CRICKET TOUR BANNED

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXXII, Issue 22004, 10 January 1935, Page 7

CRICKET TOUR BANNED

NO VISIT FROM AUSTRALIA!

BOARD OF CONTROL'S ACTION

DOMINION -TRIP VALUABLE

The Cricket Board of Control in determining not to sanction a team to visit New Zealand this season, runs counter to outside cricketing opinion, says the Sydney Referee's crickefa writer. The view is held in Sydney that —unless New Zealand stipulates that most of the leading players must he members of such a team —the Boar! is not in intimate touch with the deeper interests of cricket, which it is established to cherish, and with tho special interests of Australian representative cricket.

Even cricketers of standing are commencing to scoff at the Board. The,y are saying that it is no longer able to interpret the old generous spirit of adventure in the game, or to discern and encourage its gospel of catholicity and brotherhood in sport.

However, one does not think tho Board of Control has become heir to all the sins its critics and the cynics heap upon it. It may have become oligarchical, although within this oligarchy there is by no means the unanimity associated with oligarchs. But the Board is what crickotcrs make it, or what they deserve. If they want anything different, there is open to them recourse to the' associations, through the clubs, that is, if any activo cricketers have it in them to fight for their views on certain matters of concern to the game. Unearthing Young Talent

One's experience of cricketers off the playing field is that they are good fellows who may grumble, but not ono in 40 will put up a stern fight to get what he thinks right carried into effect. Cricketers of to-day are easy-going and indolent, in cricket away from bat and ball, yet they are not different from their brethren at any stage in the last 50 years.

The value of a tour through New Zealand in bringing on young Australians for test cricket, is beyond ques-l tion. There are some well-meaning butil superficial thinkers who affect to see; nothing in interstate second elevon'j matches and in State trials. Som<v States manage to meander along with-' out them—South Australia, Queens-J land, Tasmania, and Western Australia (to some extent). And, possibly as a consequence, they are not so often found basking or beaming in the highlights of their game. Representative; cricket would sink to mediocrity wera' ideas of that nature to become permanently dominant. In Melbourne, a little while back, one heard views in favour of sending a team to New Zealand expressed by men in important places in cricket. One hopes those men will not sit down under the weight of votes from other regions —some not striking in first-class cricket atmosphere—and allow assistance to New Zealand cricket to become just an item in the game's history. Private Tours If the board cannot see its way to send a team to New Zealand, it should have created no obstacle to a private one being organised to suit the New Zealand angle. Similar teams have been through the Dominion—some before the Board of Control had come into existence—and there is nothing on record to suggest that their experiences were not beneficial alike to Australian and New Zealand cricket. Some members of the board are apparently not aware of these teams having ever travelled across the Tasman to help their game.; New South Wales is sending an official team to Western Australia and a private team is to four North Queensland about Easter. If Victoria sends a team to Tasmania, there would be still so many first-class players left in the States that two good teams could be sent to New Zealand to play very attractively. And all this could be done without unduly handicapping any club in any city ambitious to take "premiers, 1934-35,"* after their name in the records.