29 JULY 1949, Page 5

Somewhere in the Paris office of the New York Herald-Tribune

there sits a sub-editor whose curious and unenviable task it is to write headlines for the cricket ncws from London. The London office does its best to ensure that he is seized of the salient developments in this mysterious game by emphasising points which most British reporters might deem scarcely worthy of mention (" New Zealand will complete its first innings Monday. The Home Country will then take its turn at the wicket "); and the whole thing, after all, is not really much more difficult for him to follow than a Cabinet reshuffle in China or any of the other exotic raw material which sub-editors have to handle with the air of experts. This chap has a jolly good shot at the cricket ; but somehow " Antipodeans are Held to 276 for 8 in Unfinished ist Innings of 3rd Match" and "Gentry ii Bow to Players," though they arc accurate and colourful summaries of what happened, don't quite come off. The human race is divided into people who take cricket much too seriously and people who are incapable of taking it seriously at all ; and though it was a bold and noble experiment on the part of the Herald-Tribune to effect a

sort of fusion between the two, it never really had much hope of success.

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