Spring arrived in Whakatāne with an impressive cricket resume but played just nine games for Bay of Plenty between 1938 and 1948.
Spring had been accorded the reputation of one of the best first-class players in the country.
He represented Manawatū from 1926 to 1931 during which time the province played in 13 Hawke Cup matches. Spring then played cricket in Canterbury for two seasons before transferring to Auckland in 1933.
On December 14, 1936, Spring was selected in the all-conquering Auckland Plunket Shield team.
After the team played Canterbury at Christmas, it was reported in the media: “Spring has an excellent chance to represent New Zealand to tour England in March 1937 under T C Lowry, in company with certainties H G Vivian, P E Whitelaw, J Cowie, WM Wallace and W N Carson all of Auckland”.
A shoulder blade injury resulted in the talented batsman remaining at home.
In July 1938 Spring arrived in Whakatāne. Joining the Whakatāne United Cricket Club, the new recruit went on a batting and bowling blitz. During the 1938/39 season he smote 706 runs with a highest score of 148 and took 67 wickets.
Bay of Plenty representation came quickly, with selection to captain the Bay against Waikato in a Hawke Cup challenge on December 3, 1938. Captaincy again followed against Sir Julien Cahn’s English touring side in Rotorua.
A cricket shutdown during World War II took away some of the best years of Spring’s cricket career.
The late 1940s provided evidence, of what might have been, in Spring’s time in the middle and with the ball in his firm grip.
Aged nearly 40, Spring again took the skipper’s role against Waikato on January 1, 1948, in a Hawke Cup challenge, and scored four half centuries in a handful of games.
Spring did achieve national fame and recognition as the owner of champion racehorse Rising Fast.
Rising Fast was a champion New Zealand-bred thoroughbred, who is the only horse to complete the Spring Grand Slam, winning the Cox Plate, Caulfield Cup and Melbourne Cup, in 1954.
Spring illustrates a number of outstanding players of his era who would surely have gained New Zealand selection in today’s three forms of the game.