WILL LAWN TENNIS KILL CRICKET?

Taranaki Daily News, 13 September 1919, Page 12

WILL LAWN TENNIS KILL CRICKET?

Cricket or lawn tennis—which ia to be the supreme English pastime? (says an English writer). There can be no doubt that after a period of stagnation lawn tennis has again become extremeiy popular. This is undoubtedly due to "foreign invasions" and to the Davis Cup competitions. / There is nothing like healthy rivalry to inspire public interest, and a few years ago English champions at lawn tennis were practically unbeatable. Alike at Home and on the Continent the championships resolved themselves into an unbroken sequence of semi-finals and finals between well-known English players. Foreign opposition was practically negligible. The lot of the English lawn tennis nlayed, even of the second rank, was cast in pleasant places then, but naturally public interest flagged. Then the game took mighty strides on the Continent, and the advent of keen athletes from the United States, and Australia and New Zealand, arrested the supremacy of the players from the British Isles" Now, just as Arnaud Massy, by breaking the long sequence of victories of the triumvirate, Braid, Taylor, and Vardon, at golf gave that game a great fillip, so foreign competition has instilled new life into lawn tennis. But will lawn tennis oust cricket from its position as om "national game"? I am inclined to think hot. Law tennis affords fine exercise, and is certainly very spectacular, but it is a selfish game—that is, it lacks the preeminent characteristic of cricket and football, namely, team play. In lawn tennis you are playing for your own hand, in our two national games, cricket and football, you are playing for your side. It was the lack of unselfishness that causc'l cricket to lapse into unpopularity. Batsmen "anchored" themselves to the wicket. They were just content to stay there for their own individual satisfaction, hour after hour, making runs at intervals, and apparently making no effort to win the game- Fielders, too, show no apathy, and "a certain liveliness" was conspicuous by its absence. "Liveliness," however, lias ma-du it reappearance in cricket this season, and with it cricket will continue to hold pride of place in English games, because it possesses that quality of team play which tennis lacks.