CRICKET TOURS.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXIV, Issue 19799, 21 November 1927, Page 8

CRICKET TOURS.

New Zealand cricket is developing rapidly. After the splendid success attending the tour of England just completed, it was certain that more visits overseas would be planned, more efforts made to enter the select company which meets to compete for international honours. The New Zealand Cricket Conference has adopted a policy toward that end. It has been decided that the programme for each period of six or eight years, in future, will include a visit to England, and another to Australia. It is a more modest arrangement than the regular inter j change of visits between Eng land and Australia, but in the meantime it provides as large an undertaking, probably, as this country could handle. As time goes on, the present objective of seeking experience, and profiting by lessons learned, will give way to greater ambitions. The desire to field the very best team available will result in the call to service coming to outstanding players time after time, as long as they maintain their form. If teams are sent away too often, cricket may become to some players a serious interruption to careers which may not survive the recurring breaks. The conference has seen the danger, and endeavoured to provide against it. That it should found its policy on so broad an interpretation of its duties, that it should consider its players as citizens, not merely as cricketers, is a pleasing and a reassuring sign. It will be well if the authorities governing the gamealways keep so just a sense of values. For the sake of the players, as well as for the avoidance of forced development, a tour every three or four years, with the inevitable return visits, should be ample. Under this arrangement the* game should advance as rapidly as anyone could wish. ,