WILL LAWN TENNIS KILL CRICKET?

Dominion, Volume 12, Issue 265, 5 August 1919, Page 7

WILL LAWN TENNIS KILL CRICKET?

(By "S.M." in the London "Daily Mail.") Cricket or lawn tennis-which is to be tho supreme English summer pastime? There can 1m no doubt that after a period of stagnation lawn tennis has again become extremely popular. This is undoubtedly due to "foreign invasions" and to tho Davis Cup competitions. There is nothing like healthy rivalry to inspire public interest, and a few years ago English champions at lawn tennis, wero practically unbeatable. Alike ,at home and on the Continent the championships resolved themselves into an unbroken sequence of semi-finals and finals between well-known English players. ..Foreign opposition was practically negligible. The lot of the English lawn tennis player, oven of the second rank, was cast in pleasant places then, but naturally public interest flagged. Then flic gamo took mighty strides on the Continent, and the advent of keen athletes from the United States, and Australia and New Zealand arrested the supremacy of the players from tho British Isles. Now, just as Arnaud Massy, by breaking tho long sequence of victories of the triumvirate, Braid, Taylor, and Vardon, at golf gavo that game a great fillip, so foreign' competition has instilled new lifo into lawn tennis. Buit will lawn tennis oust cricket from it? position aa our "national game"? I am inclined to think not. Lawn tennis affords fine exercise and is certainly very spectacular, but it is a selfish gamethat is, it lacks the pre-eminent characteristic of cricket and fotoball, namely, team play. In lawn tennis you aro playing for your own hand; jn our two na. tional games, cricket and football, you nre playing for your side. It was the lack of unselfishness that caused' erickci to lapse into unpopularity. Batsmen "anchored" themselves to the wicket. They were just content to stay thorn for (heir own individual satisfaction, hour after hour, making runs at rare intervals and apparently making no effort to win tho gamo. Fielders, i too, showed apathy 'and "a. certain liveliness]' was conspicuous by its absence. "Liveliness," howover, has made its reappear' ance in cricket this season, and with it! cricket will continue to hold pride o/ place in English games, because it pos sesscs that quality of team play whicl lawn tennis lacke. \