Untitled

New Zealand Herald, Volume XX, Issue 6636, 23 February 1883, Page 4

Surely if anything could absorb public attention it ought- to be a sudden dissolution, an appeal to the country, and the decision of the fate of a Government. Yet a cablegram which we print from Melbourne informs us that " the deep interest which has been taken in the late international cricket match has completely eclipsed the impending general elections." This is carrying devotion to an athletic game to au absurd ani mischievous extent. We strongly believe in the sound mind in the sound body, and that unless the body is kept sound the mind will soon become diseased, but it is questionable whether this eager and absorbing interest ill cricket, to the exclusion of everything else from the attention of yiiuna men, is

not mentally degrading. There are some young men who, instead of using cricket as a means of fitting themselves for the work of life, as occasional relaxation, devote an amount of attention to it which prevents them from becoming accomplished in the work at which they have to earn their livelihood. Australia appears to be very much worse than New Zealand in this respect. Recent visitors to "the other side" tell us that the youth there look upon Murdoch and B.innermnu and the other cricket heroes of Australia as greater men than any that have ever appeared in history, greater than warriors, or poets, or philosophers, or statesmen. Boys see that cricketers are regarded as national heroes, and that they are constantly received everywhere with copious incense offered up by reverential worshippers.