AN ACORN, NOW AN OAK

Evening Post, Volume CVIII, Issue 141, 11 December 1929, Page 12

AN ACORN, NOW AN OAK

Some interesting cricket history, full of the shadow of coming events (now come), is found in the London weekly "Cricket." of 241h April, 1902. The date indicates a long step backward into the past, but an article in "Cricket" carries back a little bit farther still, by quoting an editorial published on 10th December, L9Ol, in the "Evening Post," which was then formulating the case for direct exchange of cricket tours between New Zealand and the Mother Country. The position at that time obtaining was dominated by the "gate" factor. An Australian cricket team in England could produce a financial surplus; so could an English team in Australia. But to extend llie lour of an English team from Australia to New Zealand meant losing money. Who was to lose it? Was New Zealand to find the whole loss? Would Australia in some way contribute to the solution of the problem, which involved considerations of personal time and convenience as well as finance? The problem of Australia's poor relation (using the phrase in a cricket sense) had been so little dealt with that the "Evening Post" of 10th December, 1901, was able to show that no English cricket team had visited New Zealand between 1887 and 1901; and that when Arthur Shrewsbury's eleven was in New Zealand in the | former year it played only in WelIlington and Christchurch. In the j intervening fourteen years four EngU jlish elevens had visited Australia j without touching this country. New Zealand was indeed so much out in the cold that the "Evening Post" adjyocated direct tours; and though the idea took long to root, from that seed has sprung the development which was consummated yesterday in the arrival of the Marylebone Cricket Club's touring team. Another M.C.C, the Melbourne Cricket Club, was in those days a ruling force at the Australian end. Someone in New Zealand, in forwarding the "Evening Post's" editorial to "Cricket," wrote to "Cricket's" editor as follows:

We in little New Zealand are not to have a visit from Maclaren's eleven, and so long as English teams come out under the auspices of the Melbourne Cricket Club we are not likely to have them, the expense and the loss of time which tho visit would involve being powerful difficulties in the way.

It should perhaps be interjected here that Australia this season has financiallyhelped New Zealand by arranging several Australian matches with the M.C.C. team en route, on. a basis that gives New Zealand 75 per cent, of net proceeds as an aid to financing the tour; and for this solid monetary assistance New Zealand is grateful, and she is grateful also to the i visiting Englishmen for the personal exertions that made possible the rather exacting Australian portion of the itinerary. In its article in 1901 this paper said:

It would not be necessary to bring out a too powerful eleven, but at the same time one should be brought from which the Maorilanders would lcai'n something.

There is good reason for believing that the M.C.C. team will fill the bill, and that New Zealand cricket, helped nowadays by the long-sought-for English connection as well as the Australian connection, will continue its upward progress. , Another tit-bit from the old number of "Cricket" is the contemporary judgment of F. S. Ashley-Cooper that the then just completed tour of Maclaren's eleven in Australia would not have resulted in England's loss of four Tests out of five if Maclaren had chosen "safer and less brilliant batsmen. ... On Australian wickets it is the patient batsman who 'meets with most success." / Herein lurks the germ of the "digging-in" controversy, the cure of which seems to be to breed more Bradmans.