ENTER CRICKET.

Auckland Star, Volume LIX, Issue 249, 20 October 1928, Page 8

ENTER CRICKET.

A SEASONABLE BOOK.

(By CYRANO.)

'Tor winter's rains and ruins are over, and all the season of snows and"—well, shall we say, football T Cricket begins to-day, which tiphtiw that summer is at hand, and long warm days and groups under the dreaming trees, and tl* A white evening star, and all that sort of thing, It is one of the charms of cricket that it makes you think of such things. There may be better games —personally, I don't think there are—but there certainly is not any game about which cluster so many associations, so many stories, so much history and literature. What other game could furnish the varied entertainment of this book before me t * It covers a hundred and fifty years or so of history; it touches nearly every country; it is rich in humour; and it helps life with philosophy.

Cricket, of course, is a summer game, and as you watch it on a really worthy ground—green, velvety turf surrounded by trees—you will swear, as the sunlight grows more golden with the mellowing of the afternoon, that no other game could be so (This is why some of us old stagers in Auckland still regret the abandonment of the Domain as the principal ground.) But the passionate cricketer (so to speak) will play cricket anywhere and at any time. In England and in other places they are more contemptuous of the weather i n New Zealand. A New Zealander who plays in England told me that he has actually wiped snow off the ball before bowling. In this book there is a whole chapter on winter, cricket, in which instances are given of play amid hail and snow. Cricket has often been played on ice. One club team in England—appropriately called the Ducks—pride themselves on playing in any weather. In their roving round the world Englishmen, especially soldiers and sailors, have played in every dime and season. Major Wynyard, who brought a team to New Zealand in the good old days before the war, played on active service in Burma, with sentries grated round the edge of the "field." Teams from ritish men-of-war played a match at Spitzbergen under the midnight sun on a pitch that consisted of soft mossy earth, with lots of stone. "Our fast bowler made a start at the glacier end." The day after Bagdad was occupied wickets were pitched. And when, before the war, during the scramble for territory in China, Prince Henry of Prussia, the Kaiser's brother, visited that part of the world and saw nothing taking place in the British territory of Wei-hai-wei but two British officers laying out a cricket pitdi (in the German sphere coolies were building forts), he is reported to have said, "The world is yours." Events proved that it wasn't Germany's.

To many readers the most surprising thing in this fascinating book will be the information about cricket in foreign countries. Foreigners have never really taken to cricket, but they play the game to a greater extent than is generally supposed. For years there has been a cricket league in Paris, and several English teams have visited Germany. The game is also played in Holland and Denmark. Some foreign ideas of cricket are highly amusing. When the M.C.C. visited Paris many years ago a Frenchman remarked that it was truly a magnificent game, but he could not understand why the players did not engage servants to field for them. The Sultan made the same remark in Constantinople. While Napoleon HI. and the Empress were watching a game in England long-on brought off a difficult and spectacular catch. A minute later a gentle-man-in-waiting, hat in hand, approached the fieldsman with a message from the Emperor, thanking him for the performance and asking him' to do it again.

The most delightful chapter is the one on cricket and the church. The connection has always been close, and always will be so Ion" as there are dbrates to pull the village match out of the fire. "Lor, parson, what a man ye be!" cried a delighted labourer when a vicar returned to the tent after such an act of grace. "Ye saved us all last Sunday, and now ye've come and saved us on a Saturday!" The author recalls, too, an unfriendly miner who was converted bv "that hit o' yourn to square leg for six a fortnight ago, and sympathises with the rector who said that what the parish wanted was not a theologian but a fast bowler with an off-break. °

Lastly, I am moved to note that in New Zealand there is proportionately far less cricket played by men who are past their physical prime. In England it is common for men to play regularly on into middle age and even beyond. The abundant facilities for club cricket account for this. Many players of county and international class continue to enjoy the game in obscurity. I know an ex-county player two years ago, in his fiftieth year with a good club, was still captaining the side. E. M. Grace played for sixtv seasons, and Charles Absolom took a hundred wickets when he was eighty. In the author's parish the eleven was well led in 1906 by a man who played his first match in 1837. It was this man's widow who said: "Ah, yes! We enjoyed sixty-two years of happy, wedded, cricket life." This is a good story with which to begin a new season.

• Cricket Highuiayt and Byxeayt, by P. S AshleyCooper. (Allen and Unwin.)