Cricket 1898

A p r il 21, 1898. CRICKET : A WEEKLY RECORD OF THE GAME. 7 A U S T R A L I A N C R OW D S . SEVERE REMARKS BY THE ENGLISH AND AUSTRALIAN CAPTAINS. In the course of a speech made aft r the fifth match against Australia in reply to a toast of “ The English team,” Mr. Stoddart said :— “ If you will excuse me, I would like to make a few remarks, which may, however, not be pleasant. Y ou have not all happened to have been with us throughout the tour, but in view of what has happened I feel it to be absolutely my duty to make them. I have the right, as an English cricketer who has been out here so often, to make reference to the insults which have been poured upon me and my team during our journey through this country. I can assure you that by a section of the crowd we have been insulted, hooted at, and hissed in every match and on eveiy ground without exception. Another matter is that a certain section of the Press has been equally insulting to them. These are the only two things which have marred the pleasure of the trip. I hope the Trustees of the Sydney Cricket Ground will in future prevent such scenes as have occurred in this match. The same remark applies to the Ground Committees all over Australia, and I hope they will use their best endeavours to see that cricketers are treated as they should be, as sportsmen and gentlemen who play for the honour of the game, and who should receive the protection of the various Ground Com­ mittees. A section of the Press has gone out of its way to annoy and insult us. I do not think we deserved to incur all this wrath from the grounds and the Press. I do hope that these remarks will not convey to the promoters that we are dis­ satisfied with the tour. The hooting of the crowd has not been confined to us alone. We have seen the same thing in match after match, when colonial players have been hooted, hissed and howled at as if they were a lot of prize-fighters or something of that sort. In the match New South Wales against the English team on this ground Tom Garrett, one of the finest sportsmen in Australia, was treated in a shabby way. (Cheers). I will say nothing more. I will, however, ask the Trustees of every cricket ground in Australia, if they wish to have the game played purely and honestly, to at once check this grow ing evil.” With reference to the behaviour of the crowds, the Australian captain said : “ I quite agree with Mr. Stoddart’s remarks about the crowd. They are a perfect nuisance. (Cheers.) And yet we can’t do without them. (Laughter.) I think barracking should be stopped, and they could easily do it by sending a few private detectives among the crowd. They did it in Melbourne once, and three men were taken to gaol. I think they got about a week, and there was no more barracking there for about six months. It could be easily be done in that way.” As the remarks of Mr. Stoddart about the crowds have caused a great deal of discussion in Australia, although those of the Australian captain seem to have attracted very little attention, it may be well to give an extract upon the subject from the Sydney Daily Telegraph. It may fairly be said to represent the general opinion. “ The observations made by the English captain, Mr. Stoddart, after the close of the last test match constituted a general theme of conversation yesterday in cricketing circles. The prevailing idea was that nothing has occurred outside the usual and inevitable “ barracking,” and certainly nothing that could make any person, not toohighly strung and sensitive, feel that insults and affronts had been offered. To a certain extent, a first-class cricketer is a public character, and if he should feel sore when the public are not absolutely eulogistic, he has his own temperament to thank for it. As is well known, Australian players in the games against the Englishmen have been un­ mercifully made butts of by the crowd, but they have not treated any of the Englishmen in this coarse manner. On Saturday last 36,000 watched the game, and nobody can deny it was an orderly gathering, the Englishmen being ap­ plauded just as much as the home eleven. It would be extraordinary, indeed, if out of the number of people who generally assemble to watch classic cricket matches, a percentage did not give vent to their feelings by sundry howls, groans, and hooting, which, truly enough, is ungentle- manly and unsportsmanlike, but is in­ evitable when such a heterogeneous crowd congregates. Enlightened electors consider themselves entitled to hoot a candidate, and even in England the electors also know how to howl a speaker down. In every crowd that watches a cricket match it is safe to say that there are always a number of ill-bred people, who will allow their pent-up feelings to take the form of hooting, and English crowds are no exception. It would be idle hypocrisy to say that an Australian crowd wants, in a case of England v. Australia, to see the home team defeated, but there is no instance on record during the tour of Stoddart’s team, in which the spectators have failed, speaking of the crowd as a whole, to treat the English in that chivalrous spirit due to manly oppo­ nents. When Australians play English teams in England, the desire of the spectators to see the local men win is just as apparent, and Australian cricket­ ers have never been thin-skinned enough to cavil, even if, as at times has been the case, patriotism has got the better of fair dealing. Stoddart’s complaint about ground authorities in Australia tolerating demonstrations b y the spectators is all very well, but it must not be forgotten that the man who expresses his disappro­ bation at the developments in the game by hooting and so forth infringes no law of the realm, and cannot be interfered with ; so how can ground authorities be censured in this connection ? To take a drubbing without offering the least excuse is more than an ordinary human being is capable of, and the English captain, who is a most popular sports­ man, is, after all, only human. When they get the Australians on the green fields (and wet wickets) of Merrie E n g­ land, the cricketers of the mother country will have an opportunity of wiping off old scores, but observations about wicked wickets and naughty crowds are not cal­ culated to do much good. Some of the members of the Aus­ tralian Eleven were interviewed on the same subject by a representative of the Sydney Evening Nezvs, S. Gregory said that without doubt Australian barrackers are worse than any others. Their treatment of Garrett in par­ ticular during the past season was shameful. A t the same time, any man who plays big cricket must be prepared to put up with a certain amount of ban­ ter. The crowd go wild with excitement at times and cannot control themselves. Asked whether the last Australian team could complain about the conduct of English barrackers, he paused for a while and said reflectively : “ Well, at Kennington Oval, when the third test- match was played, the crowd, after wait­ ing in the rain from eleven o ’clock until a-quarter to five in the afternoon, swarmed on to the ground and threatened to pull things to pieces unless the game was started. A t last the umpires had to go out, and England began their innings on an easy wicket in the rain.” Gregory was reminded by his business- partner, Mr. Outram, who also accom­ panied the last team to England, of an incident at Yorkshire. Jones was rocking them in at his fastest, and matters were going so badly with the county team that a section of the crowd angrily demanded that Trott should take Jones off. They yelled to the Australian captain, and finally he complied with their wishes, substituting Eady for Jones. But as the Tasmanian is a bigger man, and almost as fast as the “ Adelaide express,” the spectators became more angry than before, and used language which, in Aus­ tralia, would be characterised as obscene. Again, at Leeds, rain drove the players off to the pavilion at a time when the Australians had the game well in hand. “ They were hooting terribly,” said Mr. Gregory, “ because we would not go out in the wet. Some of the crowd came up in front of the pavilion ‘ giving us turns,’ and one chap put a bottle on the stumps, which fell on the pitch and broke.” The New South Wales captain considers that prompt measures should be taken to prevent such scenes in the future as happened during the present season. The remedy he suggests is summary ejectment and prosecution for insulting behaviour. This was done in Melbourne about five years ago, a barracker being sent to gaol for a fortnight for hooting and abusing George Giffen. Other members of Australian Elevens gave their opinions, on the understand­ ing that their names should not be pub­ lished. “ English crowds are far more apathetic than Australian,” said a famous bow ler; ‘ ‘ they do not give us much applause, and seem to be always under the impression that, barring accidents,