If a boy seems promising the county authorities should give him a trial, and, if he does well, then let the pressmen get busy. Every one is so terrified lest a good man may be overlooked. But how unlikely that is if the county authorities are at all keen. Trial matches can be arranged. Visits can be paid to schools. There is no need for this hectic discovery of twenty Spooners every season. The school figures of players like Stevens and Chapman and Hubert Ashton would have been quite sufficient to ensure a proper trial for them. And the fact remains that in spite of this press work amateur cricket is at a lower ebb now than it has ever been before. The Gentlemen and Players match has become too one-sided to stimulate interest in anything save individual performances. Very few amateurs are good enough to play for England. Douglas is; and he was not one of the marked men of cricket articles. His entrance was as untheatrical as his batting. D. J. Knight, is on his form of 1919, the second best batsman in the country; Stevens, at his best, is a great match-winning factor; Tennyson and Fender are useful players. But it is impossible to maintain that there are to-day any amateur batsmen comparable with Maclaren, Spooner, Fry, Stoddart, and Jackson, than the cricketers, that is to say, who passed unheralded on their merits into first-class cricket. The low standard of amateur cricket cannot be argued away. And this trumpeting of the press could only be excused, could it be proved to further the interests of amateur sport in England. Instead of furthering those interests, it works against them. It makes games at a Public School too much of a business and too little of a sport. It introduces professionalism. And I am prepared to wonder how far one really enjoys one's games at school.