CRICKETERS’ CLUB

Sun (Auckland), Volume 1, Issue 91, 8 July 1927, Page 10

CRICKETERS’ CLUB

INQUESTS AND CHESS ARTHUR MAULEY’S IDEA When he isn’t playing cricket, Arthur Mailey is busy sketching for the Sydney papers, or writing an entertaining little skit on the game he loves. Here is Mailey’s idea of the cricketers’ club, which it is proposed to form in Sydney: I do not know of any game, perhaps with the exception of bull-fight-ing, where the social side is so neglected as in cricket (observes the famous “googlie” bowler). There is some excuse for the bullfighter, wh# probably spends the intervening time between his performances, in the hospital, and his opponent does not as a rule participate in any after-dinner post- mortems. Cricketers are different. They love an inquest almost as passionately as does a golfer. But even cricketers t-an see the light occasionally, and now there is a possibility of a club being formed, where players may meet and recount "deeds of valour.” Attempts have been made in years past to start a club, but somebody threw a spanner I into the machinery, and the works suddenly stopped.

The cricketers of New South Wales own a building in George Street, which is probably worth £50,000, and there is a movement to erect a larger building (which work, I hope, will be given to a cricketer architect) where facili-

ties for an up-to-date club can be easily arranged.

Cricket in Australia, and New South Wales in particular, will benefit if the younger players are given the opportunity of mixing and conversing with those who have gained a fair amount of knowledge on the bitter, but very interesting, road of experience. I can almost see a future Australian XI. captain sitting in the club on the eve of a Test match, wondering what tactics he will adopt on' the morrow. Then we can say to him, “There’s Alf. Noble and Warwick Armstrong playing chess over in the corner. Go and have a yarn with them.”