Talk Of Lack Of Personalities In England's Cricket

Taranaki Daily News, 4 June 1934, Page 14

Talk Of Lack Of Personalities In England's Cricket

A QUESTION OF COLOUR IN GAME

ONE or two writers in England have been lamenting, lately, what they assert to be a scarcity of personalities in modern first-class cricket, and an absence of “colour” from the game. There is a sighing for another W. G. Grace, another “Ranji,” another C. B. Fry, another Sammy Woods, and so on. There is even a regret for the disappearance of the beards and side-whis-kers of the 19th century, and the moustaches of a generation ago! All this is very sad, no doubt, but scarcely material for earnest discussion. At any rate, it is not worth while arguing with anyone who, because “W.G.” bestrode the cricket of his day like a Colossus, seems to think that all cricket before that of to-day began and ended with him. Still, one cannot let the suggestion that there is no colour in cricket nowadays win by default, even if the colour in it is not the colour meant by the croakers.

Perhaps it was the lament about the absence of colour from modern firstclass cricket which caused the man wno cabled the description of the match between Oxford University and the Australian team to mention that F. C. de Saram, who scored 128, out ot 216 in the second innings of Oxford, is a Sinhalese. There have been other dark-skinned players from Ceylon who have played cricket at the great English universities, but 1 fancy that de Saram is the first from that island to play for one of these universities in an important match. Other Sinhalese, though, have played occasionally for county teams. And there have, as we all know, been from India in university and county teams m England.

Perhaps, too, the repining about there being not enough colour in first-class cricket now is occasioned by the fact that the most colourful personality m

the game in England to-day is not engaged in first-class play, but in Lancashire League games—L. N. Constantine.

However, do not fear, friend Reader, that I am about to wander into platitudinous remarks about the spread of cricket into many countries and among varied races To me, the most significant event of first-class cricket in the last few days is the appearance of Maurice Tate as acting-captain of Sussex. Cricket has been for 200 years so much a part of natural life in tawny Sussex” that unless one often glances over the names of its county players of late years one does not realise fully, until such a surprising event as the captaining of its team by a professional, the extent to which a county once rich in gifted amateurs has come to rely upon professionals for the .composition of its team.

Yet now, thinking back, one recalls how often Sussex has had captains who were born and bred in distant lands. India has provided two captains for Sussex—K. S. Ranjitsinhji and K. S. Duleepsinhji. Australia produced another—W. L. Murdoch. The regular captain of the county this year, A. Melville, is a South African. I fancy there have been others who had no acquaintance with Sussex cricket until they went to England on other cricket occasions. Some of the English-born captains of Sussex came to it from other

parts of England. Now, it seems, Sussex can produce neither one native-born amateur with both the ability and the time to captain the side, nor any nativeborn amateur, even without skill m captaincy, to play for the side regularly.

The Sussex professionals, . however, are Sussex-bred, and Tate is distinctively a “native <son.” And who can honestly claim that there are no personalities left in first-class cricket when one finds that the often-caricatured Tate, beloved by cartoonists for his conversational habits, his big feet, and his unconscious humour —a former captain of England and Sussex has described Tate as at once a charming companion and a real clown—is. even though only temporarily, captain of a county which, whatever its position in the championship competition, has always been in the forefront of the game itself?

I wonder if Tate, when he led Sussex the other day, felt as he said he did once when he had to make a speech. His speech was: “Gentlemen, I feel just like George Robey, all hot and bothered.” And the next day a Sussex paper reported that Tate had said: “Gentlemen, I feel just like George Robey, all hot and bottled.” A.L.C.