The Cricket Tour

Press, Volume LXXIII, Issue 22197, 14 September 1937, Page 8

The Cricket Tour

The third tour of England by a New Zealand cricket side has provided curiously mixed results. Admirable performances against some of the strongest counties have offset failures against weaker ones. The batting has been unexpectedly unsure; the bowling has been unexpectedly effective. Wretched situations have been magnificently restored; and advantages seem to have been too easily lost. The fielding hat- reached, apparently, the highest standard New Zealand has yet achieved oversea, and has seldom slipped; but the worst slips have been en occasions when most was at stake and have been most heavily punished. It is possible, of course, to refer all this to the uncertainty of cricket; but to do so is to reject all thought of studying mistakes and profiting by them. For example, it can hardly be questioned that one difficulty throughout the tour has been that of finding safe openers. The number of experiments—with some surprising successes—has been extraordinary; but the weakness was never overcome. It seems as if the problem might have been more carefully reviewed before the team was sent away. In other words, captain and players are less to blame than the selectors. This is only one of several respects in which the results of the tour may be seen as a commentary on the selection. Least is to be gained by narrowing its application to individuals. The selectors are not proved to have been wise in sending A and unwise in sending B by the mere fact that A's performances have been good and B's disappointing. But broader inferences are safer and more .useful. No strain is put upon the results by saying that they argue, for instance, the wisdom of preferring younger and more adaptable players, when the alternative arises, to older ones who have learned all that their limits will allow. It is better policy to try youth and develop promise than to lean on experience and play for safety; that is, when the particular question is whether some younger or some older player should fill a place. It would be a quite rash and wrong inference that a touring side should be made up entirely of colts. The importance of this bias in favour of youth in selecting New Zealand teams is of course increased by the rarity of an English tour and the value of its lessons, which the young player not only is more apt to learn but has more years to teach in his turn. The report of the captain and the manager will be awaited with keen interest; but whatever information and advice they bring back, they may be expected to insist upon the success of the tour as an adventure of the best sporting kind, in which defeats and victories are of less account than the quality of the experience, of the effort put into it, and of the stimulus drawn from it.