Leaves Of A Sportfolio

Taranaki Daily News, 4 June 1934, Page 14

Leaves Of A Sportfolio

MOT without reason, the Marylebone Cricket Club tagged its closure of the official aspects of the bodyline controversy, last year, with a suggestion that the Australian, Board of Cricket Control should make an effort to control that section of the Australian cricket crowd which is prone to become too blatant in its barracking of play and players. The Australian board has promised to make such an effort. Now though, the M.C.C. may not be altogether easy about the behaviour of a portion of England’s own mass of cricket spectators. For some weeks past officials of the Notts County ■Cricket Club, on whose ground at Trent Bridge the first Test match with the Australian team now in England will be played, have been receiving anonymous letters threatening various unpleasantnesses for the visiting team when that match is in progress. Officially, these scurrilous letters are treated without any seriousness, but one wonders whether or not the officials who receive them are, privately, as unconcerned about them as they make out.

There have been sections of crowds at big events in sport in Great Britain even more unsportsmanlike in their actions and barracking than any Australian spectators. It is not the little demonstration in the last part of the Australian cricket team’s match with Hampshire, at Southampton, which reminds me of that. Hooting the Australians who appealed against the continuation ot play in a bad light was not. in itself, a disquieting incident, although the fact that the Australians were obviously keen to make runs quickly—they sent' in three of their liveliest hitters^—left the demonstrators without any excuse at all. It is the disgraceful behaviour of 10,000 spectators at the British amateur golf championship which is the most pointed reminder of the liability even of many British spectators to allow their partisanship to overcome any appreciation of fair play that they may possess. .

There have been other ugly incidents at important golf competitions in Great Britain, but surely none worse than the treatment of J. McLean, young Scottish player, in his match with J. Wallace, also from Scotland. The crowd which had applauded McLean in the match that brought him into opposition with Wallace resorted even to physical coercion—crowding on to him to prevent him from swinging a club, and pushing him about —to prevent him from beating Wallace. Apparently the reason why the crowd wanted Wallace to win was that he is an out-of-worK artisan who had made a most praiseworthy effort to win the championship in his first appearance in the competition. But nothing can excuse the crowd's manner of manifesting that desire.

*** . ■ However much one may sympathise with Wallace, there seems to have been a rough-and-ready justice in the crushing defeat which Lawson Little, young golfer from America, gave to the man from Troon in f he final. It was justice not because Wallace allied himself with the crowd’s tactics—he did not — but because no one who had been assisted, even though unwillingly on his part, by a crowd to reach the final in that way could claim to have got into the final on his merits and nothing more.

It is known quite definitely that the crowds which have caused some ugly incidents at other important golf competitions were composed not of golfers but of people who had paid their shillings, or whatever the charge for admission was, simply with the purpose of seeing something that was regarded as a great event in sport. They are not of the type of people who attend a sport just for the sake of the sport itself, and who can appreciate its niceties: they are of a type that seeks sensation and that considers that payment of gate-charges is reason why it should shape the sensation to suit its own distorted ideas. The fact that these people are no more genuinely interested in one sport than another leaves them just as likely to decide, by a sort of mass-impulse, to pick upon a cricket Test as upon a golf championship for a display of their uncivilised manners. Fortunately, they cannot ( re-

sort so easily to physical brutalities at a cricket match as they can on a golf course.

•» * * QEVERAL intrepid men have demonstrated by their circumnavigations of the globe that craft small enough to be sailed by one man, or two men, can be navigated across the seven seas as safely as a large liner. Unless my memory errs, there/ was one instance in which a lone navigator undertook, for a wager, to complete his voyage round the world in a given time, but in the others time was not of the essence of the adventure. In all of these men it was the spirit of adventure that dictated the undertaking; the method varied according to other influences, among which was the urge to the life of a maritime hermit—the desire to be alone with the immense solitudes of trackless seas. Whatever the combination of motives, the practical result of all these adventures has been the same—a demonstration that safety in sailing the sea is not to be measured in terms of comfort and size of craft.

What, though, is the value, either practical or spiritual, of the round-the-world yach’t race which is to start from England in August? There surely is no practical value in it, for the race cannot add to the sum of human knowledge, or yield new ideas about the designing of yachts for deep-water cruising in heavy weather. The larger racing yachts of Great Britain and . America are designed now to give them stability in heavy, weather, and the smaller racing-cum-cruising yachts have had their weatherliness . ' increased by the results of experience of racing over the 3000 miles across the North Atlantic Ocean, and over the 900 miles or'so of the Fastnet Cup course. The practical purpose is limited by the average opportunity for yachtsmen to engage in long-distance racing in deep waters—and there are very few men indeed who have the time, the opportunity. and the inclination to contemplate voyaging round the world in small craft. In any case, the vessels used for this race will be not craft specially built for the • purpose, but boats of proved weatherliness over shorter routes, adapted for living in on a round-the-wOrld voyage. * * * Small sailing craft such as have been used, and will be used, bv the lone navigators of 30.000 miles of ocean are more weatherlv and seaworthy than the pinnaces in which many maritime adventurers, with small companies, of men, put out across uncharted seas in the 16th century. \ * * * . Is there any deepening of the spirit of adventure in having a race round the world in small craft? If there is, it is beyond my comprehension. The urge to beat other men is added to the desire to pit one’s wits and physical capacity against the strength and vagaries of the sea and the winds. But the oceans are formidable enough to small vessels, and the introduction of racing into the venture brings into it an element of foolishness which lessens the enjoyment, personal or vicarious, of conflict with wind and wave. No doubt yachtsmen in the ports of call for the little vessels in the race will appreciate the hardihood of their sailors, but probably will be wanting in the fullness of sympathy and admiration, in the call of spirit to spirit, that they have had for lonely voyagers across the oceans who needed no extraneous cultivation of the spirit of adventure. A. L. C. R. B. Loudon, noted flank-forward for New South Wales and Australia, recently played his Isoth match in Sydney’s first-grade Rugby* He has played for the Manly Club almost throughout his . long career. Loudon is a Canterbury product, and was at Christ’s College in 1914. • V. # The Bombay quadrangular cricket tournament, which was discontinued after the 1930 matches because of political differences, is to be revived this year, between teams representing Hindus, Mohammedans. Parsees, and Europeans. It will be held in the last part of November and the earlv part of December.