COMPARISON

Wanganui Chronicle, Volume LXXXIII, Issue 19773, 22 February 1927, Page 5

COMPARISON

MELBA AND PONSFORD CRICKET CRITICS’ OPINION. “Melba may sing to us for £5OO a night-. Why may not Ponsford accept £l5OO a year for pleasing as many people?” asks the Evening News cricket writer, commenting on the remarks of Mr. W. P. McElhone, president of ihe N.S.W. Cricket Association. “There, is not much territorial feeling about cricket,” he continues. We have all enjoyed the Surrey-Middlesex matches in which Hayward .-aid Lockwood were opposed to Warner and Albert Trott, though none of them was born within the county he represented.

“Mr McElhone overlooks the player’s right to sell his abilities in the best market. If we had not done a bit of ‘poaching* we would never have seen Albert Trott, Tarrant, Vogler. Llewelyn or Macdonald. “There is too much dictation by men who take the gate money to those men whom the public pays to sec. When the Australians realise that £20,000 of the sum paid by the English public solely to see them play is remaining after the expenses have been covered they naturally are irritated, and that differance of £5O in the bonus becomes an affair of ultimatums. If the enormous profits from test tours unsettle the players Australia should take a smaller percentage or pay the players better.” Colonel F. S. Jackson, a former English captain and now Governor-desig-nate of Bengal, in an interview, sn : I “The bonus is an open door to professionalism. The payment of a def mite sum agreed on beforehand is different. It would bo far better if the Board of Control offered the players £6OO outright, plus travelling expenses. There would be no stigma of professionalism in that. Had Blackpool secured Ponsford Australia would have had a just grievance. ”