M.C.C. Colours Not Worn By Club Members Of Earlier Day

Press, Volume XCI, Issue 27675, 3 June 1955, Page 7

M.C.C. Colours Not Worn By Club Members Of Earlier Day

A letter written recently to “The Times” suggests, indirectly, that New Zealanders have been guilty of a grave form of lese-majesty. New Zealand cricketers, touring England or playing against M.C.C. teams in this country, have made it a custom to exchange items of their equipment for the club’s vivid red and yellow tie, and to .wear it.

The letter, written by Mr Cecil Graves, of Aberdeenshire, said: “About three months or so after my birth my mother’s brother, Edward Grey, asked if my name was down for the M.C.C. She said it was not. ‘Good gracious,’ he said, ‘it should have been down a year ago,’ and went off to rectify matters. “When I eventually was elected, it was impressed on me that it was not done, whether playing for the club or not, to wear the colours, and I can think of none of my contemporaries in the immediately post-1914-18 War years who possessed a tie or a cap, still less a blazer. “We were expected to wear our Free Foresters, Incogniti, and even I Zingari (a particularly glaring combination) colours. But the M.C.C. ones —no. I think the reason may be was that many people who hardly knew one end of a bat from the other sought election to what was and still is one of the greatest club institutions in the

world. But there may be different reasons which others may be able to bring forward.” Mr Graves’s letter recalls the news item printed this week, and reporting that a boy of 14 who had been nominated for membership of the M.C.C. would have to wait 60 years ‘‘before he could wear the club’s famous yellow and red tie,” because of the long list of prospective members. Not many New Zealanders would wish to wait a lifetime for admission to the club and then be guilty of bad form if they chose to wear its tie.

Those New Zealand cricketers who possess M.C.C. ties wear them quite frequently—to matches and cricket functions, and even, one suspects, to support baggy flannels while working in the garden. But zealous members of the M.C.C. should be careful not to make the mistake which enlivened a Plunket Shield match in New Zealand many years ago. One of New Zealand’s best-known players, Tom Lowry, came out to bat soon after his return from Cambridge University. He was wearing a light blue cap, and was immediately the target of abuse from a section of the crowd which considered he was “putting on side”— although their remarks were not couched in such polite terms. The cap he wore came from the back country of Rangitikei—the Moawhango Cricket Club.