Your favorite cricket books which you recommend

[Guest BossBhai]

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[Mr. Wicket]

I do not have the book and haven't read it. I have seen it often on shop shelves but I am afraid I haven't been tempted to buy it.

It's worth buying, SJS. One of the best pieces of cricket lit on Indian cricket, a really wonderful read.

[SJS50]

Yankee Land ji ... Wont give you the exact co-ordinates as Iam afraid you will beat the krap out of me :-D

:) I travel to US often. My younger son lives in Chicago. Maybe when I am there next time (in September this year) we'll have a beer together

[Guest BossBhai]

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[Malcolm Merlyn]

SJS seems a really big collector of old cricket books..........no doubt i am envious of him.If only i could lay my hand on some of those rare books of his. You have my respect sir:isalute:

[SJS50]

Yess sir ... Iam in NJ though ... but if you promise to part with copies of some of the fine books I will be tempted. :P :-D

Lets see I may be in Albany in the second week of May to attend a nephew's wedding. Thats not that far from NJ.

[Guest BossBhai]

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[Malcolm Merlyn]

You got it :two_thumbs_up: The Daaru is on me :yay:

you are offering him daaru and trying to take away his valuable books:headshake:

[sandeep]

Pundits from Pakistan is pretty good. worth a read.

[SJS50]

Weii. This is not exactly a book review but it is about one of cricket's most celeberated writers.

C.L.R. James - The Black Cardus?

'What do they know of Cricket who only cricket know. All the world is a stage, all the world, including the cricket-field, and all the men and women merely players.'

- CLR James in Beyond A Boundary.

On the 1st of September 1933, there appeared in the Manchester Guardian an article about a game of cricket in the Lancashire league between Rawtenstall and Nelson. Nothing about this game from the minor cricket of the leagues or the unknown writer would have drawn special attention but for the fact that the Manchester Guardian's cricket correspondent was none other than the legendary Cardus (later Sir Neville). Cardus was struck by the powerful imagery evoked by CLRJ's 'prose of unparalleled precision and grace'. That article has become one of the classics and an oft-printed essay on the immortal S.F. Barnes. Barnes then in his sixtieth year, was playing for Rawtenstall and facing him, as the professional for Nelson, was another great cricketer - Learie Constantine who was to be knighted and made a Baron later. In that, only the second article of his long and illustrious career as a cricket journalist and writer, CLRJ brings to life the clearly ageing yet magnificently composed master that was the Rawtenstall professional, He introduces Barnes to us as:

To begin with, Barnes not only is fifty-nine, he looks it. Some cricketers at fifty-nine look and move like men in their thirties. Not so Barnes. You can almost hear the old bones creaking. He is tall and thin, well over six feet, with strong features. It is rather a remarkable face in its way and could belong to a great lawyer or a statesman without incongruity. He holds his head well back, with the rather long chin lifted. He looks like a man who has seen as much of the world as he wants to see. . . He fixed his field, two slips close in and the old-fashioned point, close in. Mid off was rather wide. When every man was placed to the nearest centimeter Barnes walked back and set the old machinery in motion. As he forced himself to the crease you could see every year of the fifty-nine; but the arm swung over gallantly, high and straight. The wicket was slow, but a ball whipped hot from the pitch in the first over and second slip took a neat catch. When the over was finished he walked a certain number of steps and took his position in the slips. He stood as straight as his right arm, with his hands behind his back. The bowler began his run - a long run - Barnes still immovable. Just as the ball was about to be delivered, Barnes bent forward slightly with his hands ready in front of him. To go right down, as a normal slip fieldsman goes, was for him, obviously, a physical impossibility. He looked alert and I got the impression that whatever went into his hands would stay there. As the ball went into the wicketkeeper's hands or was played by the batsman, Barnes straightened himself and again put his hands behind his back. That was his procedure in the field through the afternoon. Now and then by way of variety he would move a leg an inch or two and point it on the toe for a second or two. Apart from that he husbanded his strength. He took seven wickets for about 30 runs and it is impossible to imagine better bowling of its kind. The batsmen opposed to him were not of high rank, most of them, but good bowling is good bowling. Whoever plays it. . . . As the Rawtenstall team came in, the crowd applauded his fine bowling mightily. Barnes walked through it intent on his own affairs. He had had much of that all his life.

CLRJ's cricket writing is largely about West Indies and its cricketers besides his coverage of Lancashire cricket while he was a journalist based in that county. However, there is enough in it to enthuse lovers of the game from all parts of the world. One has tried to find writings about Indian cricketers but there isn't much besides an article - A Majestic Innings With Few Peers - on Sandeep Patil's brilliant onslaught on English bowlers in the Old Trafford Test of 1982. In keeping with his reputation as a knowledgeable and balanced writer he does not go gaga over Sandeep Patil in spite of his unreserved plaudits for that magnificent century and maintains that a great innings, even a peerless one, does not a great batsman make.

I have seen many centuries by great batsmen during the past fifty years. In confidence and power, I have seen few that approach Patil's century. The peak of this innings arrived with a new-ball delivery that pitched somewhat short, from Willis. Patil, it seemed to me, stepped back to hook but the delivery was on him too quickly. He did not moderate his aggression but from his backfoot played a tennis stroke past the bowler to the boundary. I have not kept count, but I believe he found the boundary on the offside, between point and cover, as often as he hooked to the square leg boundary. Altogether an innings without superior and with very few peers. Comparison is the cricket fanatics' incurable practice. Matthew Arnold once said that one should learn very well certain classic pieces of poetry and that this would help in the writing of poetry. I instinctively apply a similar principle to great innings by great batsmen. . . Patil's innings was a great one but that does not make him a great batsman in the historic sense of that noble term. . . . To reach it he will need many repetitions of what took place at Old Trafford last June.

He is supposed to have written an article comparing Botham, Imran Khan and Kapil Dev in the same year, 1982, the year in which India and Pakistan shared a summer touring England and all three great all-rounders appeared to be bent on outdoing the others in what has come to be known as the 'Summer of the All-rounder'. Unfortunately, the article seems to be as yet unpublished. What would one not give to be able to read it. Another of his articles that fascinates me is one he wrote, as early as 1963, comparing Dexter and Sobers as batsmen in the context of their countries and the attitudes of those around them. In this he describes Dexter a victim of the dour and dogged nature of English batsmanship that surrounded him and which affected the brilliance and genius of his own batting.

Dexter is a man more sinned against than sinning. (At Lord's) he did not merely drive the two fast bowlers, or hook them. He hit them so that you (and probably they) forgot that they were fast bowlers. . . He does not make centuries because he has the habit of losing 'concentration'. Blessed word. If the other players on his side bore names like K.L. Hutchings, A.C. Maclaren, F.S. Jackson, C.B. Fry and he were playing against Victor Trumper, Clemont Hill and Vernon Ransford; he would make his centuries and perhaps a double century or two. He is a Cavalier amongst Roundheads. He plays not only against opposing batsmen but against the very soul of the age. He is playing his innings in the style of a master expressing a personal vision. Like Macartney, Dexter, a new Governor-General, is intent on hitting the ball, and hitting the bowler, to the boundary. Then suddenly it begins to dawn on him that this is a Test match and that, worse still, he is the captain of England. He begins to concentrate - on that. The result is what happens to those who try to sit between two stools, or to be more precise, a good man fallen among people whose morals are not his own. I see Dexter as engaged in a constant struggle for free individuality in a conformist age. . . . I saw him in the West Indies in 1960. . . Periodically would appear the strokes of a batsman who hit the ball as if it were placed on a tee, but watching himself. Everything about Dexter marks him as a cavalier of 1895-1914. Writing in 1957 of the men of the golden age, I made bold to say, 'Not only their cricketing styles but the personal careers of men like Ranjitsinhji and C.B. Fry outside the cricket world show how restless was the spirit that expressed itself in their play.' Dexter has shown recently that he is of the same breed. It is not that Dexter is not dependable. It is that the other players of the day are too dependable. They inhibit him. In his observations of the game, all aspects of it, he bears the stamp of a man in conflict with his age. These two (Sobers and Dexter) are not the souls of our age but they certainly are the applause, the delight, the wonder of our stage. In every stroke they shake a lance.

Where are cricket writers today who will see batsmanship of men like Lara and Tendulkar in the context of their age, time and place in history? CLRJ was very close to Learie Constantine. They played club cricket together as youngsters back in Trinidad and then when he ran into financial troubles he moved in with the legendary all-rounder while the latter was playing in the Lancashire league. In fact, it was with Constantine that he went to see Barnes when he came to know that the sixty-year-old legend was going to play in a league game against Nelson for whom Constantine was the professional. He was so moved by the experience that he came back and wrote that article on Barnes and when he showed it to Constantine he suggested to CLRJ to send it up to Cardus at the Manchester Guardian. As a youngster in Trinidad he had developed close friendships with many West Indian cricketers from their pre-Test cricket days like George John -'one of the most formidable bowlers who ever handled a ball', Piggott - 'one of the world's great wicket-keepers between the wars' and Telemaque 'not a great player but he was good' to George Headley and Constantine. He was highly respected by latter day cricketers like Worrell, Weekes, Walcott, Sobers etc. He made friends with cricketers and writers from Australia and England and sent the manuscript of his book to some of them like Fingleton for a critical appraisal and also asked for assistance of people like John Arlott to help find a publisher for it. Arlott tried and failed and then wrote to CLRJ that the book wouldn't sell enough copies to break even.

'There is a point at which a book breaks even and our experts in the matter can not see your book achieving it. Both John St John and I are extremely sorry. . . I do hope you have better luck with it elsewhere.'

It is ironic that the same book, Beyond A Boundary, is now regarded by most critics as the finest cricket book of all times and one hasn't come across a single one who does not place it amongst a short list of the finest of all time. CLRJ was very critical of modern cricket journalism, particularly after the advent of the television. In an article in 1985 on the decline of English cricket he touches on the subject and as he would invariably do, he supported his criticism with very valid and logical arguments. Its difficult to disagree with any of what he said a quarter of a century ago; writing today he would have only used stronger language and justifiably so.

. . . today the kind of analysis that you got from the masters and the reports of the journalists have disappeared. They have disappeared first because of television and the fact that after two or three overs, two or three people are on television saying what happened and giving causes. You cannot analyse a five-day cricket match or five five-day cricket matches in that way. The result is that we have a series of front page observations, dramatic moments, astonishing successes, astonishing failures - everything or nothing, governed by the remorseless claims of the television audience waiting for the (single) event that will summarize the day's play or the morning's play. . . . The press and the older cricketers had the feeling of responsibility for going below the surface. Today. . . there are journalists who must catch the passing event and seek the pregnant phrase. I am not attacking a body of men for not doing what they ought to do. I am saying that the modern means of communication, the pressure by other sports on cricket space, photography, love for scandals and the general absence of strategic thought (and not merely on cricket) have deeply damaged cricket reports. I do not say the reporters do harm to cricket but that cricket in the present age does great harm to reporting.

Finally, he was easily the strongest supporter of West Indian cricket and West Indian cricketers amongst all the great writers. To the extent that one would be tempted to say he was just that wee bit biased. But that is a minor failing in so skillful and gifted a writer. He invariably wrote of West Indian cricketers in the context of their lives and the socio-economic conditions of the coloured people of the Caribbean. He seemed to realize it himself when he wrote:

Writing critically about West Indies cricket and cricketers, or any cricket for that matter, is a difficult discipline. The investigation, the analysis, even the casual historical or sociological gossip about any cricketer should deal with his actual cricket, the way he bats or bowls or fields, does all or any of these. You may wander far from where you started but unless you have your eyes constantly on the ball, in fact never take your eyes off it; you are soon writing not about cricket, but yourself (or other people) and psychological or literary responses to the game. This can be and has been done quite brilliantly, adding a little something to literature but practically nothing to cricket, as little as the story of Jack and the Beanstalk adds to our knowledge of agriculture. This is particularly relevant to West Indies cricket.

One could not, however, accuse him of not keeping his eyes on the ball and ignoring writing about the cricket. His heavy usage of the 'historical and sociological' context only enhanced his work and gave it a unique flavour. However, this aspect of his writing does come out rather strongly in his writings, particularly in the longer format, which in his case is basically his celebrated cricket book - Beyond A Boundary. It has been called by many as 'the best cricket book ever' and some have gone to the extent of labeling it 'the greatest sports book ever written'. In fact the Guardian went on to write that 'To say 'the best cricket book ever' is pifflingly inadequate praise' while another leading English paper advised its subscribers 'Anyone who has not encountered (Beyond a Boundary) should seize the chance now' So where does he stand in the pantheon of cricket writers? When George Headly was scoring Test runs at nearly seventy per innings the world sat up and took notice not just of him but of West Indian cricket itself. Something the West Indians were clearly craving for and when someone called him a Black Bradman, the cry went up in the Caribbean that it might be more appropriate to dub Don Bradman as the White Headley. That last bit of tongue-in-cheek repartee apart, Headley did get the label of the Black Bradman tagged on to him and one wonders if CLRJ deserves a similar celebration as the Black Cardus or should we indeed call Sir Neville the White James? Seriously, one likes to resist the temptation for using such appellations for they tend to somehow diminish the one we are trying to put on a higher pedestal by denying them their own place in history and the scheme of things. Even if one is not inclined to call CLRJ the Black Cardus, the fact remains that he was more different from Sir Neville, one suspects, than was Headley from Sir Donald and even the difference between those two great batsmen is considerable. One does not say this to put either of Cardus or CLRJ higher than the other but to emphasise their inherent difference as writers and more fundamentally as cricket writers. While the images Cardus's prose evokes are steeped in the romanticism of a schoolboy, the writings of CLRJ evoke images that are more solid and life like. It's the work of a consummate professional who understood both the finer points of the game and the understandings of human beings and relationships between individuals. One could say that they, Cardus and CLRJ, with their writings, represent their people and also reflect the respective positions of their nations in the power grid of the world. Cardus was an Englishman writing at a time when Britain was still at peace with itself although the 'empire' was close to its final decades. His writings thus evoke a gentle, easy going life of rural English countryside; even when the individuals involved were mere workers in the fields. A sense of calm prevails on the cricket fields of Cardus while James's cricketers seem to be straining to break free of the shackles of centuries of bondage. It also reflects his own very strong views on the condition of his people - it was the subject on which he wrote with even more passion than he did on cricket. When I read CLRJ I can feel the tension of the writer whereas Cardus transports me into the English countryside and actually helps relieve me of any tensions of my own. I personally do not consider CLRJ as a cricket writer in so much as I do not consider Beyond A Boundary as a cricket book. It is a book about the Caribbean, which uses cricket as the backdrop for the social milieu of the Trinidad of his youth and provides us 'a unique glimpse of the human forces and struggles' of the times. The young boy from Port of Spain who seems to have his life completely engulfed by cricket and cricketers was also living amongst his people in appalling conditions, not just economic but worse. The divisions of status and more strongly of colour were not taken as fate or destiny or karma by this impressionable young man who from childhood had been exposed to British writings in the form of books and magazines literature and poetry. One can see how he was slowly but surely being transformed into a social and political thinker and activist and it is this aspect of his personality which, for me at least, dominates and strongly radiates through his writings even when they are supposed to be on cricket. This does, however, lend his writings a very strong character and make for compulsive and very absorbing reading, which is educative of much more than the cricket and cricketers who form the main characters on stage, as it were, in Beyond A Boundary. It is as a cricket journalist during his stints with Manchester Guardian and Glasgow Herald that one sees pure cricket writing without social and cultural overtones and he does a fabulous job. But then that should not surprise us since he had all the qualities of a great cricket writer. He wrote beautifully and movingly and he loved the game. More importantly he understood the finer aspects of the game as the best English writers of the times did. Examples of his knowledge and understanding of the game abound in his writings but there is one particular article by him on Winston St George, which I love to read again and again. CLRJ states of W. St. Hill that 'No one I have seen, neither Bradman nor Sobers, saw the ball more quickly, nor made up the mind earlier.' One may or may not agree with that assertion but there is absolutely no doubt that in the chapter called The Most Unkindest Cut in his book, he brings the batsman that W. St. Hill was, alive and present before you through a complete and detailed word-image of his batting. It is a fascinating piece of cricket writing. It is a twenty-two page long essay portraying a player one had heard so little about, and yet read the chapter and you will feel as if you watched W. St. Hill bat right before your eyes. This is a quality that Cardus's writing also has but, as I have written before, Cardus's portraits and images are less disturbing than those of CLRJ's who was not just writing about the glorious days spent playing cricket but of the tensions, the struggles, the pent up frustrations of a people exploding in the only place they were legally allowed to - the cricket field. No CLRJ is no Cardus (and Headley was no Bradman) but then Cardus wasn't CLRJ either. So if by calling him the Black Cardus we are trying to show our respect for a great writer who also wrote of cricket and cricketers who am I to complain.

[Tapioca]

one hasn't come across a single one who does not place it amongst a short list of the finest of all time.

Count me as the first one, SJS. Blame it on my lack of taste or knowledge or views on race or whatever, but my first impression on reading certain chapters of the book was "WTF" and after two readings it remains so. I am not talking about the more cricketing sections like St Hill or John or Headley, but the more "social" stuff, in the West Indies and Rugby school stuff in England (been a while since the last read, so it is difficult to be precise). It won't surprise me if the critics or you or Salil consider it as the greatest book, but if ordinary fans talk about its greatness, I would suspect strongly that the reason is that they have been told that it is a "greatest" book. Parts of BaB are wonderful, but it is the "greatest" business that makes me suspicious and irritated. Where did you get the Sandeep Patil piece from ? Can you please post the whole thing. I am not a fan of Cardus either. I used to like him but the more I read *about* him, the more I lose interest in his writings. I would like a cricket writer to write about things that really happened, not dress up fiction as fact. For great prose, I prefer that of the Alan Ross or John Arlott variety, not his.

[bunny]

Hello SJS. Are there "modern" books that talk about technique (and gossip :), and are worth buying?

[SJS50]

. I am not a fan of Cardus either. I used to like him but the more I read *about* him, the more I lose interest in his writings. I would like a cricket writer to write about things that really happened, not dress up fiction as fact. For great prose, I prefer that of the Alan Ross or John Arlott variety, not his.

What follows is specifically written for you maybe :)

Cricket Writer Par Excellence - The Incomparable Neville Cardus

When one reads him in the armchair one is transported to the ground and sees the game again in progress. We glance back even to Hambledon; we see the great giants of the time of "W.G."; we have the game as it is on the village green as well as at Lord's; and it is not only our sporting interest in cricket that Mr. Cardus quickens, but cricket's great beauty and charm and humour. . . because it is the writing of a man who loves the game and whose touch is as delightful as his judgement is sound..

- Archie MacLaren on Cardus

He could write so well that I have hardly ever read a notice of his, however brief and hasty, without something - it might be just a phrase - illuminating the page.

- J B Priestley on Cardus

When TP Bharathan ('Ustadji' to all of us at Delhi's Madras Cricket Club in the 1960's) first lent me his precious copy of a Cardus, heavily protected in a thick brown paper cover, and told me in the most threatening voice that gentlest of cricket coaches imaginable could muster, 'If you lose or damage this book, I'll kill you', of course I knew the threat meant nothing. I did realize, however, as to how precious the thin volume was to this generous little man who had, for decades, given every single Rupee of what he saved (after providing for his very meager personal needs) and every single waking hour (other than the time spent at Air HQ in Delhi where he worked) to the game he loved so dearly. Ustadji gave freely and unthinkingly of himself to his wards and the game he tried to inculcate in their very being. However even his apparently unlimited generosity had its limits and it certainly stopped at this well-worn copy of The Summer Game. All the way home, I held the book close to my body, afraid to leave it in the bus as I did so often with my school books, deliberately to avoid doing my homework as per my sisters and due to the absent mindedness according to my mother. After a hurriedly wolfed meal, I rushed to my room 'to finish my homework'. When my mother came to wake me up next morning I was still reading it using a torchlight under my quilt. I was already a cricket crazy teenager but on that night I fell head over heels in love with the game. That is the effect the prose of Neville Cardus had on tens of thousands of schoolboys around the world. On the elderly lovers of the game reading him, Cardus had a different affect; he turned them into schoolboys again. The schoolboy with his love for the game and undying devotion to his cricketing Gods was the central character of a lot of Cardus's early writing even when not directly invoked by the writer. I suppose it was Cardus himself, a short sighted, grubby school boy at the turn of the last century, furtively sneaking a peek at the afternoon papers, scared that a full view might reveal that his beloved Spooner had fallen before lunch at Old Trafford. When you read. . .

When I was not much more than a child I adored Victor Trumper. Indeed I found myself in a predicament. Patriotic as most small boys, I of course wanted England to beat Australia every time. But also I wanted Trumper to bat well in every innings. I got out of the dilemma by the most artful prayer ever delivered to Omnipotence. Please God, prayed this small boy that was once myself, Please make Victor Trumper score a century tomorrow-out of an Australian total of 120 all out

. . . . you recall your own childhood prayers. It wasn't difficult to replace England with India and have Norman O'Neill occupying Trumper's place at the altar. When he died in 1975 Cardus was within less than a decade short of a century of his own but its unlikely that at heart he remained anything but a schoolboy where cricket was concerned. His love for the game was unalloyed - unadulterated, his devotion to his heroes, be they of Lancashire or England, was that of a Labrador to its master and his playful disdain for the enemy, mostly Aussies and Yorkshire men, as delightfully mixed with admiration as only a schoolboy is capable of conjuring up. However, to reduce his writings to the flights of fancy of a school boy who refused to grow up, as some of his latter day critics have tried to do, would be to do great injustice to the greatest of cricket writers and would expose us to charges of envy and worse. Cardus did much more than bring the schoolboy alive in all of us. One of the striking features of his writings was the amazingly vivid pictures he painted of the England of the times, the greens of the cricket grounds, the whites of the players walking down the pavilion steps and most of all the way in which he brought to life the characters of the game. Cardus took us along with him into touching distance of Wilfred Rhodes, George Hurst, Tom Richardson, George Gunn, Reggie Spooner and a host of others. He puts us in the time machine of his writings and transports us to the lands of yore and the characters that inhabit them. He makes us the invisible witnesses to the most intimate dialogue with and amongst the giants of an era gone past who he not just brought to life, almost in flesh and blood, but completed with the accents, dialogues, mannerisms and personality nuances. We can never thank him enough for that. People today struggle to appreciate the likes of "W.G.", Spofforth, Ranji, Rhodes, Woolley, and Jessop etc. In the absence of television or any other type of visual media the modern fan is unable to go beyond reducing the feats of these giants of a century and more ago to merely a function of their statistics. Photographs are few and the films almost non-existent, cruelly short, black and white and jerky making the characters less than life like and caricatures of the all-conquering athletes they had been. This is in complete contrast to what media and technology is able to do to modern day sportsmen, providing us with a larger than life image which makes us believe that the difference between the giants of the modern day and those of a century ago are as great as the difference in the technology of the two eras. What Cardus helps to provides us with is an alternate view, a glimpse through his writings of the cricket fields of England and the giants that bestrode them and, for that, the least we can do is to be immensely grateful to him. Yet there have been writers, not fit enough to sharpen Cardus's pencils or dry the ink on his manuscripts, who have seen it fit to run him down for 'living in his imagination'. Of course Cardus took 'poetic' license, and I use the word poetic for his prose very deliberately when he fills in from his imagination, colours in the picture he is painting for us to make the experience so graphic and so vivid for us. This is his art, which is to be seen for being different from the run-of-the-mill craft the writers of our times struggle to churn out day after day. But instead of admiring the man's art some have chosen to want to run down that which is most wondrous in his writings. It must have really hurt Cardus when, amidst half a century of undiluted admiration, murmurings were heard about his 'inventing' scenes and dialogues in his flights of fancy around the cricket fields of the world. He was finally driven to write in The Spectator in the mid-1970s when commenting on Christopher Martin Jenkins summing up of MCC's tour of the Caribbean in 1974 when CMJ bemoaned the lack of characters in the game of the day, he wrote. . .

I sympathise with him in his searching for characters in our first-class cricket at the moment. Frankly, I think they are there, present embryonically. Emmott Robinson, Rhodes and Herbert Sutcliffe, were not actually the rounded 'characters' looming large in my accounts of Lancashire versus Yorkshire matches. They provided me with merely the raw material, so to say; my histrionic pen provided the rest. I have often told, in print, of a wet morning at Leeds, a Yorkshire versus Lancashire match. The sun came forth hot and sumptuous. At half-past two Rhodes and Robinson went out to inspect the wicket, I with them. Rhodes pressed a finger into the soft turf, saying, "Emmott, it'll be 'sticky' at four o'clock." "No, Wilfred, half-past." I put words into his mouth that God intended him to utter.

He goes on to add in another place talking of the typical Yorkshire stodginess at the crease.

I one day protested to Maurice Leyland, great Yorkshire batsman and representative Yorkshire man, that this sort of cricket was 'killing the game'. "I's all reight," he assured me, "but what we need in Yorkshire-Lancashire matches is 'no umpires' - and fair cheatin' all round." Lancashire and Yorkshire batsmen, on being struck on the pads by the bowler, immediately withdrew legs away from the stumps, so that the umpire would be hard put to it to deliver a leg-before decision. No truly born and bred cricketer of Lancashire and Yorkshire would have dreamed of 'walking', of leaving his crease way back to the pavilion in advance of an umpire's decision. Yet, wonderful to relate, it was in a Lancashire and Yorkshire match, at Old Trafford, that burly Dick Tyldesley so forgot the rigour of the game that after making a sharp catch at short-leg announced to the umpire, who was about to raise his hand for dismissal, that the ball just touched the ground before the apparent catch had been accomplished. I congratulated Tyldesley, at the end of the day's play, on his sportsmanship. "Thanks very much", he replied, in broad Lancashire accent "West Haughton Sunday School tha knows." (Did he really say it, or did I...)

We really don't care Sir Neville; wish you hadn't even brought it up. Another complaint that some modern writers have against Cardus and other great writers of earlier eras is that they live in the past; that they tend to glorify the heroes of their own youths and run down all those who came later. At the outset, let's admit that this is true for almost all of us just lovers of the game or those that even attempt to write about it - it's human tendency. Yet, an unbiased reading of his accounts (or those of others like him) reveals that in most cases the argument of 'living in the past' is not based on solid grounds. Sir Neville does make a mention of this tendency too when he writes. . .

I am often told that I live my cricket in the past, enchantment of distance glorifying disproportionately cricketers in action decades ago. But let me see, today, Barry Richards at the wicket, or Kanhai, or Sobers, or Clive Lloyd or Kallicharan, to pick a few UN-English names, and I know I am watching cricketers so gifted in skills, as fascinating and personal as any exhibited by my heroes in the past.

There. There it is in cold print but I wish it were just said in an interview or a casual chat. In print it looks as if someone of the stature of Cardus is being made to 'defend' his immortal writings and that hurts. Everyone who calls himself a student of the game, and is not lying through his teeth on one count or the other, has at least read one work of Cardus. For these readers and fans of Cardus it is not difficult to see that he does not run down modern day greats when he waxes lyrical of the giants of an earlier age. So what did we seek from him by way of explanation - surely not a forsaking of the memories of his youth, the disavowing of his childhood deities, a disowning of the heroes of his dreams? No one, not even a chronicler of history, and Cardus is only very partially that should not be put to such a tortuous dilemma of choice. Thankfully, he added after that paragraph, in his typical humorous vein, showing no signs of any rancour he may have felt. . .

Emmott Robinson once said to me, "Tha writes some funny stuff about us, flowery-like; but only this mornin' my missus said to me, 'but ther's summat in what he says - and me and mi mother 'as been tellin' thi same thing these many years'."

So then what is it that the modern day scribes really dislike about Cardus? One really doesn't know but one can try to make a guess. It's probably no more than a tentative hypothesis but when something is a mystery to me, I tend to look within and seek an answer. I have read Cardus as a fifteen year old and still read him as I am on the threshold of being four times that blissful age. I do see him differently today particularly since I have started dabbling in putting pen to paper or rather finger to keyboard myself with cricket as my favourite subject. I have started seeing Cardus differently as I read him one more time. I love the words, the wordplay, the pen-portraits, the script of the plays his characters are performing and their dialogue. But I am also resentful. I am resentful because I wish, so very desperately, that those beautiful turns of phrase, those delightful analogies, and those spontaneous yet wonderfully evocative portraits that he paints with effortless flourishes of his pen had emanated from my keyboard. I once thought it was a good idea to publish a book of Cardus's quotes (I might still do it one day) but I found, as I started making a list of them, that it would run into volumes. There is a sentence to underline every other line. Its almost as if the man's entire body of work till the 1950s is worth quoting. I do not know if there are many writers in any sphere of whom the same might be true. That is what is special about John Frederick Neville Cardus. A very large number of eminent writers who followed him and did fabulous work have been criticised for copying Cardus. I am not sure the criticism is justified although the underlying message is valid. That Sir Neville influenced cricket writers who followed him is not surprising and many have indeed admitted to being greatly influenced by the master. We have to take the impact Sir Neville had on the writings of those who grew up reading him, as an unconscious acknowledgement of the influence his writings had on them and no more. It is an unintended compliment - the best as far as compliments go. I find it very interesting how one keeps coming across sentences that he wrote and find how beautifully they fit a character in the modern game. As I read. . .

Jessop's eyes and brain were always un-ruffled and discerning while he scattered far and wide, the best of balls, crashed them against sight screens, through windows of pavilions, into bottles of glasses and bars, on the roofs of houses in the vicinity

. . . . I wonder why I did not write that when Afridi was scattering Indian bowling to all parts of the Green Park at Kanpur in 2005. When he wrote. . .

If he was audacious, it was because audacity paid - offense was his best defense. He improvised strokes never seen before on the cricket field, but not out of the artist's love of doing things in a different way, but because inimical circumstances could not be thrust aside by the old expedients. When he tried a fresh stroke he asked (himself) if it 'worked' not if it was 'artistic'. We all recollect his slash stroke, that uppercut over the slips' heads. It was not beautiful to see, but immensely fruitful of runs. Had it happened in an innings of Spooner it would have looked like a flaw in a delicate piece of porcelain. But how in keeping the stroke was with the punitive game of Tyldesley! Again take his off driving; he had no objections to lofting the ball as long as it was lofted profitably. The batsman who is an artist before he is a cricketer has a fastidiousness, which is set all on edge, so to say, at the very sight of a stroke 'off the carpet'. Tyldesley had no such compunctions.

. . . he was talking of Johnny Tyldesley and yet as I read the words again a few days ago, I asked myself why I couldn't write that when I wrote a piece on Sehwag last month. It could so easily have been said of Sehwag that he was being audacious because audacity paid. I could have thought of the inimical circumstances that could not be thrust aside for old expedients or that similar batting coming from the blade of Laxman would have been like flaws in a delicate piece of porcelain? Why couldn't I think of that? I really think I could have written it myself, but no, that's not true. It just appears as if I could have written that. That is the hallmark of truly great writing. It always has that effect on those wanting to write. Then it depends upon them whether they recognise, in this unconscious compliment they are paying to the writer, an unsaid recognition of the art or, see in it ordinariness, bring him down to their own levels and attempt to run down his work. Fortunately for the cricket enthusiast, willing to know of the game, the players and the eras long gone, Cardus remains alive through his magnificent body of work. If only the books were as easy to come across on bookshelves in cricket playing countries as are the biographies and autobiographies of active cricketers that are, more often than not, not worth the price of the dustcover.

[SJS50]

Count me as the first one, SJS. Blame it on my lack of taste or knowledge or views on race or whatever, but my first impression on reading certain chapters of the book was "WTF" and after two readings it remains so. I am not talking about the more cricketing sections like St Hill or John or Headley, but the more "social" stuff, in the West Indies and Rugby school stuff in England (been a while since the last read, so it is difficult to be precise). It won't surprise me if the critics or you or Salil consider it as the greatest book, but if ordinary fans talk about its greatness, I would suspect strongly that the reason is that they have been told that it is a "greatest" book. Parts of BaB are wonderful, but it is the "greatest" business that makes me suspicious and irritated.

No I do not consider it the greatest cricket book eiher, in fact I have written in the article above that it is not exactly a cricket book. He is a social commentator but the bits of the book about cricket are definitely very good. He does have a bit of a complex about being black but then its difficult for us so far removed, particularly in time, to appreciate what a balck man in the early part of the last century experienced. But I am not the greatest fan of the social side of the book though I can see what he is saying and appreciate where he is coming from. I wrote in the article above, and I quote, . . . I personally do not consider CLRJ as a cricket writer in so much as I do not consider Beyond A Boundary as a cricket book. It is a book about the Caribbean, which uses cricket as the backdrop for the social milieu of the Trinidad of his youth and provides us 'a unique glimpse of the human forces and struggles' of the times. The young boy from Port of Spain who seems to have his life completely engulfed by cricket and cricketers was also living amongst his people in appalling conditions, not just economic but worse. The divisions of status and more strongly of colour were not taken as fate or destiny or karma by this impressionable young man who from childhood had been exposed to British writings in the form of books and magazines literature and poetry. One can see how he was slowly but surely being transformed into a social and political thinker and activist and it is this aspect of his personality which, for me at least, dominates and strongly radiates through his writings even when they are supposed to be on cricket. This does, however, lend his writings a very strong character and make for compulsive and very absorbing reading, which is educative of much more than the cricket and cricketers who form the main characters on stage, as it were, in Beyond A Boundary.

[Mr. Wicket]

Beyond a Boundary is a very, very good book - though I wouldn't list it among my favourite books, and certainly not in the cricket section (more an in depth sociological/semi political and anthropological tome). For a great book - give me Fingleton's Cricket Crisis. Or Brightly Fades the Don. Or Masters of Cricket. Fingleton is my favourite writer (and probably the best writer I have seen on cricket) - who managed to write with incredible insight, knowledge and flair at the same time - while avoiding the excessive romanticism of Cardus.

[SJS50]

Beyond a Boundary is a very, very good book - though I wouldn't list it among my favourite books, and certainly not in the cricket section (more an in depth sociological/semi political and anthropological tome). For a great book - give me Fingleton's Cricket Crisis. Or Brightly Fades the Don. Or Masters of Cricket. Fingleton is my favourite writer (and probably the best writer I have seen on cricket) - who managed to write with incredible insight, knowledge and flair at the same time - while avoiding the excessive romanticism of Cardus.

Its terrific when a cricketer of renown turns out to be a good writer. That;s when you have the best of it all. And you are right Fingleton is also my favourite writer amongst the many cricketers who have written on the game. The other cricketer who has written very well on the game is Trevor Bailey. There is an authenticity about the writing of someone who has "been there done it all" which non-cricketing writers somehow lack. Unfortunately not many of the cricketers turned out to be great writers. Hobbs, for example, is a terribly disappointing writer. Then there are those who are very good but haven't written much. Brearley's Art of Captaincy is one of my al time favourite cricket books and yet this highly gifted intellectual, who also led the English cricket team with success, did not write more.

[Mr. Wicket]

Bill O'Reilly's Cricket Conquest is another excellent book. What are your thoughts on SMG's Sunny Days, btw?

[Tapioca]

SJS, 'poetic license' is just a euphemism for a lie :) All sports has legends about their players (Yogi Berra being a prime example of one who did not say many of the things that he said), but I don't know whether any of those will not just condone but celebrate the sort of thing that Cardus did (which is possibly why Cardus is somewhat unique across sports). I suspect that Arlott and co could write this way about the players if they really wanted to, but they couldn't force themselves to take so much license. For me, the distaste with his writing could be a product of disillusionment, that happened when I learned many of my favourite Cardus stories were not true. For eg, there is this one about the respect that Rhodes commended from the fellow professionals (recreating from memory) :

As McGahey (Charles McGahey of Essex) walked out to face Rhodes and Yorkshire, the weather changed. Looking over his shoulder at the darkening sun, McGahey exclaimed, "Ullo ! Caught Tunnicliffe b Rhodes 0 ". And so it was. Both innings"

(Tunnicliffe being the faithful first slipper for Rhodes). I was hugely impressed by this story when I first read it. Now of course you can check Cricketarchive Player Oracle and see that such a thing never happened. A main thrust of the story is that McGahey was out for a pair. It doesn't sound too impressive if McGahey made 21 & 8, for eg, but that is the most that could possibly have happened. Cardus inserted the dialogue and/or modified the story to make it better. Some of the made up stuff is easy to spot. Like the one about George Gunn. At 10 o'clock one morning, Gunn was having tea and reading the newspaper. His wife reminded him that he had to go to Trent Bridge for the second day's play in the county match. Gunn replied that his team is batting and there is no need to hurry. His wife told him that he better hurry because *he* was batting. Gunn checked the newspaper, confirmed that he indeed was one of the not out batsmen and quickly took a cab to the ground. The same essay tells several Gunn stories, like one about how walked down the wicket to Ted Macdonald, and when Macdonald ("the most majestic, fastest bowler of the day, and on the kill") threatened to knock off his head replied "why Mac, you couldn't knock a dent on a pound of butter on a hot day" (or something similar) and then proceeded to upper cut a bouncer for six over third man. As said earlier, the joy from reading something like this is sucked out when you suspect that it never happened.

[Mr. Wicket]

Nicely put S. Cardus was a fine writer, but it's hard to determine which of his pieces belong in the cricket section and which belong in fiction.

[SJS50]

Without going into specifics you are missing the point. He says himself that he puts words in the mouths of his characters. This is a style of writing and has to be seen as such. He is not lying for god's sake. He has no reason to. And you cant get away with it. He was writing when people who he wa writing about would have pointed out that he was lying they did not. Because everyone realised what he was doing and appreciated his bringing the characters to life and filling colours in them and the events. Its interesting to note that criticism of Cardus started when he became older. This is intriguing for many who were not at the scenes decided to point out his 'inaccuracies' if you please. I dont need to be told what is factual and what is not in Cardus's writings. I enjoy it for the beauty of it and the manner in which he brings me in close contact as it were with cricketers long dead. This has to be seen as a style (to repeat the word) rather than a failing. Next thing we will do is to criticise poetry for being inaccurate or highly exaggerated. All those who love Cardus's writings, and they are legion, do not go about defending his so-called in-accuracies. They do not feel the need to. When he writes. . .

On June 26, 1902, Old Trafford was a placew of Ethiopic heat, and the crowd that sat there in the airless world saw JT Tyldesley flog the Surrey bowlers all over the field. Richardson attacked from the Stretford end, and at every over's finish he wiped the sweat from his brow and felt his heart beating hammer strokes. Richardson had all his fieldsman on the off side, save one, who "looked out" at mid on. And once he bowled a long hop to Tyldesley, who swung on his heel;s and hooked the ball far into the on field. The Surrey fieldsman at mid-wicket saw something pass him, and with his eyes helplessly followed the direction of the hit, "One boundary more or less don't count on a day like this," it was possible to imagine the sweltering fellow telling himself, "Besides. Johnny is plainly going to get them anyhow." The ball slackened pace at the boundary's edge. Would it just roll home? The crowd tried to cheer it to the edge of the field. Then one was aware of heavy thuds on the earth. Some Surrey man, after all had been fool enough to think a desparate spurt and a boundary saved worthwhile, blistering sun despite. Who on earth was the stout but misguides sportsman? Heaven be praised, it was Richardson himself. He had bowled the ball; he had been bowling balls and his fastest, for nearly two hours. His labours in the sun had made ill those who sat watching him. And here he was, pounding along the outfield, after a hit off his own bowling. The writer sat on the 'popular' side, under the score board, as the ball got home a foot in advance of Richardson. The impetus of his run swept him over the edge of the grass, and to stop himself he put out his arms and grasped the iron rail. He laughed - the handsomest laugh in the world - and said "Thank You" to somebody who threw the ball back to him. His face was wet, his breath scant. He was a picture of honest toil. With the ball in his hands again he trotted back to the wicket and once more went through the travails of bowling at J T Tyldesley on a pitiless summer's day.

. . . he paints for me the most graphic picture of Tom Richardson I have ever read. I have nine whole chapters on Tom Richardson in different books with me running into many dozens of pages. They all tell me of the kind of character Tom was. Hardworking, tireless, workhorse of a great bowler with a great countenance and a hearty outlook but none of them is able to do what these few lines at the beginning of Cardus' piece on him do for me. I do not care whether this account is true or not. I am not going to go to a website to check how many runs Tyldesley scored on 26th June 1902 at Old Trafford. That is not what this piece is for. It paints for me a most vivid picture of the man (and it is an accurate picture as confirmed by many other contemporary accounts of the man), more vivid than could be done with ten times as many words and they wouldn't hold my attention too. If you cant see what I am saying here, I am afraid I have to rest my case. :)