FICKLE PUBLIC.

Star (Christchurch), Volume XLIV, Issue 714, 18 March 1933, Page 13

FICKLE PUBLIC.

Beaten Athletes Too Readily Discredited. CRICKET REPUTATIONS. We are sometimes prone in this country to become unduly pessimistic over our athletes, states a Sydney cricket writer. Too readily do we discard our champions because of an alleged failure or two. Because, this season, we have lost the cricket Ashes, many and varied have been the comments on our players—comments tinged with acid reflections on their skill and courage and a general air of melancholy which cannot fail to transmit itself to the players. We have, I think, quite failed to give due credit to O’Reilly, for example. Here is a man in his first season against England, depending on skill and brains for his success, and pitting his wits against those of the batsmen with considerable credit to himself. He has, time after time, worried the best batsmen of England and has got them out. Then we come to Bradman, unsettled by internal troubles and by sickness. Here is a champion batsman, the finest in the game, facing for the first time a form of attack especially designed for his discomfiture. He has had to meet fast-rising balls on his body. His lack of inches has made the task all the harder. Therefore, he worked out an unorthodox method of meeting unorthodoxy. Two months ago he expressed his intention of trying to overcome Larwood by stepping away and hitting the ball into the open off-field. Bradman has to make runs. He had the courage to depart from text-book batsmanship, and \ve should appreciate the fact that he is game to try new methods where old ones have failed.

Nobody could say, I think, that our cricket is perfect, or that the standard is what we would like, but is there reason for despair? I do not think so. The batting of O’Brien, Darling, Fingleton, Nagel and some of the other young ones has been most encouraging. Bromley, from what I can hear, is a player with a future. Fleetwood-Smith has plenty of bowling in him. He can, and should, be developed. Brown, Rowe and other lads show promise, and the wicket-keeping is in safe hands with Oldfield and Walker about the place. Then -we have Bradman, M'Cabe, Wall, O’Reilly—all with years of cricket ahead of them. Meanwhile, let us remember that our players have done, and are doing, their best, and that they deserve our support. By the time they go to England, the vexed question of body-bowling will have been settled by the M.C.C. If it is stopped, everything will be well. If that august body decides that it is all right for the batsman to be forced to use his bat to protect his body, rather than to make strokes, then the air at least will be cleared, and our chaps can adopt the same tactics.