The Sun 42 WYNDHAM STREET, AUCKLAND SATURDAY, OCTOBER 20, 1928 A GREAT RENUNCIATION

Sun (Auckland), Volume II, Issue 490, 20 October 1928, Page 8

The Sun 42 WYNDHAM STREET, AUCKLAND SATURDAY, OCTOBER 20, 1928 A GREAT RENUNCIATION

A POTENTIAL politician in England lias made a renunciation which might he commended to all who entertain political aspirations. He has put cricket before politics. The heroic figure is Mr. P. T. Eckersley, newly-elected captain of the Lancashire Cricket Club, who had been previously announced as Conservative candidate for the Newton division of Lancashire. But cricket can still come before politics, and Mr. Eckersley has renounced the opportunity. England is a land of curious contradictions. Lord Birkenhead is hurrying out of politics because, having swept it clear of gauds, he finds it has nothing more to offer him, while Mr. Eckersley rejects a tempting political opening because a game that is enshrined in glory demands the best attention he can give it. There is the off chance, of course, that Mr. Eckersley was glad of the opportunity to “get out from under.” Newton may be one of those unpleasant industrial areas in which coarse factory hands bawl unpleasant and highly personal epithets at Conservative candidates. But, on the other hand, the constituency may embrace a nice slice of rural England, where old feudal traditions still linger in baronial hall and lowly cottage alike. Then Mr. Eckersley’s renunciation would be magnificent. Assuming that it was, it contains a fine lesson in fidelity for the army of Auckland cricketers who are opening their season to-day. Cricket before politics! And why not ? Could but some power put the same alternatives before a number of New Zealand candidates, and lead them to the same decision! They know it not, but they would play better cricket than politics, even though they have never held a bat or a hall in their fumbling hands. As for the ethics of the choice—well, Willow is King. If cricket has not done more than polities in the way of boisterous performance, it has at least done as much in building the firmness of English character, and in spreading that firmness beyond the seas. The gods of cricket have a responsibility in their hands. They have held it since the days when cricket was merely the spontaneous pastime of yokels on village greens, when the bat was a gnarled club, the crease a depression in the ground, and the wicket a stick or two propped up behind the crease. That takes one well back into English history, the sort of history that is not written in the history books, yet played a greater part in moulding a nation’s character than the superficial procession of contemporary sensations which we force-feed into the school children of to-day. But that is an aside, diverting us from cricket, the game which cast its spell over English manhood. The schoolboys played it. It became the recreation of “the quality” as well as of the villages. Huge sums were won and lost when (as now) cricket formed a pleasant medium for a cheerful wager. The Old Hambledon Club was born, holding sway through the latter half of the eighteenth century, when its sturdy, whiskered champions, who had learned their game on the sacred sward of Broad Halfpenny Down, could deride the might of the Rest of England. Now comes Thomas Lord, caretaker of Lord Winehelsea’s private ground. Seized with the idea of forming a cricket ground in London, he laid the first stone of the edifice of cricket as we know it to-day, and forged a link between the early giants and Mr. Eckersley. Raucous West Australians chide the Englishmen because of their slow scoring at Fremantle; but their own side goes in and fails to provide an accelerating rate. In Melbourne there is another prelude to the battle for the Ashes, a preliminary between Australia and the Rest, in which batsmen and bowlers are fighting grimly for the supreme honour which the sport of their country can offer them. Here in Auckland there are no such epic struggles at hand; but it is not in the great spectacular matches that the true glory of cricket is maintained. Instead, it draws its greatness from its appeal to youth, from the sporting rivalry apparent between urchins in a deserted street. In cricket, as in other games, there is sometimes a raw edge exposed. Too much commercialism, too much attention to averages, too many appeals—these things at times disturb one’s complete confidence in the security of the game. Yet, in spite of them, its greatness lives on, and “playing cricket” is still a synonym for observance of the highest motives in social, sporting and business contacts. Therefore we applaud Mr. Eckersley’s choice as an unintentional obeisance to a game that has played a great part in the building of a nation. A good cricketer, he might have turned out a rotten politician; but it is not in that consideration that the force of his decision lies.