DOES CRICKET NEED PLUCK?

Oamaru Mail, Volume XXXIX, Issue 10956, 22 December 1911, Page 2

DOES CRICKET NEED PLUCK?

FAMOUS PLAYER'S REPLY TO "8.P."

Lieut.-General Baden-Powell's attack on cricket, made at Clayesmore School and 1 reported in the Express, has drawn a spirited! reply from prominent cr l ck etc rs. "I do not much believe in cricket,;' the Chief Scout said. "I- find there is such a lot of waste of time about it_ There's too much personal swank about it. What we want is playing in teams, as we do in football." He added that the national pastime was not a game which needed pluck, instancing the case of an officer whom he hatUseen in battle—one who was captain of his school tearn and a schoolboy idol, but was • conspicuous by his absence when he came to a tight place. One of the keenest critics of Lieut. - Geiieral Baden-Powell's statement was Mr F. E. Lacey. Mr Lacey knows -is much about cricket as most men. He had made the fourth highest individual score ever known in a first-class match; he is Secretary of the M.C.C.,, and! as an ex-Soccer "blue" he is well able to judge of the respective merits of football and cricket.

"It surely must be obvious to everybody," he said to an Express representative on Saturday, "that cricket does require pluck' and determination as well. I have been black and uiue for weeks after playing fast bowlers on a fast wicket.

"I have plnyed'football—both Association and Rugby —for about fifteen years. I played Soccer for Cambridge. I should certainly say cricket requires as much pluck as either Soccer or Rugby." Mr A. E. Stoddart, the celebrated: Middlesex batsman, was terse in his comment. This was his brief reply to General Bad en-Powell's attack. "No danger? I wonder if Sir Robert Baden-Powell has ever played against Lockwood, Mold, or Tom Richardson?" George Hirst, the Yorkshire cricketer, was equally emphatic. "As to waste of time," he said, "I know that it has not been a waste of time so far as I am concerned'."

Mr A. 0. Jones, the captain of Notts, expressed mucn surprise at the statements. '"I must confess to a feeling of astonishment," he declared. "What better training can you have for boys than cricket? Have we not the saying that Waterloo was won on the playing fields of Eton? Cricket is an excellent training. There is discipline, for every player must notice liis captain. It passes me to make out how Lieut.Goneral Baden-Powell could say he does not much believe in cricket, and that it is wasted time. "Then as to cricket not needing pluck—is not pluck required of a cricketer who goes in to bat knowing that under circumstances which do not favor him the match .is against his side? There arc many fine cricketers in the army—take, for instance, only two, Colonel Poore and Major A. J. Turner.

"Waste of time? Well, we do not get much of that in these days. As to swank, it is a word of American importation, I suppose, and no two persons would interpret it to mean exactly the same thing. Swank, however, may be found anywhere, even among junior officers of the armv."

Tom Richardson, the Surrey fast bowler, said; "I have always found that cricket requires both pluck and endurance."