CRICKET

Dominion, Volume 19, Issue 238, 22 June 1926, Page 7

CRICKET

AUSTRALIA V. LANCASHIRE

WEATHER THREATENING FOR SECOND DAY

(Rec. June 22, 1.30 a.m.) London, June 21. For the continuation of the cricket match between Australia and Lancashire, there is threatening weather, after an oppressive Sunday, but the wicket is good. McDonald and Parkin opened the bowling. Macartney and Richardson, straight off the mark, as though there had been no interruption, settled down to an average of five runs an over. . JThe score now is five wickets for 150 (Macartney not out 72, Richardson not out 21). —Reuter. AUSTRALIANS? “COMMERCIAL SPIRIT” LONDON PAPERS COMMENTS Bt Tblegbaph—Pbbs» Association. Copyright. London, Juno 20. The "Observer,” recalling a paragraph in "Lillywhito’s Annual” in 1882, which stated "unconsciously, and perhaps with out suspicion, the Australians are seriously and perceptibly showing aggravated symptoms of a commercial spirit in cricket,” declares that the suggestion still holds. The visitors never attempt to disguise their paramount interest in the gate returns. There has been an increasing tendency during the last 20 years to only regard the tours from two aspects—a crusade to defeat England and a commercial proposition. They have never understood and appreciated the importance that England attaches to the county championships. "If international cricket ceased we should be woefully poorer,” says the "Observer,” "but if county cricket lost its grip, cricket would quickly die. The lengthening of Test matches by a single day is one thing nnd unlimited extension is another. We have suffered enough from the influence of the Australians, who would now foist unlimited cricket upon our leading p’ayers. A time limit is Indispensable in the true interests of the game. The delights of cricket will become more and more obscured so long as England and Australia are more concerned in avoiding defeats than in forcing a win. If this process advances far enough, a dav of reckoning will come, and this will be when the public awaken to the fact that the game they really love is dead, and they will then seek recreation elsewhere. The whole tendency in modern sport has been to increase the nace. and in cricket alone has there deliberately been a reverse process.” —Sydney “Sun” Cable.

PROSPECTIVE TOURS M.C.C. TEAM GOING TO , SOUTH AFRICA London, June 20. The "Weekly Dispatch" understands that the Marylebone Club will send a team to South Africa in the autumn, with A. E. R. Gilligan as captain. M. W. Tate has accepted an invitation to take part in. the tour.—Sydney "Sun - Cable-. i YORKSHIRE VISIT TO AUSTRALIA DENIED London,-June 20. Mr. F. C. Toone, the Yorkshire secretary, who was also manager of the English team which visited Australia in 1924. and various newspapers are busy denying that the Yorkshire cricketers are going to Australia, but the "Daily Chronicle” made it clear that it was only a friendly and good-humoured interclianpe between the members of the teams while playing at Sheffield. Naturally the question of tours is in the hands of’the Board of Control—Aus.-N.Z. Cable Assn.