The Evening Star MONDAY, SEPTEMBER 12, 1927. OUR CRICKETERS.

Evening Star, Issue 19659, 12 September 1927, Page 4

The Evening Star MONDAY, SEPTEMBER 12, 1927. OUR CRICKETERS.

The Now Zealanders are playing the last match of their tour in the Old Country, lu most respects it has been a great adventure. When the team left those shores there was a good deal of diffidence as to how they would shape. The most usual forecast heard was that they might show themselves perhaps a little better than the second-class English counties, but would bo overwhelmed by the counties in the running for the championship. Nevertheless those who adopted this conservative attitude probably cherished the hope that j now and again our youthful pioneers ■would extend some of the stronger sides. They have certainly done so. And they have never collapsed, never been really overwhelmed. Middlesex had to fight to win; creditable draws were played against Surrey and Sussex, as well as against a M. 0.0. eleven; of the unfinished games which did not proceed very far because of weather, in only the match against Yorkshire were the New Zealanders loft very far behind; while New Zealand certainly had the best of the game against Gloucestershire; and the merit of the win over Glamorgan was ira- ’ mediately emphasised by the Welsh county’s sensational defeat of Notts and consequent plucking away of a long deferred county championship that seemed within its grasp. Our team’s j record is a good one—a better one than • the majority of its supporters expected. ; From a sporting point of view the ven- i tore has been abundantly justified. 1 From another point of view, however, I it has not turned out so well. Cricket is nob, or should not bo, a moncy-mak- i iug business. It does not attract the I crowds like football, yet requires a j larger expenditure. The most that was j hoped was that the tour would pay its I way, aud that those who put up the money at this end would not lose by their practical patriotism. This hope will not bo fulfilled, but the experience is no different from that of quite a few English counties, to whoso rescue supporters have had to come periodically to enable a team to bo placed in the hold throughout the season. Possibly the wet season in England, once the weather broke after the spring and early summer drought, has contributed to the small attendances. Yet one would have imagined that out of courtesy, out of curiosity, out of a desire to see sparkling cricket, many more people would have patronised the various grounds on the occasion of the Now Zealanders’ appearances thereon. For ( our men certainly did play the game and play it attractively. Many of them are free exponents of shots whose gradual disappearance, because of the “two-eyed stance” brought about by googly bowling, has been the lament of critics. Some of them, when in the humor (and this has not been infrequent) , have literally flailed the bowling. Though somo of the grounds played on may have been small, Dacrc and Lowry have liberally interspersed i their scores with hits over the ropes for six, which is popularly understood to be what a cricket-loving crowd delights to see as a contrast to the stolid methods often adopted by Australian and English batsmen as the tactics to avoid losing matches if not to win them. But it seems that the English masses now like the game less for its own sake, and if they do flock to the grounds, do it chiefly out of partisanship. To quote one English writer, “the championship table fetish bus caught hold of the crowd in most centres and a match without the competitive tag to it does not seem to draw.”

To the team itself, and to us iu New Zealand, the weather and the attendances have boon the only disappointments It is true that from their own personal part in it the tour must have been a bitter disappointment to two of its members. But this percentage of failure is not the exception among English elevens touring Australia and Australian elevens touring England that one or two members have not completely failed to reproduce their home form on foreign soil. And there is this to he said for Cunningham that ho has suffered from some form of muscular contraction;

while his captain has justified Oliver’s fairly frequent inclusion on the ground of his being tho outstanding fieldsman of them all, and as we well remember it was tho New Zealand fielding which English critics said at the beginning was tho department in which improvement was obviously called for. We assume, not entirely without grounds, that improvement has gradually been made, notably in the catching, but to what extent and how uniformly maintained wo have no accurate guide. Certain it is that a wise, thorough, and universally liked leader such as Lowry has proved himself would leave nothing undone, by precept and example, to ensure remedying the foundation of team work, in their captain the New Zealanders were indeed fortunate, and the encomiums on their deportment on the field and off indicate that the men have given him loyal support and little cause for anxiety. Though the tour is practically over, its real results in its influence on cricket in N v Zealand have yet to begin. They cannot fail to bo a stimulation of interest iu a game too long overshadowed by football in New Zealand, and improvement iu the standard of play ‘can hardly fail to accompany a heightened and widened interest. Otago had but one representative in tho team—and Blunt has fairly earned the title of its best all-round player—but wo hope that local cricket will share to the full iu the expected general advance, and that the engagement of Eastman, of Essex, by the Otago Cricket Association will do for it all that the oldtimers declare tho engagement of Lawton did for the local cricket in days long past.