The Christchurch Star. TUESDAY, OCTOBER 15, 1929. BRIGHTER AND LIVELIER CRICKET.

Star (Christchurch), Issue 18890, 15 October 1929, Page 8

The Christchurch Star. TUESDAY, OCTOBER 15, 1929. BRIGHTER AND LIVELIER CRICKET.

IF THE CRICKET authorities in England this month make the larger wicket a permanency, the rules will automatically apply to New Zealand, and every ball that has missed the wicket in the past by the proverbial coat of varnish will have another inch in width and height in which to do its deadly work. The new rules, which were tried in England last year, made for brighter cricket and livelier play, although it must be admitted that the unusually large crowds were attracted to some extent by the exceptionally fine summer. Batsmen of the highest class were not seriously affected by the larger wicket, but men of less skill, having an extra thirty-six inches to defend, had their run-getting seriously curtailed. The effect of all this was to increase the finished matches from a little over 50 per cent in 1928 to 72 per cent in 1929, and on this ground the new rule regarding the wicket justified itself. Opinion, however, is sharply divided on the new application of the l.b.w. law, and this change may not be endorsed by the Rules Committee. At first blush it would appear that rules designed to make batting more difficult would tend to make cricket duller, because the slump in cricket has been brought about entirely by stonewalling tactics and defensive play. However, the object of the changes was to reduce the proportion of drawn matches, and the success achieved in this direction may put an unexpected premium on bright and enterprising batting. In that case the new rules will be as welcome in New Zealand as they seem to have been in England. FENCES ARE NOT NEEDED. A PHOTOGRAPH in this issue shows how greatly the appearance of Sydenham Park has been improved by the removal of the fence on the Colombo Street frontage, and from the aesthetic point of view there can be no question whatever that such fences ought to be removed from all reserves. The only point, therefore, on which the City Council could feel justified in ordering the reinstatement of the fence was the safety of the school children who play in the park, and occasionally, it is said, dash across the street in pursuit of balls. At first blush the arguments of the Sydenham school committee on this point appear to be convincing, but we are inclined to think that children are not the heedless little beings that grandmotherly people imagine them to be. City children nowadays look before they leap. Moreover, they have a deep side channel on the park frontage and they have also two rows of trees as a reminder that they are near the danger zone. The risk of accidents is imaginary rather than real, and on this occasion we are entirely at one with Councillor F. R. Cooke in believing that the danger is non-existent. Unfortunately, the whole matter was not discussed entirely on its merits. In removing the fence without the approval of the City Council, the Works Committee seems to have been treading on somebody’s toes THE MAYOR AND THE NEWSPAPERS. 1C T>ECAUSE THE EDITORS of the newspapers laugh at us we just get down and crawl to them,” said the Mayor last night, in an effort to persuade the City Council to adhere to its decision to close the dance halls of the city at 11.30 p.m. on Saturdays. Unfortunately, there was not even a shadow of justification for his remark. The newspapers, indeed, have laughed most heartily at the City Council for doing just what it refused to do on this occasion, that is to say, for coming to a decision at one meeting and reversing it at the next, just as it has done in connection with the storing of the CUock Tower, and the abolition of parking in Colombo Street north, to take the two most recent instances. So far from crawling to anybody, the Council might be likened in its perversity to a well-known animal that goes on four legs. It is this somewhat porcine streak of perversity that is the cause of half the trouble. The newspapers want the City Council to build the art gaffery on a city section and not in the gardens; to discontinue the boulevard, with its wasteful expenditure of public money; to improve Cathedral Square, and not to go on disfiguring it; to leave Sydenham Park unfenced now that the Reserves Committee has had a brain wave on the subject, and not to make an ass of itself from one end of the country to the other by closing dance halls half an hour earlier, in a fruitless endeavour to stop abuses that are really not connected with the hour of closing. But in all of these tilings the Council pursues its headstrong course in a really comic endeavour to preserve its own dignity. We humbly admit that for the purpose of getting the decision regarding dance halls reversed we laughed too soon. In the normal course of events the Council could have been relied on to reverse its own decision, and the laughter should have been kept for that occasion.