NIGGERS'S CRICKET.

Press, Volume XLVI, Issue 7257, 17 January 1889, Page 6

NIGGERS'S CRICKET.

Not by any means in old England alone do ladies go in for cricket. Far away in the Western Isles of the Caribbean Sea, the dusky maids and matrons wield the willow, and enter the lists unhandicapped against the male Quaehies. All over the West Indies cricket, has taken a tremendous hold of the negroes' fancy, and every little town and, village counts its rival elevens. Loud and deep are the planter's" Curses'as he Bees Ills qeat. gangs spending days after days in the cricket field, while his crops He spoiling for Jack of labourers to pick or cat the cocoa or canes. An English umpire might not perhaps be always satisfied at the procedure of the game, and though free fights may probably occur more frequently in the course of a match than might be desired, still the love of the game is all there, and the West Indies might turn out collectively almost as good a team as any other place in the tropics. Last year a very fair American eleven went round the West Indies, and much to their surprise came off only second best in most of the islands. In Grenada, one of the Windward Islands, for example, they were beaten by a scratch eleven collected in a hurry, and consisting mostly of coloured fellows, and some of the darkies showed capital form. It ia especially in this island that the fair(?) sex have gone in for cricket, and a match between the Red Roses and the " Blue" Roses, as two rival elevens are called, Is a sight to be seen and remembered. The dusky damsels have imagined a most striking costume for cricket, consisting of red or blue Tarn o , Shanters, blouses of the same flaming colours, short petticoats reaching to the knee, blue or red unmentionables coming down to the ankles and leaving the well-developed brown or black feet bare and unconfined. The ladies are, however, generally captained by men, and though the bowling may not be over severe, the slogging is terrific. The field presents a most lively appearance, dotted over by the bright hued figures, and a nigger band with tomtoms and tambourines is always to be found thumping under a temporary shelter, and keeping the Quaehies around in a chronic state of jigging. In most of the islands cricket is enthusiastically carried on by the whites, and, regardless of the burning rays of a tropical sun and probable sunstroke, military men, officials, and planters play right through the day with unflagging zeaL An English eleven might do worse, the writer says, than spend two or three of the winter months going round the West Indies, where, besides good cricket, they would have an opportunity of seeing some of the fijMat scenery in the world, and samn|« ise hospitality for which these ootoaro have always been noted,

BaCensee— The Bank of New Zealand,