The Wicked Cricket Critic by C.J Dennis

The London Observer says it is difficult to put a weight on the tongues of cricket barrackers, but cricket writers are worse than barrackers.

If the cricket critics' nagging
Merits stern official gagging --
   Which I doubt --
How would critical ascetics,
With their prosy homiletics,
   Shut it out?
And the question then arises:
If more cricketing surprises,
   Such as bodyline, begin to threaten cricket,
And another stunt, when sprung,
Call for clicking of the tongue,
   Should a cricket critic critically click it?
 
When the barrackers grow lyric
In a manner most satiric
   And profane,
How, one ventures still to wonder,
May the clamor be kept under?
   How restrain?
For one barbaric larrik-
In can do a lot of barrack-
   In', and cause a lot of worry at the wicket.
But would sportsmen be abusing
Cricket canons in refusing
   To supply that cricket critic with a ticket?
 
As a critic analytic
Of the cricket critics' critic
   I would say,
When we criticise their cricket,
Then the players have to stick it,
   Come what may.
No specific soporific
May be used; for it is diffic-
   Ult to strike a critic partly paralytic.
So there's nothing gained in seeking,
As I know; and I am speaking
   As a critic of the cricket critic's critic.

First published in The Herald, 18 October 1933