LEAVES OF A SPORTSMAN’S NOTEBOOK

Sun (Auckland), Volume I, Issue 122, 13 August 1927, Page 11

LEAVES OF A SPORTSMAN’S NOTEBOOK

The New Zealand cricket team’s performances in Great Britain have stimulated national interest in cricket in this Dominion. They have brought appreciably nearer the time when this country may expect to be engaged in real test matches with the best elevens of England and Australia. But it should be recognised that until New Zealand reaches that status it should not expect its cricketers to command the attention that would make tours of Great Britain very profitable. To the general public there need not be any poignant disappointment with the attendances at the present team’s matches in the Old Country. Cricket in England is on such a very different footing from that of Rugby football that until New Zealand plays test cricket matches, and arouses such interest as is taken in the tour of an Australian eleven, its cricketers will not attract the attention that is given to a Dominion Rugby team. The county competition at ITome fans county patriotism, and cricket enthusiasts are concerned much more with the doings of their county sides against one another than with matches that do not bear on the county championship. The man who admires fine cricket for its own sake alone may go to see the New Zealand cricketers when they are in hitting mood, but he is not of a common type, and the team that earns a pecuniary profit must needs be one that arouses national pat-riotism-—over-riding parochialism—and stirs some feeling for the cricket prestige of the British lion. If the New Zealanders were scheduled to play test matches against All-England they would draw a much larger number of curious spectators to their matches. The measure of public interest in the New Zealand team’s games is indicated fairly accurately by the space given to them in the provincial newspapers in the Old Country. The descriptions and comments are very short in comparison with the space given to games in the county competition. The reports cabled to the New Zealand newspapers are very much longer than the average reports in the English papers, apart from those in a few—very few —journals devoted wholly to sport. Indeed, it may be said, quite fairly, that the average cricket enthusiast in England knows little about the New Zealanders until after they have departed from his own county, and what he learns then is generally by word of jnouth. To the great bulk of the British people the New Zealand team is unheralded and unsung. CARLYLE AND THE DERBY A correspondent of the Manchester “Guardian” remarks that before memory of this year’s Derby has been

washed away it may be worth while to note that the greatest of ail modern writers in his class was given an opportunity of describing the Derby. At some time, apparently, while he was engaged upon the “Life of Frederick the Great” Thomas Carlyle was offered 1,000 guineas “for a description of the Derby Day to which his name should be appended. Mr. David Alec Wilson, who notes the fact in the latest volume of his “Life of Carlyle,” does not disclose the name of the editor —surely unique in the fifties—who made this astonishing proposal, nor; unfortunately, does he quote Carlyle’s letter of refusal, which would be a delightful piece of copy. A point of particular interest is this: that to-day, after half a century or so of journalistic expansion, not the biggest name in the market would command a higher figure for a Derby “special” than the one Carlyle was pleased to decline. BOXING'S LOSS The death of Freddie Welsh emphasises, by its reminder of more glorious days, the comparative poverty of British boxing to-day. After the retirement of Freddie Welsh, Matt Wells, Johnny Summers, and Jimmy Wilde, and the death of Joe Driscoll, the lighter weight classes in British boxing have been without a man of really world-wide prominence. There certainly has been none whose doings have aroused keen interest on this side of the world, and so, by the absence of precept in style and methods, there has been a certain loss to boxing in Australia and New Zealand, too. The present crop of heavyweights is poor, too, but here the weakness has been with English boxing so long that it is not felt so much as the more recent loss. RUDENESS, OR SPORTSMANSHIP In truth, 1 must be dull. I have just been reading some references, in North Island papers, to an incident at the Canadian Association football team’s match with Poverty Bay, at Gisborne, which the Canadians, not exerting themselves unduly, won by six goals to nil. For a part of the game one of the Canadians was off the field, chatting with friends who had gone to see the game. He was not injured, but simply thought that a conversation would be more enjoyable than doing little or nothing on the field of play. Some of the .Northern people seem to think that his action was humorous. Others appear to find some sportsmanship it it. Alas! my sense of humour is not developed enough. Or else, as I suggested before, I must be merely dull these days, for all that I have

been able to see in this particular Canadian’s action has been rudeness to the Poverty Bay team. SKINNING THE SCHOLARS Here’s a litle story from the Sydney “Sun”:— He was a bookmaker, not learned, but a man of perception; consequently anything he heard was always fixed in his memory. Happening on a party of professional men at his club on a warm night, he wiped the sweat from his brow and remarked that he was in a state of transpiration. “Perspiration,” corrected one of his friends. “Transpiration is what I said.” he remarked, "and it is quite correct.” Bets were made freely, one collegebred fellow giving odds of five to one. Reference to Webster’s was the proof, which netted the bookmaker about £lO. SEALED ORDERS The tragi-comic situation which the trouble over the Hawke’s Bay-Waira-rapa match for the Ranfurly Shield has reached reminds one of a captain of a liner putting out to sea under sealed orders from his crew—not from the owners of the ship. It is almost incredible that the Hawke’s Bay Rugby Union should have tried to get a sealed appeal past the New Zealand Rugby Union’s Management Committee. Whatever public opinion in Napier may be, it is evident that the Hawke’s Bay Rugby Union has lost its sense of perspective. Cannot some other union arise in Its wrath and settle this unseemly trouble by beating both Wairarapa and Hawke's Bay?