CRICKET AND ALCOHOL

Otago Daily Times, Issue 21300, 2 April 1931, Page 3

CRICKET AND ALCOHOL

LADY ASTOR’S STATEMENT COMEDY OF CABLES. (From Our Own Correspondent.) LONDON, February 17. On Friday night, in the House of Commons, when Mr Scrymgeour’s Prohibition Bill was under discussion, Lady Astor asserted that England lost the Ashes “ because the Australian cricketers did not drink.” Scenting a story the Daily Express cabled to the M.C.C. team in Johannesburg, and received the following reply:— Wo thank Lady Astor for the great interest she obviously takes in test cricket. We beg to state that she is guilty of a terminological inexactitude. For further information we suggest she applies to Richardson, Kippax, Ponsford, Grimmett, Oldfield and Hornibrbok. (Signed) Chapman, White, Wyatt, Peebles, Hendren, Hammond, Leyland, Goddard, Duckworth, Tate. Wyatt, in an interview, said that Lady Astor’s statement is not strictly correct, as some of the Australians were not teetotallers and some of the English team were. “I, myself, was in the English team, and I am a teetotaler.” A NEWSPAPER STUNT. Lady Astor sent the following cable to Mr Chapman: With reference to a statement signed by members of M.C.C. team sent to London Daily Express, may I urge signatories not to allow themselves to be used to make newspaper stunt. Everyone knows that if one takes two teams of young men of equal skill and if one team drinks and the other is teetotal, the teetotallers will keep their form more years and play more consistently well than the drinkers. This applies to all athletes, also to politicians, and even to journalists. In every walk in life, including cricket, we know of men whose brilliance has not survived regular drinking, even though never drunk. Best wishes for success of your tour.— (Signed) Nancy Astor. OUT -AND -OUTERS In a volume just published, “ With the 1930 Australians,” by Geoffrey Tebutt (Hodder and Stoughton) the author devotes a chapter to Tea, Teetotallers and Tests.” Not only were two of the leading members of the team outspoken total abstainers, but one or two more of the fifteen were also ‘ out-and-outers,’ and so many of the others confined their drinking to a rare sip of sherry when dining out that they too might, without descending to the splitting of hairs, be called total abstainers. Only three drank at all with any regularity; but even they wore ‘light’ drinkers. And it is worth adding they were by no means the least successful members of the party from a cricket point of view, and among the most successful socially.”