Lt.-Commander R. WOODROOFFE
IT does not fall to the lot of many of us to play cricket in the South Seas, in China, in Africa, at Gibraltar and at Malta, in Egypt, and on small islands off the Greek coast. Few but a sailor could have had the opportunity, and none but a sailor could talk about, it in so breezy and entertaining a way.
Games played in such different quarters of the globe are full of variety. The islands of the Pacific with the native Queen and her court watching the match from the houses of parliament, on the tin roof of which the balls kept bouncing, and with pigs for the after-match feast roasting on the boundary, .Again nearly a thousand miles up the Yangtse River, with all the ground a graveyard, Chinese gentlemen carrying a singing bird in a cage as they take their recreation on the city walls, and files of coolies passing by with merchandise, completely contemptuous of the madness of the cricketers. Again, Commander Woodrooffe will tell of a small town in West Africa where an elephant trampled down the pavilion in the night, and of the craft of some Greeks who put the visiting team in to bat first ' out of courtesv '-but made sure that it was no advantage on that particular pitch.