Not Cricket!

Colonel Blimp nearly fainted in his bath: in Health Minister Aneurin Bevan's leftist Tribune had appeared a headline: "Nationalize the M.C.C." The M.C.C. is the Marylebone Cricket Club, blueblooded governing body of the national sport. Wrote poker-faced George Harrison in London's News of the World'.

"Certain more or less influential supporters of the Government are backing the idea of Government ownership. The proposers of this delicious plan are basing their case on the poor showing of the M.C.C. team in Australia. They declare that our failure in the test matches will have grievous repercussions on our prestige throughout the world and particularly with those cricket-playing races east of Suez, which already have suspicions that the Mother Country is decadent."

The Government, said the Tribune, should nationalize the M.C.C. for the same reason that it had nationalized the coal mines: efficiency. It foresaw the day when players' wages would rise, trade-union officials would sit on the selection committee and the flag of the National Cricket Corp. would fly over M.C.C. headquarters. "Then England's team would really be England's team, and every player could feel that he was representing the entire country, not just a few private individuals."

Officials of the M.C.C. refused to comment. But one member said: "If this is a joke, I consider it in very poor taste. It is nothing short of abominable and I refuse even to discuss it."

No doubt Columnist Harrison had missed a note tucked away in the Tribune: "Readers are advised not to take the article on cricket, which appears elsewhere in this issue, too much to heart."

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.