CRICKETERS WHO WRITE

Southland Times, Issue 21835, 12 October 1932, Page 6

CRICKETERS WHO WRITE

If his writing activities keep Bradman out of Test cricket in Australia this season, the games will be robbed of much of their interest, and the Tests will not be an adequate 9 trial of strength, but the Board of Control has not been unreasonable in declaring that players should not engage in writing criticisms of games in which they are engaged. It might have taken up an unassailable position and made this embargo apply to

players who happen to be men whose sole occupation is writing, but it has not done so and the controversy centres about Bradman who happens to be a phenomenal batsman whose name can be exploited for newspaper purposes. This feature in sport has been developed extensively in comparatively recent years, and newspapers which care more for the exploitation of a name than for the quality of the matter they publish are largely responsible for this. Without intention, they are undermining the whole edifice of criticism, the value of which lies in detachment from the rivalry of competition. The true critic is the complement and not the rival of the artist, and one of the greatest of his virtues is that he can speak or write from the viewpoint of the expert observer whose view is not swayed by personal or national interests. It is well-known that the great artist is rarely a sound critic, and as the men who are engaged to write because they have become famous in sport are usually artists, they are rarely, if ever, properly equipped to act as critics. The value of what Bradman writes on cricket is determined, not by the soundness of his views or the scope of his experience, but by his extraordinary batting figures. On the other hand Bradman argues that he has been able to stay in Australia because engagements to write on the game have given him an occupation sufficiently lucrative. Australian cricket, of course, is greater than Bradman or any other individual player, and there should be a middle way out of the deadlock. It might be found in elimination of criticism from any writings on the games in which he is actually a participant, and it might take a better, a more patriotic course, with the newspaper syndicate that employs him freeing Bradman, without any monetary loss to him, from his engagement to write on the Test games during theii’ currency. That self-denial would be appreciated and it would show that the engagement made with Bradman was made with the idea of forwarding the best interests of the game.