The Basin Reserve.

Free Lance, Volume IV, Issue 164, 22 August 1903, Page 18

The Basin Reserve.

THE taking cf the electnc tiam line through the Basin Reserve has been the cause of a lot of discussion both in and out of the papers during the last for+nrght. It seems to be a generally accepted fact that ultimately the line will have to go through the Reseive, but many think it need not do so jet. We have heard a lot about the "street-widening schemes of the City Council— well . it appears to me that no great engineering difficulties would have to be surmounted to leave the portion of the Basin Reserve used b\ the cricketers intact, and yet lay a tram-line which would not have any awkward corners in it. It is a certainty that the Caledonian Hotel when re-built will be back to the accepted width by the street-widening scheme of Adelaadp-road What is to prevent a semi-circular line being constructed which would cut into the Basin Reserve on the Caledonian Hotel side, skirt the Fountain on the far side of the Reserve, and come out of the Reserve at the top of Kent Terrace., ioinmg the present line in Cambridge Terrace some little distance down the road? The Basin Reserve is the only place on which cricket can be played with any comfort in Wellington. Cricket does not wholly and solely consist of playing 'matches Saturday by Saturday — the work at the practice nets, naght after night, is what makes crioketert. Just think for a minute what it means for a young fellow leaving work at five o'clock to have to go to Newtown Park, Athletic Park, Russell Terrace, or Duppa-street, so as to get his ten minutes' strike 9 Would it be worth the candle, and would not many of our promising cricketers get sick of the trouble to get that strike, and give the game best altogether p As for the Newtown Park, it would be a couple of seasons before it would be fit for cricket, and even then it would want an expert groundsman at work on it to bring it into anything like decent order for playing cricket. I am willing to grant that it looks beautiful to the eye, but I invite any councillor that likes — Councillor Barber for preference — to walk over the Newtown Park with "Father" Ashbolt, and if the latter cannot in five minutes convince him of the huge undertaking it would prove to get Newtow n Park in the order necessary to nldv big cricket matches on, he is not the kind of man I take him for.