USE OF LEISURE

Evening Post, Volume CXVI, Issue 79, 30 September 1933, Page 6

USE OF LEISURE

JARDINE AND CRICKET

A LITERARY LUNCHEON

(From "The Post's" Representative.) LONDON, August 18. D. 11. Jardine, captain of the M.C.C., was the principal, guest at Foyle's Literary Luncheon, held at Grosvenor House. Sir John Squire presided over a largo gathering, at which Jardine quoted that definition of cricket, given by a New Zealandcr —"That beautiful, beautiful game which is battle and service and sport and art"—as the worthiest that ho knew. In welcoming Mr. Jardine, Sir John Squire said that they had heard all about him recently. Ho was the "Monster from tho Antipodes," "Douglas the Killer, who tells his men to go out and shoot the balls straight at their heads and don't care twopence about cricket." He fully bore out his reputation as the cave man. (Laughter.) Nevertheless, Sir John hoped that he would remain captain of England for another ten years. In his short speech 'Mr. Jardine said: "In the world as it may be, it seems that there is going to be more leisure for many .of us than there has been hitherto. Ever since the earliest Greek civilisation the test of culture has been the ability to make use, and good use, of your leisure, and cricket is a nice, leisurely game, though it does not produce the thrills which I am told one finds in dog-racing or dirt-track racing." WR_TIN» ABOUT CRICKET. He thought it important that the way in which this future world might spend some of its leisure should be well written about, and the romance of any sport brought out. So many people who wrote about cricket today could write exceedingly well about the green grass and the conversation in tho crowd, but what they wanted was some genius who could draw an accurate picture of an Australian barracker in full cry.' "We want someone," he went on, "who can bring out the best that is in this game "which makes at least this appeal to literature: it has a future and it has had a great past. It is one of the few of our sports left which has uot yet been speeded up—and I say that with all due deference to the pace of the English bowling." In proposing the toast of "Literature and Cricket," Mr. H. D. G. Leve-son-Gower pleaded guilty to the nickname of "Shrimp," and added that he had cherished another nickname, "Snipe," bestowed upon him by the late AY. G. Grace. Mr. Alec Waugh, responding, said ' that'the literature in relation to cricket was small in comparison with, the literature that had been inspired by other branches of sport. But, smallthough it was, it was lovingly cherished 'by ' its admirersi The literature 0f... cricket had for the most part, in fact almost entirely, not been contributed by professional writers. Speaking as a writer of fiction, he would say that the great difficulty in regard- to writing about cricket was the absence of what was called an obviously romantic interest. He did not know if any young woman had ever been proposed to on a cricketground, but he could imagine that many girls had broken off their'engagements because they had "been dragged round to watch cricket matches. The real literature about cricket was written by cricketers; that was, by people who had been, moved to write on a subject that they really understood.