A SPECTATO R'S NOTEBOOK I IMAGINE the Australian cricketers will
look back on few more agreeable experiences during their tour (apart from winning a Test Match or two) than the dinner given them by Sir Stanley Holmes, M.P., at the House of Commons on Monday. Sir Stanley is an ardent follower of cricket, a proclivity which he ascribes to the fact of his having been " almost born at Lord's," and he has with the same generosity entertained an earlier Australian team, and the South Africans last year, in the same way at the same place. On Monday the health of the visitors was proposed by the Prime Minister, who explained that he was rather under the weather as he happened to be a Surrey man (Surrey had been ruthlessly mopped up that day by the Kangaroos), pronounced cricket and civilisation to be synonymous, and expressed a reminiscent preference for village-green cricket, where the victors made about 33 and the other side was rattled out for 25, over the displays common on the assiduously prepared pitches at Lord's or Old Trafford or the Oval. That point was neatly countered by Bradman, who is in danger of seeing his prowess as an after-dinner speaker overshadow his achievements with the bat, with the remark that the records that had been most dramatically lowered in recent years were in swimming—" and you can't tell me that the water has changed." Mr. Oliver Stanley, Sir Stanley Holmes himself and Sir Pelham Warner maintained the standard at its height, and the visitors were well inducted in Parliamentary practice by calls to divisions three times during dinner and by their introduction to the gallery after- wards to listen to the petrol debate.
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