CRICKET IN THE PROVINCES.

Taranaki Daily News, 4 March 1935, Page 4

CRICKET IN THE PROVINCES.

The Town versus Country cricket match at present being played at Wellington gives emphasis to a serious weakness in the development of cricket in New Zealand. Cricket and football are still regarded as the most important national games of New Zealand, but they have been developed along different lines. In Rugby Union football there are a comparatively large number of major unions, and owing to the frequency with which representative teams meet one another there is ample opportunity for the best players to improve and be judged at their true value. In cricket, on the other hand, the four chief cities of the Dominion, under the name of the “major associations,” have in effect isolated themselves on a pedestal, and a wide gap separates them from the provincial, or “minor” associations. The protracted nature of the Plunket Shield competition has completed the isolation. This annual quadrangular tournament engages almost all the attention of the major associations, with the result that players in the minor associations are left to compete amongst themselves in a separate group, and they have little opportunity of improving their play (and, incidentally, their match temperament, which is a most important thing in cricket) by meeting the city players. A psychology is created against them in favour of the city players, and rarely is a provincial player able to gain inclusion in a New Zealand team. Not so long ago the non-inclusion in the Wellington team of any provincial players in the Wellington Plunket Shield district (which includes Taranaki, Hawke’s Bay, Manawatu and Wairarapa) was the subject of comment at a Wellington association meeting, and one member replied that there were no players in the country worthy of selection. Yet on the form displayed in the Town versus Country match the Country team, even though it is not fully representative of the provinces referred to, is more than holding its own with the city players. One cannot help feeling that under the present Bystem of administration the country players are not being given a fair opportunity to excel, and that the game from a national point of view is suffering on that account. One suggested solution is the formation of a fifth Plunket Shield district; another that the present Plunket Shield teams should play regularly against the neighbouring provinces. Whatever is the best course of action is for the authorities to decide, but there is a strong case for amending the existing position.