BLIND PARTISANS

Sun (Auckland), Volume II, Issue 543, 21 December 1928, Page 10

BLIND PARTISANS

THE two successive defeats meted out to the Australian Cricket Eleven may be a tragedy or a- blessing in disguise, which*ever way one chooses to look at it. But there has been no more melancholy feature of the Tests than the vogue of the playerwriter. and the old cricketer wedding an amateurish pen with comparatively little of his old-time facility with the bat. On the question of tactics in the field, the opinions of old players like P. P. Warner, Clem Hill and P. E. Woolley are of undoubted value. But almost without exception, when the oldtimers blossom out into general criticism of the game, they lose their sense of proportion, and become little more than blind partisans.

Even Warwick Armstrong, the greatest Test match captain since the war, has floundered like an elephant at times. The

“Manchester Guardian,” which includes on its staff probably the most brilliant cricket writer in England, pokes a little mild fun at some of Armstrong’s comments on the first Test. “Surely a great big man like Mr. Armstrong is not going to break down and cry at a bit of stonewalling by a few Pommies,” says the “Guardian.”

And so are illustrious names in the world of cricket shorn of their matchless lustre. “At every word, a reputation dies.” Even before his injury at Sydney, Ponsford’s form with the bat had deteriorated. It has been soundly argued that not even Ponsford can give proper attention to the game and be running round dashing off newspaper articles during the progress of a match. Some of his comments, too, on the English players have not helped to promote good feeling between the two teams. It is reported from Sydney that the Australian Board of Control will go into the question of the player-writer at its next meeting, when, it is expected, steps will be taken to put a stop to the newspaper activities of Test match players. In other sports (Tilden’s case is a typical one), the playerwriter has become the subject of fierce controversy, much of it harmful to the sport. It has been proved times without number that with few exceptions, the player-writer and the old player lack the sound judgment of the trained journalist. There is wisdom in the old proverb about the cobbler sticking to his last.