CRICKETERS' EARNINGS

Dominion, Volume 12, Issue 241, 5 July 1919, Page 8

CRICKETERS' EARNINGS

. ■ ' WHAT PROFESSIONAL PLAYERS RECEIVE. (By A County Player, 'in the "Daily Mail.") Jockeys get fat fees and handsome presents; boxers earn big purses; professional billiards players enjoy handsome incomes; and the earnings of footballers aru not to be despised when it is remembered that they seldom play more than two gunios per week. Compared with these, the' man who plays cricket for his bread and butter leads a very strenuous life, and is not at all well paid. His season lasts for only four or Jive months, and during that tinio he must devote every moment of hUf time to tho countjj which employs him'. During the rest of the year lie recoives a retaining fee which is seldom moro than 255. per week. His fees lor county matches are smaller than most people imagine. Five pounds for a home match and M for an "away" game, with a bonus of .£1 for a wiu, is about the average. Some counties aro increasing these sums while the cost of living remains at its present level—others consider that in paying Ihe old threeday fees for two-day games they aru treating their players handsomely. Supposing a player is engaged regularly throughout the season, playing, say, two matches per week, and that the wins and losses about balance, then his income would be some Mi weekly. - To this must be added his ground s'talf pay, M, or, at the most, J!3 per week—not always paid when ho is drawing match fees. For journeys over a certain distance he receives an allowance which (.bout covers this item in his expenditure. But his. hotel bills, his kit, and clothes ho has to buy himself, and these aro very expensive items. If, throughout the season, he makes a clear .£11) per week he is lucky.

TaJent money brings him in a little, if lie is lucky. Some years ago.it was tljo practice to award talent money by hard and fast rules—,£l for every 3(1 run's uiade, and tho same amount tor every live wickets taken in a match. 11 was a had system. Fifty or even MO runs under perfect conditions are sometimes no more difficult to make than 25 or 30 on u "glue^pot." So I'ar as the bowlers «ro concerned the old system was even more unjust. Four good wickets, perhaps tho best four, entitled a bowler to nothing.

Just before the war a n&v system came into vogue. It consists in awarding points, each of tho value of, let us say, ss. They aro allotted to any player' whoso work merits them, according to circumstances. Thus a-plucky twenty at a. crucial moment .may receive the same reward as tho fluent fifty before things were going badly. The bowler who has trundled •with skill, bui. whose work has boon dogged by misfortune, wilt pick up his fair sharo of marks and good fielding will reap its just reward.

Talent money does not lot up lo a very enormous sum. Twenty pounds in a season would 'be considered ;i fail- haul by most plajvrs. and 'ho nvieks, who ninko heaps of runs, are novor likely to do more than to double this amount.

The leading player.-.—those, lhal. is, whose places in representative' sides are almost assured--earn a. liltle more. for Test Hatches their fee is .£2O, whilo.lho pay for a. .Gentlemen vers-us Flayers gamp is just half as much. But nuc of Ihe finest all-round crickelers England oyer possessed confesses that Ihe grealesl amount he over earned in (.no season was less I ban MOD.

There are about lo be submitted lo the Senate of th e University of .London, in the interests of demobilised oliieeis and men, of released war workers, and other poisons, proposals for storting nest session within the university a special two-years' •■jonrse of comprehensive study for intending journalists and for instituting a univuriity diploma in journalism In bo awarded aflir examination to students faking tho special course. Major Inglis, Fellow (if lung's, andInto. (Jiivcrsily Loci liter 'n M.c-ehanic-.il Engineering, has been appointed Professor ol' Meihniiism and.Applied Mechanics at' I'ainliriilgo University, lip is understood to have rendered i;ico.t service in bridge-making at the front. Fiilliain Borough Connc-ii has eutlnrised the borough engineer lo pioMd with the manufacture of bricks frur.i clr.ik.-r and lime. it is estimated thai such bricks can be made lor I'-fis. per lOi'il.