A SPECTATOR'S NOTEBOOK
AT the beginning of the week all the papers, and with good reason, were congratulating this country on a series of brilliant sporting achievements—in rowing, in yachting, in golf, in tennis (with Miss Round and Perry facile principes in public favour), and in cricket. But alas, the cricket did not turn out so well as was expected, and now everyone who is anyone in the cricketing world seems to be busily engaged in pointing out just whose fault it was that England missed a victory. I have never known a battle of heroes on a sporting field accompanied by such a battle of ex-heroes, ably supported by sub-editors, in the columns of the evening papers. (It was a sub-editor who emphasized in .a headline the finely critical judgement of an ex-Test captain, that it was through sheer bad batting that Wyatt got out first ball.) Among the dis- covered causes of failure were bad bowling, bad fielding, bad placing of the field by the captain, slow batting, and a bad Selection Committee. Quot testes, tot sententiae.
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