Whipped, And Cherry-Topped

Cricket anthologies have a long pedigree, but where the Picador collection differs fromits predecessors is in its conscious internationalism: B.C. Pires rubs shoulders withMartin Johnson, N.S. Ramaswami’s essay follows Alan Gibson’s. Two of the mosttouching essays in the book are Dale Slater’s profile of a talented black SouthAfrican all-rounder destined by apartheid to never play a first-class match, and PhilipSnow’s reminiscences of a Fijian who could have given Ian Botham a run for his money.

The greats, of course, are here, with their divine arsenal of strokes. The toughesttask for any cricket anthologist is surely to overcome the impulse to carry everythingwritten by Neville Cardus on the game (Who but Cardus and which game but cricket couldhave produced a sentence like this: “As England’s total arrived at the fulltide of 400, Duleepsinhji allowed his freedom of strokeplay to run tolicentiousness”), and the whole of C.L.R. James’ Beyond a Boundary. Cardusis represented here through seven pieces, from his classic profile of Arthur Mailey to ajolly little essay on umpires. Guha has selected four from James, including his famouscelebrations of Headley and Sobers (“His command of the rising ball in the drive,his close fielding and his hurling himself into his fast bowling are a living embodimentof centuries of a tortured history”). Fingleton appears six times, and it’sa pleasure to read again that definitive paean to Victor Trumper and the craftilycalibrated appraisal of Bradman, Brightly Fades the Don.

There’s E.W. Swanton on Compton’s arrival on the county circuit (“Atthis point there entered a juvenile figure with an oddly relaxed way of walking, somewhatloose round the knees and with a swaying of the shoulders, inclined to let his bat trailafter him rather than use it as a stick in the usual fashion”), Ray Robinson onKeith Miller’s derringdo, and Matthew Engel’s poignant piece on Colin Milburn,whose career was tragically cut short by the loss of an eye. And many more panegyrics tothe great and the godlike. But, though the deepest memories in any sport are aboutglorious individual feats, in my opinion the best cricket writing has always been reservedfor—in the absence of a better word—the joy of the game, often expressed throughodd tales about the less-than-famous. Here too, the book does not disappoint: amongothers, there’s a superb piece on legendary Sydney barracker Yabba (when a newbatsman had added only five in half an hour with the team total above 500, Yabba shoutedat the batting side captain: “Hurry up, declare the innings before he gets set andscores a century!”). But why, oh why, is there only one funny piece from Ian Peebles,the drollest cricket raconteur of all? Why is not there a single article on the art ofcaptaincy, for surely in no other game does the captain play such a decisive role? Whyinclude a V. S. Naipaul review of Beyond a Boundary when you have already carriedthree chapters from that classic? If this was done to include a literary figure in thebook, a better choice could have been Harold Pinter’s graceful takes, devoid of thosemysterious pauses that confound his drama critics. And the omission that rankles the mostis that in spite of half-a-dozen pieces on Yorkshire cricket and cricketers, there’snothing on Geoff Boycott, whose idiosyncrasies have inspired some of the most entertainingcricket writing ever.

Indeed, the only complaint one has about this anthology is that it could have done witha lighter heart. Guha’s introductions to the articles are often packed with nearlyexhibitionist levels of trivia, and the relentless ‘I’-s sometimes give theseentrees an egotistic tone. Both cricket fanatic and bookworm, he has put his heart andsoul into the project, but they need not have been flaunted. But these are minor carpingsthat fade to nothing compared to the pleasure that some of the pieces dole outunsparingly. Consider the exquisite opening of a newspaper report by Cardus on awell-fought Ashes Test: “There is a passage in Tom Jones where Fielding, havinggot his plot terribly complicated, calls on all the high Muses, in person and severally,for aid; because he tells us, ‘without their guidance I do not know how to bring mystory to a successful conclusion’. As I write this report, I feel also the need ofinspired and kindly forces. The day’s play, in the old term, beggarsdescription...” Hallelujah!