CRICKET

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LIV, Issue 189, 8 February 1912, Page 7

CRICKET

Commenting on the complaint that in the accounts of the Australian eleven when last in England was an item of £402 for "tips," the Melbourne Argus says: The team consisted of fifteen members, and they were away for not less than seven months. The sum works out at almost precisely 3s per member daily. That being so, the shudder of horror with which the statement appears to "have been received reflects great credit on the Brisbane delegates, or, rather, on their mothers, who must have i brought them up well, and guarded them carefully from all contact with the wicked world of hotels and steamers and wharves and railway stations and other places where tips are given and received. To these innocent and untravelled persons, the statement evidently brought a painful vision of recklessly improvident cricketers scattering largesse with both hands lip and down the United Kingdom. Probably the more sagacious' of the delegates shrewdly suspected that there was more in the statement than met the eye, and that the expenditure of so stupendous a sum as three shillings daily could only be accounted for on the supposition that the word "tips" was a euphemism for bacchanalian orgies and riotous living of the most lurid description. Greatly as we may admire .the Arcadian simplicity implied in this attitude, it is permissible, for the sake of the fair fame of our cricketers, to wish that the Queensland delegates knew- a, little more aboult the pains and penalties of travelling. It is a fact, thougli doubtless a deplorable fact, that when abroad one can spend, three shillings daily—and even: possibly a little more—without being accused of reckless prodigality "by hotel waiters, luggage porters or cabmen.