Douglas Catley’s NZ cricket limerick

This weekend was the Downtown Community Ministry’s annual book fair. Always a good time if you're a book lover. One book I picked up happened to have a cricket limerick inside, which I’ll share with you here.

The book is by Douglas Catley entitled A Dabble of Limericks and was published in 1973. He also published a collection of poetry, Thoughts of a Wonderer, in 1969. Catley was a designer, engineer and inventor. I’ve never come across him before, but his limericks are an entertaining light read.

The biographical note on Catley states that he was born in Canada but left when he was two “because he couldn’t stand the milk”. He grew up in New Zealand, in the North of Auckland, and as a young man crewed in Auckland-based yachts. He worked for the Fire Service, studied maths, advanced engineering and electronics. Through this, he qualified as a member of the Institution of Fire Engineers of Great Britain, and later ran Enterprise Engineering in Wellington, New Zealand.

DOUGLAS CATLEY

Cricket Limerick

A famous big-hitter in cricket

Slamm’d his on-drive into a thicket

    Where girls tann’d in the nude

    And no gent would intrude,

But long-on was on a good wicket.

© Douglas Catley, 1973

(From A Dabble of Limericks, Cape Catley Ltd, 1973)