CRICKET’S GAY ADVENTURERS

Timaru Herald, Volume CXLIII, Issue 20782, 17 July 1937, Page 16 (Supplement)

CRICKET’S GAY ADVENTURERS

BRIGHTER PLAY PLEA Yesterday I w’as one of the fortunate ninety-odd thousand who crowded into Wembley Stadium to witness football’s grand finale and Sunderland’s great triumph. What a glorious spectacle the Cup-Final is, and with what healthy vigour the football season passes, writes a special commissioner in the “News of the World.” To-morrow—weather permitting! I shall be one of a few hundreds who will venture along to Lord’s, the Oval, or perhaps, Old Trafford, Worcester, or Cardiff, to welcome the new cricket season. What a contrast the tranquillity of the cricket fields provides to the noise, bustle, and excitement of football. Perhaps you prefer the sweet restfulness—dare I say, dignity!—of cricket to the convulsive excitement of football. Each man to his own choice, but I believe the most perfervid cricket devotee will admit that the time has arrived when more of the gusto and the enthusiasm of football must be introduced to the summer game. The way many, indeed the majority, of our county cricketers play the game nowadays is slowly, but surely, driving more and more people, who are at heart cricket enthusiasts, to other and more exhilarating sporting pursuits. Try as we may, we shall never succeed in bringing to Lord's, or to any other cricket ground, the atmosphere of Wembley on Cup-Final day. It is not necessary. But if county cricket—as distinct from club and international cricket—is to thrive, the players must realise, as footballers have been made to realise, that they must put vastly more into the game than they have been wont to do.

I have said it before, and there can be no harm in repeating it, since it is all-important to the future welfare of the game, the average man—or woman —does not care two straws how runs are made or how wickets are taken. They care even less about players’ averages.

People go along to cricket matches to be entertained. They are merely bored when a batsman takes four hours to make 80 runs, or even a century, on a perfect pitch. Let us try to be realists about cricket. It is the most scientific game in the world, and for that reason it is the most difficult to understand. Therefore, the average man never has bothered and never will bother, to understand the finer points of the game.

He does not care a rap whether Tom Jones bowls a googly or a leg-break. He does not know the difference between an in-swinger and an awayswlnger. It means nothing to him. But he can still appreciate, and enjoy, cricket, in spite of his lack of technical knowledge. All he desires is to see the ball cracked hard and often to the boundary, or the bails sent flying.

He may even applaud the snick through the slips that was intended for a drive through the covers! But what does it matter?

Such a stroke may make the man with expert knowledge squirm. But that Is just what I am trying to say—if cricket has to depend for patronage on those people who have a thorough knowledge of the game, then it’s good-bye to cricket!

The future success of the game depends on roping in all and sundry, and it can be done—at least on a much larger scale than has been the case—if players are wise. They and to a lesser degree, county committees, hold the key to success. We want more and more the spirit of the Hammonds, Barnetts, Glmbletts, and Wellards in county cricket. Are the gay adventurers of the game bred only in the West Country?

“It won’t always be easy to spot the difference between the bad bowler who gets a good wicket, and the good bowler who takes a bad one,” says the writer.

Well, really, that’s too bad. I didn’t think of it! Fancy, for instance, G. O. Allen bowling himself to a standstill on a flaming Jttae day at Lord’s, and returning an analysis of “None for plenty,” while someone else at the other end goes on for a few overs and diddles out five batsmen for 20!