BEATEN BUT NOT DISGRACED

Evening Post, Volume CXXIII, Issue 129, 2 June 1937, Page 10

BEATEN BUT NOT DISGRACED

Sporting circles in Australia and New Zealand will be a little disappointed with the performances of their representatives in the latest lawn tennis and cricket contests respectively. Australia has sustained a crushing defeat by the United States in the Davis Cup match, losing all four singles and the doubles. New Zealand, after making a brave show at cricket on the famous Old Trafford ground, has been beaten soundly by Lancashire, so the cable messages announced today, by the ample margin of eight wickets. Australia's lawn tennis debacle was largely the result of ill luck, Quist and McGrath both being more or less incapacitated by illness, leaving Crawford an impossible task in the face of a strong American team. The New Zealanders, however, had done quite well against a first-class cricket eleven and were fairly safe for at least a drawn game, when Page, their captain, elected to take a sporting chance of victory; or

defeat by declaring with the score 227 for six wickets, leaving Lancashire two-and-a-half hours in which to get 196 runs to win. This the county learn succeeded in doing for the loss of two wickets. To criticise cricket tactics, when one is not on the spot, is always risky, but i£, would seem, on the face of it, with the scores as they were and the time available, that the New Zealand captain was rather premature and precipitate in his decision to declare at that stage. Still the conditions might have Warranted confidence, and it is unlikely that the decision was made without consultation. If the judgment was proved erroneous by the event and the game lost, there is at least the satisfaction that the New Zealanders were far from disgraced. One of the most pleasing features in this, as in the previous matches of the tour, is the capacity of most members of the team to get runs. If none, of them has yet made a'century, the average performance is distinctly promising, and the bowling and the fielding are fully up to expectations.