VILLAGE CRICKET

Evening Star, Issue 20612, 11 October 1930, Page 26

VILLAGE CRICKET

VALUE IH ENGLISH LIFE “ Well, you may say what you like about old buildings, but I think you’ll have to admit that as a place for young peojle to grow up healthily, America’s got the old. world beat,” writes Alec. Waugh, in the London * Sunday Times.’ It was in New Orleans that an American said that to mgj For a day and a-half I had been sightseeing in that city of many fortunes, over whose towers five flags have flown, that might havo been, had not yellow fever ravaged the Haitian Plains, the pivot of a French colonial empire big enough to havo turned Napoleon’s eyes westward from the Russian snows. For months I had been curious to loiter under, the hand-wrought balconies of Roiyal street. But frankly I had been disappointed. The narrow streets seemed dingy and ill-kept. The shadow of Prohibition lay heavily upon the gaiety of the vieux carre. French restaurant is just not anything without its sommelier bending pontifically about a wine list. And however picturesque the little walled-in patios may be, you do feel entitled, in an old-world atmosphere, to order something stronger than near-beer. It was not till I had crossed the broad-bit pathway of Canal street that 1 got that sense of exhilaration, of a great wind blowing, that in the now world nearly always comes to mo. Indeed. New Orleans, with its two clearly differentiated worlds, its old quarter, full of history, and on the other side of Canal street its typical hundred-por-cout. modern American city, is a test of the way one’s inclinations turn; whether to the past and its achievements, or the future and its potentialities. To me personally tomorrow is more romantic than yesterday, and it was not the relics ; and trees of a colonial civilisation, but the broad streets, and the lights, and parks that thrilled me there. It was while we were driving through one of the parks that the American made that remark to mo. “As regards

athletics,” he said, “ and without athletics you can’t have a healthy race, have you anything in the world to equal this?” AN EXPENSIVE COUNTRY. On the surface he seemed justified enough. America is an expensive country. But for those who want fun cheaply there is plenty to be had. For a very few cents young people can, within a few minutes of their homes, play tennis on decent .courts, and swim in large open-air baths. I don’t suppose that any Englishman could drive through the parks of any American city, other than New York, without camparing the opportunities for healthy exercise that are given to the young people of America with the very limited scope that exists in England. 1 remembered that conversation three weeks later when I was back in England and on a cricket tour. It was a casual, light-hearted kind of tour. The first match was against the handiest village. It was not good cricket. It indeed, quite bad cricket; and, as happens in quite, bad cricket, the worse side won. And I could imagine that my American friend would havo viewed with pitying, if affectionate, commiseration the crumpled nature of the field, the uneven texture of the pitch, the stubbleclad hillocks of the outfield. “ So this,” ho would have said, “ is what you call a sports field.” Would havo said, that is to say, had he arrived at 3 o’clock, watched the game for an hour, and driven back to town.” Had he stayed the whole day, there are things that he could not havo failed to notice. He would havo noticed first that at half-past 1 the two sides repaired to the garden of the village inn, beneath the shade of whose oak trees wore set out upon long tables lettuces and choose and bread and beer, and that after the game there was dinner for the two sides in the village hall, and that after dinner there were songs and a speech or two; and noticing that he would have realised that this cricket match,, though it might he a kind that bore small relation to the game that is played at Ivonnington and St. John’s Wood, had managed t'o bring together on terms of complete equality for ten hours twenty-two men who might be said to represent in their

separate ways most sides of the nation’s life. Which was something that no form of athletics oould possibly do across the Atlantic for twenty-two similarly situated Americans. AMERICAN DIFFERENTIATION. It is as dangerous as it is tempting for the traveller to dogmatise about the countries that lie has hurried or loitered through, but nowhere in America have I seen athletics as a national democratic institution, as a means of union between the various classes in the State. In New Orleans, for example, there is at the top of the scale an exclusive country club where there are tennis .courts, a clubhouse, and a swimming bath; there is another park where,_ for so many nickels, you can quite pleasantly swim and hit a tennis ball. The athletic’s life in New Orleans is divided into classes. Athletics here would not bring the son of an affluent banker into touch with the son of his friend’s butler. In California, ,in most of the small towns, there will be base ball to ■ watch on Saturdays and Sundays. It will be played by the artisans, and a bag will he banded round the crowd. The well-to-do classes will be absent. The nearest approach that I have seen to democratic athletics in America was a rodeo in San Arno. One knew a good many of the cow-boys. One chatted to them before their show and after it. But even then one lacked the feeling of partnership in a common interest. The cow-boys were the performers, we the audinence. The importance of that, difference can_ scarcely be exaggerated. In America athletics mark class distinctions. In England they remove them. A partnership of fifty runs on the cricket field is a surer basis for friendship than fifty thousand words of Marxian philosophy. And however platitudinous it may sound to say so, I believe that the existence of village cricket in England and the absence of any equivalent for village cricket _in other countries, i gives to the_ English that sense of a corporate national life that other nations lack, and it was because of that I was able to drive without any feeling of envy through the I wide parks of New Orleans. I believe j that, in spite of those large parks, the credit balance is still upon our side.