OUR CRICKETERS IN AUSTRALIA.

Feilding Star, Volume 4, Issue 675, 6 January 1926, Page 4

OUR CRICKETERS IN AUSTRALIA.

It is matter for rejoicing on the part of every lover of our national summer pastime that the team of Mew Zealand cricketers that has just finished its official programme for the tour of Australia has come through with, only one defeat. They were heaten as much, by Brisbane's heat in the first match of the tour as by Queensland’s team. But the special 'feature for congratulation was that in the three cities wherein cricket flourishes .Melbourne, Adelaide, and Sydney—out - men played the rep. teams there to a draw. This is a remarkable achievement, especially when it is considered that it was anticipated that our team would suffer several single-innings defeats. But nothing like that happened. Instead, it was the New Zealanders who shook up the enemy in the country districts. And during the tour Patrick and Co. had to face some “hot stuff,” yet they played the game as never before in the history of New Zealand rep. cricket. Tin’s encourages us to the belief that the 1925-0 tour of the New Zealand team will make for the turning point in the development of our summer pastime. No more will we go down ignominiously before any touring team from anywhere overseas in the future. Patrick and Co. have demonstrated that we can meet and adequately hold our own end up in the game on Australia’s own wickets. It should mean that never again will a New Zealand team, even in our centres, he beaten, as in the past, even before they lace the enemy. The psychology of success is more success, and that applies in sports and pastimes us in any other department of life’s interests and activities. At last we have learned to play cricket in the enemy’s own j backyard and hold our own end up. , It will have been • noticed, also, by j the observant that contemporaneous- i |y with surprising success of our touring team on the the other side

of Tasman Sea there have been unusually heavy scorings in the big games in New Zealand itself, where cricket has now become even much more than u.suaully interesting in all the centres: There are certainly signs in plenty that we arc now worthily playing the game of all games that count with Britons the world over.