ANOTHER ENGLISH ELEVEN.

Southland Times, Volume III, Issue 205, 19 January 1866, Page 3

ANOTHER ENGLISH ELEVEN.

! (From tlie Australian.) We Victorians, like Cape ostriches, are doomed it seems to be periodically plucked by English cricketers. The two years necessary for our feathers to grow again have scarcely elapsed, and we are I threatened with another invasion of English professionals. " Cricket must be allowed to decay," so writes Colonel Ward, whom ropst of us can remember, ten years I ago in the intercolonial matches, with his I peculiar attitudes, both as a batsman and bowler. And Cricket will decay, thinks the colonel, unless Wilsher Jupp, and the rising men of England come out to put a little new life into it. And the Colonel ought to be a good judge in such matters as he has seen plenty ot cricket, both in the old world and new. I must say, how ever, that I think our feathers have not yet grown enough to stand another plucking so soon. And I question very much if English professional cricketers are able to form a disinterested opinion on this subject, however great their love for " the noble game." Cricket in Australia made the fortunes of those cosmopolitan entrepreneurs, Messrs. Spiers and Pond. Victorian cricket enabled Parr and Co. to take home a nice little nugget a piece of Victorian gold ; and no doubt Victorian cricket wili for some time to come, do much to relieve that chronic impecuniosity against which we are told English professionals struggle from year to year in their own country. 500 sovereigns per man, aud all expenses paid, is not a bad way of commencing a season at Lord's or the Oval. The dead winter months of rain and snow exchanged for bright sunshine, feting, feeding, and lionising in the southern hemisphere ; the overland passage home, with a draft; to be crashed on arrival at the old country-— this it is, no doubt, wiiich has impressed Humphrey, Wilsher, and Co., and through them Colonel Ward, with the risk cricket runs of "going to decay" in these colonies unless they pay us a visit shortly. lam not at all disposed to take so desponding a view of cricket, nor do I think that at present, we are in so hopeless a condition as to require an English physician. The science of cricket has no doubt, been greatly improved in these colonies by Messrs. Stephenson and Parr, and periodical visits from an England eleven will no doubt pay both ways, both us in the improvement of our game, and our teachers by the handsome payment they get for their lessons. But cricket can be overdone ; and there is uo doubt that the present is a singularly inopportune time to broach the introduction of another England eleven.