Sir: I wish I could take issue with Benny Green's
findings in his Per- sonal Column (8 May), but cricket lovers will hardly-be able to avoid his sad conclusion that the writing really appears to be upon the wall. I think, however, it is worth look- ing into some of the matters he raises.
The financial aspect is crucial. No sport canpossibly survive for long in face of the table of losses in the article. But here is an in- teresting point which Mr Green has missed. The total of the deficits in his list works out, by my rough calculation. at around £150.000, Now the cricket authorities have estimated the overall loss caused by the cancellation of the
South African tour at amounts varying between £200,000 and £250,000. So that although only a fool would dispute the extreme seriousness of the position, it is reasonable to suggest that the counties would not be up against it to anything like the same degree if it had not been for the cancella- tion and it can do no harm, and might do some good, to look back a year later at that story.
Nobody can readily dispute Green's statement that the cricket authorities. are themselves at ,least partially responsible for the game's ills. They sparked off the whole conflagration themselves by their omission of D'Olivcira on the clearly dishonest ground of lack 'of
ability which enabled the Guardian
(which became the demonstrators' bible) to say, quite rightly, that 'anyone who believed that would believe the moon was made of green cheese' and prompted me, as an outraged MCC member, to call a meeting in my office with the Good Sheppard of Woolwich in the chair (a boob for which I have never forgiven myself). And all through the mounting controversy, their spokesman kept on wearily in- sisting that these tours were valu- able at 'building bridges' despite: all, the evidence to the contrary, bowling up these slow full-tosses that even lightweight intellects like Peter Hain and John Arlott could hit out of the ground with mono- tonous regularity. But the activities of these latter gentry and their co- horts can only fill fair-minded peo- ple with disgust.
From the Hairs and all those who can see no evil except that which emanates from South Africa, one knows what to expect. But the attitude of sports writers like Arlott, and his paper the Guardian, was crucial. Clearly, if that were the real issue, the sufferings of human beings are rather more im- portant than the welfare of cricket. Yet it is instructive to look at what is happening this year. Bengali demonstrators are following the Pakistani touring team around. Do they get the backing of Arlott in the Guardian in their efforts to stop the'tour? On the contrary, they receive just a whiff of patron- ising tolerance. Yet what happened in Dacca makes Sharpeville look like a Sunday school picnic. But who cares? The bandwagon rolls only for blacks maltreated by whites. In South Africa. The suf- ferings of untold millions of hu- man beings of all colours around the world are not of interest. And why should even Sharpeville be a criterion? The victims of that mas- sacre were not yet cold in their graves when the 1960 S. African tourists came here. Which did not stop Arlott and.the Guardian from happily commentating without so much as-a boo. It is indeed odd to note that we have been playing whites-only cricketers for almost the whole of the Guardian's 150 years—and they have only just noticed!
- Before leaving this aspect. it may interest SPECTATOR readers to be let into a secret which seems to have been withheld from Guardian cricket followers. Arlott recently reviewed this year's Wisden and devoted most of his piece to a very kind review of the coverage of the whole tour issue. However, he told us that there was one sentence with which he took issue. And what was that? Ah, that's the secret. The sentence was ,not quoted, nor was even a hint given as to what it meant. And a million puzzled Guardian readers could not even find out by reading Wisden, be- cause the sentence occurs in a, well- written article of some fifteen pages! However, as a friend of the Wisden writer, I am now able to _reward SPECTATOR readers who have followed me thus far by open- ing the door of Bluebeard's room : 'Lovers of liberty and law and order owe a debt of gratitude to the Cricket Council'. No wonder Arlott was so coy. For the con- verse becomes equally obvious. Lovers of liberty owe no thanks to the Hairs and the Arlotts. But no point in spelling this out to a million lively minds.
Perhaps I may refer in conch', sion to one purely cricketing aspect of the article where Green sug- gests that part of the trouble is that the players do not entertain as they did in the good old days when they drew the crowds. This is the same sort of myth as the 'long, hot summers of my youth'. As a boy, I used to watch the Roses matches at Old Trafford. The household names were Hallows and Makepiece, Oldroyd and Mitchell. All as dull as ditchwater. And the grounds were full. Yet I saw today's Compton, fellow name of Sobers, performing at Lord's against Middlesex a few days ago. I doubt if the total crowd over three days reached four figures. The world has changed. And, I fancy, not for the better.
L. E. IVeidberg 14 Templewood Avenue, London NW3
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