Essential cricket library
Neil
I've only got a few cricket books in my library. Any suggestions for
the *essential* cricket library? I'm an England fan, but a cricket
lover above all.
TIA
--
Neil
alvey
Taste is an individual thing (personally I can't handle Cardus at all),
but if you want 'traditional' cricket writing then of the Oz authors I'd
recommend;
Ray Robinson; a man who rarely wrote a harsh word on anybody and was a
maniac for accuracy. He was known to keep pecking away at the background
of a decision or a story for years. My personal favourite would be his
history of Australian captains, 'On Top Down Under'.
Jack Fingleton; one of the few Test players to have successfully made
the transition from player to published. Wrote in a fine "muscular
English" and, like his contemporary Bill O'Reilly was not afraid to
throw the occassional rock at whatever he thought deserved it. Most
notably Bradman. Try 'Brightly Fades The Don'. (Which is *not* a Mario
Puzo novel as many people suspect.)
2nd Division:
Peter Roebuck; Some of his early (English) works are a nice light read.
Gideon Haigh; An observer with a reasonable turn of phrase. His recent
work on Jack Iverson is the most exhaustively researched cricket book
I've ever read.
Humour:
Warwick Todd, the man who makes SK Warne appear saintly.
Anything concering Merv Hughes who, from what I've read, I'd give the
title of Funniest Cricketer Ever. Some of the Merv anecdotes are
hysterically funny.
To avoid:
'Tour Books' Especially by anybody named Waugh.
Others I'm fond of: In no order or category.
CLR James, 'Beyond A Boundary'.
Bill Bowes
Frances Edmonds
To Avoid at Any Price:
Dickie Bird
Boycs (unless you have an interest in mental disorders. But then rsc
provides that for free...)
alvey
In Brisbane, modestly omitting my own modest autobiography, "Bloody
Selectors." An attractively packaged 6 volume set telling the story of
one of Australia's greatest ever players who, due to the incredible NSV
bias of Australia's selectors, never played a single Test. Available
from underneath my house. (Cash only).
Sid
> Neil wrote:
> Taste is an individual thing (personally I can't handle Cardus at
> all), but if you want 'traditional' cricket writing then of the Oz
> authors I'd recommend;
> Ray Robinson; a man who rarely wrote a harsh word on anybody and was a
> Jack Fingleton; one of the few Test players to have successfully made
> Peter Roebuck; Some of his early (English) works are a nice light read.
> Gideon Haigh; An observer with a reasonable turn of phrase. His recent
> Warwick Todd, the man who makes SK Warne appear saintly.
A good list!
> In Brisbane, modestly omitting my own modest autobiography, "Bloody
> Selectors." An attractively packaged 6 volume set telling the story of
> one of Australia's greatest ever players who, due to the incredible
> NSV bias of Australia's selectors, never played a single
> Test. Available from underneath my house. (Cash only).
How many selectors do you have underneath your house right now?
Or did you mean players?
Sid
--
This too shall change.
sid at nerte dot net
http://www.nerte.net
Jan Buxton
Nothing too heavy/learned from me, I'll leave that to those who know
about such things. Some stuff thats enjoyable to read,
'Opening Up' by Michael Atherton
'What Now? The Autobiography' by Phil Tufnell
'Postcards from the Beach' by Phil Tufnell
'A Lot of Hard Yakka' by Simon Hughes
'Yakking Around the World' by Simon Hughes
--
Jan
Bob Dubery
"Neil" <en...@btinternet.com> wrote in message
news:3f53aead...@news.btinternet.com...
No such thing as an "essential" library in my POV. Cricket has a wide range
of characters, a long history, encompasses a range of activities within the
time-span of a single game, that the body of literature surrounding the game
is massive. You could, if you wanted, specialise in a single period.
Specialising in PLAYERS is less feasible, though there's a lot written about
the two notable giants of yesteryear Grace and Bradman.
Do you want to read biographies? Autobiographies? Books about the history
and development of the game?
There's so much, and I find it difficult enough to pick books for myself
I usually don't enjoy autobiographies much. Too many of them are written by
players who have nothing really illuminating to offer and seem intent on
contextualising the various unsavoury incidents they've been involved in.
Yet I recently bought a copy of Allan Donald's book - because it was on sale
and dirt cheap - and found it most enjoyable and refreshingly candid.
There are histories within the greater history. There is, for example, a
whole "lost" history of non-white cricket in SA. As an SAn I am keen to know
more about this history and especially the brief period of reconciliatio
between "white" and "black" cricket in the mid-70s. But books covering this
subject are not easily found.
Lots to chose from.
A book I've found fascinating is Gerald Brodribb's Next Man In. This is the
history of the laws of cricket. By recounting the evolution of the laws
Brodribb touches on many key moments in the evolution of the game.
I also like anthologies of cricket writing. The Picador Book Of Cricket,
edited by Ramachandra Guha, is a top-notch compilation.
Maybe a book like this is a good place to start becaue it will give you
taste of various writers and various periods of the game's history. Guha's
compilation will expose you to Ray Robinson, CLR James, Cardus, Fingleton,
Selvey, Arlott, Berry, Engel and many other authors.
Some of my books were bought on impulse. Some were planned in as much as I
read one book that suggested I read something else. EG in The Art Of
Captaincy, Brearley alludes several times to WG Grace. I was fascinated by
the stories of Grace's gamesmanship, and so that prompted me to seek out a
good Grace biography. Eventually I got Rae's biography of WG and now that
prompts me to learn more about Ranjitsinhji.
None of this is probably what you were hoping for :-)
vineet
>
I shall now enumerate, for the benefit of the reader, 50
fine books on the game. To choose a cricket eleven is to
invite dispute, and so it is with a cricket library. Asked
by a friend which 10 books he should buy to begin his
collection, A.A. Thomson answered, "John Nyren's A
Cricketers' Tutor, Altham and Swanton's A History of Cricket
and any eight of Cardus". I have five times as many slots to
play with, and yet, the first two of Thomson's
recommendations do not figure in my list at all.
I will begin with authors rather than titles, with the
acknowledged masters of cricket writing. James presents no
problem, since only two books have appeared under his name:
Beyond a Boundary, which was first published in 1963 - the
year Frank Worrell led his West Indian side on a triumphant
march through the grounds of England - and Cricket, a
collection of fugitive pieces lovingly put together 23 years
later by his assistant, Anna Grimshaw. Jack Fingleton wrote
more books, but two clearly stand out: his first-person
account of bodyline, Cricket Crisis (1946), and The Masters
of Cricket (1958), a collection of portraits of
contemporaries and heroes. His compatriot Ray Robinson wrote
half a dozen books of roughly equal worth. If one cannot
have them all, one might make do with Between Wickets
(1946), a fact-filled analysis of cricket between the wars,
and his last book, On Top Down Under, a cheerful roam
through the careers of the men who have captained Australia
(first published in 1976, this book reappeared in 1998,
updated by Gideon Haigh).
What then of Cardus? He certainly wrote more than eight
books, but I am not an Englishman, and must set against his
undoubted genius the claims of geographical correctness.
Perhaps one can allow him three. The Autobiography, of
course, and with it The Essential Neville Cardus, also
printed in 1949, the essays chosen with care by his
publisher, Rupert Hart-Davis. Reprinted here are pieces from
his books of the 1920s and 1930s - Cardus at his freshest:
anecdotal, worshipful and breathless. To go with it I would
recommend Close of Play (1956), a more meditative and, dare
one say, mature work.
Sports literature is dominated by biographies and
autobiographies, the former of uneven quality, the latter
not often written by the person whose name appears on the
title page. Lives of great cricketers published in recent
years are long on gossip and short on analysis. Things were
once otherwise. I think for example of Gerald Howat's 1975
biography of the first great black cricketer, Learie
Constantine, a book which subtly weaves anecdote with social
history, or of Irving Rosenwater's study of Don Bradman
(1978), a dispassionate and heavily numbered analysis of the
record-breaking batsman. Alongside Rosenwater one could
read, and buy beforehand, Brightly Fades the Don (1949),
Jack Fingleton's account of Bradman's remarkable last tour
of England.
The Don was the most phenomenal of all cricketers, possibly
excepting W.G. Grace. In England, where there is a perennial
interest in Victoriana, there is a fresh book on Grace
published almost every year. I prefer to all of these the
warm remembrance of Bernard Darwin. W.G. Grace, printed in
1934, is written by a supreme stylist who made his name
writing about another sport (golf). The modern cricketer who
has resembled Grace in the expansiveness of his personality
is surely Frederick Sewards Trueman. John Arlott's Fred:
Portrait of a Fast Bowler (1971) is a wonderful evocation of
the bowler and man, by one who spent much time with his
subject in pub and commentary box. Three other lives by
English writers shall go on to my short list - David Foot's
Harold Gimblett (1982), a Somerset man writing with love and
despair about a tormented Somerset hero; Leslie Duckworth's
S.F. Barnes (1970), the life of a truly great bowler who
chose to play in the obscurity of the leagues rather than
for Lancashire and England; and Simon Wilde's Ranji: A
Genius Rich and Strange (1990), a superb warts-and-all
recollection of the Indian prince who played for Sussex and
England.
The finest of all cricket autobiographies is unquestionably
Arthur Mailey's 10 for 66 and All That (1958), the tale of a
lowly mechanic whose playing skills allowed him to meet
kings and prime ministers and to befriend Sir James Barrie
and Neville Cardus. Mailey was a natural wit and a gifted
artist (the book carries his illustrations), and had strong
views on the game besides. Not as strong, however, as the
views of Bill O'Reilly, another in the long line of
Australian googly bowlers who have made mincemeat of English
batsmen. His Tiger: Sixty Years in Cricket (1985) is
unsparing in its criticisms of the modern game. But it also
contains lovely memories of life and sport in the bush,
including a chapter (reproduced in this anthology) on
O'Reilly's first encounter with Don Bradman. Among the
English contributions to this genre I shall select Bill
Bowes's Express Deliveries (1958), whichis reliably known
not to have been written by a ghost. This is an account of
professional cricket as seen by a hard-boiled Yorkshireman
whose first job was as a net bowler at Lord's. Add to that
Ian Peebles' Spinner's Yarn (1977), by a contemporary of
Bowes who came from further north (Scotland), and whose
route to Test cricket lay instead through The Parks at
Oxford.
Some of the best memoirists have been less than world-class
players themselves. R.C. Robertson-Glasgow's 46 Not Out
(1948) displays in abundance the love for the game of a fast
bowler who appeared, if not with a great deal of success,
for Oxford University and for Somerset. It must be read
alongside Bernard Hollowood's Cricket on the Brain (1970),
by a celebrated cartoonist and former editor of Punch, who
played in the tough northern leagues and for Staffordshire
in the Minor County Championship. Rounding off this group is
Sujit Mukherjee's Autobiography of an Unknown Cricketer
(1996), about life in a complete cricketing backwater, the
eastern Indian state of Bihar.
Mukherjee's principal reputation lies outside cricket, as a
literary historian. Two other men of letters who adored
cricket - although they played it with even less distinction
- were Edmund Blunden and Ronald Mason. Blunden's Cricket
Country (1944), published in the depths of war, is a joyous
exercise in escapism. Mason's Batsman's Paradise (1955) is
likewise a moving personal account of what the game and its
icons meant to a bookish English boy.
To move now from the idiosyncratic to the encyclopaedic,
from books that foreground one person to those that pretend
to a greater comprehensiveness. If one is looking for a
single-volume history of cricket, then Altham and Swanton, I
am afraid, must give way to Rowland Bowen's Cricket: A
History of its Growth and Development throughout the World
(1970), a magnificently learned work which is less
Anglocentric and far richer in sociological insight. Those
of a more technical bent should supplement Bowen with Gerald
Brodribb's Next Man In (first published in 1952, then in an
updated edition in 1985), which is a delightful look at the
origins of the game's laws and customs.
In terms of player strength and commercial robustness
Australia has been, for some time now, the leading cricket
nation of the world. The recently published Oxford Companion
to Australian Cricket (1996) presents an authoritative and
always readable account of the game in that country. There
are no comparable books, I fear, on other lands, but their
partisans can make do with the Wisden Book of Cricketers'
Lives (1986), compiled by Benny Green from the obituary
section of the great almanack, a little outdated, but with
8,614 entries nonetheless. Collective biography is also how
one would describe David Frith's book The Fast Men (1975;
revised edition 1977), with its companion volume on The Slow
Men (1984). I recommend these strongly, for the author
probably knows more cricket facts than any man alive, and
because in these books he celebrates cricket's underpaid
proletarians. Batsmen are the glamour boys of the game, who
are paid more, profiled more, and rewarded more. When Len
Hutton was knighted, back in 1956, Arthur Mailey
congratulated him but added, "I hope next time it is a
bowler - the last one to be knighted was Sir Francis Drake".
For the visually minded, I commend Cricket Cartoons and
Caricatures (1989), by George Plumptre, and The Art of
Cricket (1983), by Robin Simon and Alastair Smart, both of
which range deep and wide and reproduce their selections
well. Alas, there is no comparable book on cricket
photography (a casualty, one suspects, of royalty payments).
Also worth possessing is Lord's and Commons (1988), edited
by John Bright-Holmes, which focuses exclusively on cricket
fiction. Wodehouse at the Wicket (1998), edited by Murray
Hedgecock, shall be placed next to it. This brings together
all that the master humourist published on cricket, prefaced
by a superlative introduction by the editor.
Of the many anthologies preceding this one, I can bring
myself to recommend Alan Ross's A Cricketer's Companion
(second enlarged edition 1979), compiled by a man who was
born in India, who played cricket for Oxford, who wrote his
first book about Australia, and who is a notable poet
besides. Ross, whom some reckon to be the last great cricket
writer, published in 1999 a selection of his writings over
four decades, called (after a line of Tennyson on the county
of Sussex) Green Fading into Blue.
Ross chooses, in his old age, to privilege his
identification with Sussex. The county has been to him what
Lancashire once was to Cardus, or Yorkshire to A.A. Thomson.
For an Indian, himself living in a vaster and altogether
more diverse land, what is truly amazing about English
literature is its love of place. The flowers, trees and
rivers, so much smaller and less colorful, are written about
with a detail and emotional intensity absent in our own
literature. Happily, cricket has been a prime beneficiary of
English localism. In 1946 Dudley Carew wrote To the Wicket,
a delightful ramble through the counties and their
cricketers. Then in 1961 A.A. Thomson published A Cricket
Bouquet, another lovely book, whose 17 chapters end with
all-time county elevens. A quarter of a century later Tim
Heald brought out The Character of Cricket, which differed
only in focusing more on the atmosphere ofcounty grounds
rather than on their players. The most celebrated of these
grounds is the subject of Pelham Warner's Lord's: 1787-1945
(1946), written by one who captained Middlesex and England -
the former to the County Championship, the latter to an
Ashes victory in Australia - founded the Cricketer magazine
and was (need it be said?) president of the MCC as well. No
one knew Lord's better than Warner. His book is suffused
with love and knowledge; it is the one volume currently with
Mr. Patherya I most wish I had back with me.
Eight places remain, and I shall fill them with some of my
own favourites. Great Australian Cricket Stories (1982),
edited by Ken Piese, is a massive collection of tales epic
and small. Alan Gibson's The Cricket Captains of England
(1976) wears its research lightly; it is almost as
informative as, and possibly better written than, the
comparable book by Ray Robinson. Gibson's Growing Up with
Cricket contains memories of cricket played and cricketers
watched in Essex and Oxford; the tone is urbane, the wit
dry. By contrast the style is extravagant and the stories
are risqu in Michael Parkinson's Cricket Mad (1969), set in
Yorkshire, and another well-thumbed book of mine. Another
most readable book by a fan is Rowland Ryder's Cricket
Calling (1995), written in his eighties by a man who grew up
in Edgbaston Cricket Ground (where his father worked), and
whose memories stretched all the way back to Warwick
Armstrong's 1921 Australian side.
Among biographies, I can offer Ashley Mallet's Grimmett
(1993), a good Australian spin bowler remembering a better.
The finest book on the loveliest of cricket arts is probably
Trevor Bailey and Fred Trueman's The Spinners' Web (1988),
which chronicles the varying styles and achievements of the
slow bowlers the authors watched or played against (Bailey
certainly wrote his sections; Trueman possibly spoke his). I
am allowed, I think, to end with a fellow countryman writing
about other fellow countrymen. Sujit Mukherjee's The Romance
of Indian Cricket (1968) pays proper tribute to a generation
of great Indian cricketers always ignored abroad and since
superseded at home by the Tendulkars and Gavaskars.
Fifty is a number whose cricketing significance is
restricted only to the pyjama game. But 11 is too few, and a
100 would take too much time - and stretch the budget. The
list offered here is the product of a lifelong addiction and
a deeply felt cosmopolitanism. My experience may even be
unique; I know no one else who has had to build his
collection of cricket books twice over. Happily, the second
one is still growing.
RamachandraGuha
Mike Holmans
>
> "Neil" <en...@btinternet.com> wrote in message
> news:3f53aead...@news.btinternet.com...
> > I've been watching cricket for more years than I care to remember, but
> > I've only got a few cricket books in my library. Any suggestions for
> > the *essential* cricket library? I'm an England fan, but a cricket
> > lover above all.
>
> No such thing as an "essential" library in my POV.
I basically agree with most of what you say in this post, especially
that sentence, so I'm partially disagreeing with some of it just to have
something more interesting to write than what I'm supposed to be doing.
Neil is an England fan, posting from England. There is therefore one
book which is *essential* - Derek Birley's "A Social History of English
Cricket". No other book approaches it as a guide to how things got to be
that way at almost any point in English and English-cricket history.
> Cricket has a wide range
> of characters, a long history, encompasses a range of activities within the
> time-span of a single game, that the body of literature surrounding the game
> is massive. You could, if you wanted, specialise in a single period.
> Specialising in PLAYERS is less feasible, though there's a lot written about
> the two notable giants of yesteryear Grace and Bradman.
>
Actually, there's a lot written about a lot of players, because there
haven't been that many in the grand scheme of things. The difficult bit
is tracking them all down. There's not just the autobiography and the
admiring biography, but the books about each tour they went on, the
biogs and autobiogs of all their contemporaries, the history of their
county/state/province, the books about The 20 Best Leg-Spinners/Opening
Batsmen/Players with a Z in their name, and books of anecdote and
reminiscence by journalists and commentators, not to mention the
collections of pieces by non-cricketers describing some idyllic moment
in which our hero features strongly.
Just think how many books include a story about Brian Close (admittedly,
it's often the same one, but so what?). You could fill about half a mile
of shelving with books mentioning him, and you'd have a pretty fine
library about post-war cricket. Do the same with Wilfred Rhodes and
Michael Atherton and you have the entire 20th century.
> Do you want to read biographies? Autobiographies? Books about the history
> and development of the game?
>
> There's so much, and I find it difficult enough to pick books for myself
>
> I usually don't enjoy autobiographies much. Too many of them are written by
> players who have nothing really illuminating to offer and seem intent on
> contextualising the various unsavoury incidents they've been involved in.
> Yet I recently bought a copy of Allan Donald's book - because it was on sale
> and dirt cheap - and found it most enjoyable and refreshingly candid.
As you will be tediously aware, I have been gorging on a diet of old
autobiographies. One which I can heartily disrecommend is Len Hutton's
"Cricket Is My Life", which he must have autographed as a joke because
he could never have written the sentence about celebrations across
Yorkshire after his 364 "in all the Ridings, North, East, West and
South." (For those benighted souls who are not familiar with God's Own
County, the South Riding exists only in fiction.) That feeble effort is
on a par with the present-day instant biographies of players who have
one good Test series which appear and to which you're referring.
But I'd generally agree that even the decent autobiogs which come out
today are pretty dull fare, with the odd exception like Atherton's.
However, they mature with age.
I would guess that anyone who was misguided enough to buy Norman
Yardley's "Cricket Campaigns" on publication would have been bored to
death unless they had a perverse interest in the number of St Peter's
School, York pupils who won the north of England squash championship,
but I found even this dull tome yielded plenty of nuggets of historical
interest. The pot-boiler of 50 years ago is now a window on to an age
long gone, when people played cricket and lived differently. And the
matches they describe are ones of which I obviously have no personal
memories - though I have read so many accounts of the runout of McWatt
at the Bourda in 1954 that I might one day delude myself into thinking I
was actually there.
I'm having a hard time believing that I will ever be fascinated by
Graham Dilley's autobiography, say, but I suspect that in 20 years time,
even that might be an interesting reminder of what happened in the 80s.
>
> There are histories within the greater history. There is, for example, a
> whole "lost" history of non-white cricket in SA. As an SAn I am keen to know
> more about this history and especially the brief period of reconciliatio
> between "white" and "black" cricket in the mid-70s. But books covering this
> subject are not easily found.
Sounds like you ought to start researching and write one - at least
about the reconciliation period, since you know some people who could
point you in the right direction.
> Lots to chose from.
The cricket books I most enjoy are those which give the chance for
reflection. The book form ought to encourage a greater sense of
perspective, which must be supplied by either the writer or the reader
or both. Since instant tour books or snap autobiographies capitalising
on a player's mid-career popularity provide almost no perspective, they
don't become worth reading until the reader has forgotten most of the
immediate details.
In an earlier discussion, John Hall mentioned that AA Thomson was one of
his favourite writers. I'd never read any at the time, but have just
started on his "Hirst and Rhodes", and I'm already in love with it. Very
early on, he lists some fine players born in Pudsey - Long John
Tunnicliffe, Len Hutton, Herbert Sutcliffe, Major Booth, Harry Halliday
and Raymond Illingworth (1). It's the footnote that does it: "(1) The
world is full of enough trouble without starting a cold war as to where
Farsley ends and Pudsey begins. They are near enough."
But I think there is one almost infallible rule about cricket books: the
flashier the cover, the worse the book.
Cheers,
Mike
Andrew Dunford
"Mike Holmans" <mi...@jackalope.demon.co.uk> wrote in message
news:3F55D199...@jackalope.demon.co.uk...
> Bob Dubery wrote:
<snip>
> > I usually don't enjoy autobiographies much. Too many of them are written
by
> > players who have nothing really illuminating to offer and seem intent on
> > contextualising the various unsavoury incidents they've been involved
in.
> > Yet I recently bought a copy of Allan Donald's book - because it was on
sale
> > and dirt cheap - and found it most enjoyable and refreshingly candid.
>
> As you will be tediously aware, I have been gorging on a diet of old
> autobiographies. One which I can heartily disrecommend is Len Hutton's
> "Cricket Is My Life", which he must have autographed as a joke because
> he could never have written the sentence about celebrations across
> Yorkshire after his 364 "in all the Ridings, North, East, West and
> South." (For those benighted souls who are not familiar with God's Own
> County, the South Riding exists only in fiction.) That feeble effort is
> on a par with the present-day instant biographies of players who have
> one good Test series which appear and to which you're referring.
>
> But I'd generally agree that even the decent autobiogs which come out
> today are pretty dull fare, with the odd exception like Atherton's.
> However, they mature with age.
I agree. I feel there ought to be a law against players writing
autobiographies in mid-career. Not because of a danger of bringing the game
into disrepute by discussing controversial incidents, but rather that the
player often lacks maturity and/or a sense of perspective. Especially to be
avoided are titles of the "My World Cup Diary" type.
Somebody mentioned Mailey's 10 for 66 and All That. For some strange reason
(probably because I happened to locate it on a shelf), this is the first
cricket autobiography I remember reading - I suppose I was about ten years
old. The only disadvantage of sampling Mailey first is that I may have
formed the impression that autobiographies were usually interesting.
One of the wonderful things about possessing a collection which has passed
through three generations of my family is discovering old books I didn't
know I owned. There have been several occasions when something interesting
has been written on this newsgroup about an old publication, and I've
thought to myself "I must get hold of a copy of that one day", then some
time later I find one kicking around in the loft.
<snip>
Andrew
Mike Holmans
>
> "Mike Holmans" <mi...@jackalope.demon.co.uk> wrote in message
> news:3F55D199...@jackalope.demon.co.uk...
> > But I'd generally agree that even the decent autobiogs which come out
> > today are pretty dull fare, with the odd exception like Atherton's.
> > However, they mature with age.
>
> I agree. I feel there ought to be a law against players writing
> autobiographies in mid-career. Not because of a danger of bringing the game
> into disrepute by discussing controversial incidents, but rather that the
> player often lacks maturity and/or a sense of perspective. Especially to be
> avoided are titles of the "My World Cup Diary" type.
No, there shouldn't be a law against such books being produced. There
should be a law against them being read for 20 years after publication.
Then the reader supplies the perspective so sadly lacking in the
players.
Cheers,
Mike
Bob Dubery
"Mike Holmans" <mi...@jackalope.demon.co.uk> wrote in message
news:3F55D199...@jackalope.demon.co.uk...
> > There are histories within the greater history. There is, for example, a
> > whole "lost" history of non-white cricket in SA. As an SAn I am keen to
know
> > more about this history and especially the brief period of reconciliatio
> > between "white" and "black" cricket in the mid-70s. But books covering
this
> > subject are not easily found.
>
> Sounds like you ought to start researching and write one - at least
> about the reconciliation period, since you know some people who could
> point you in the right direction.
There are books. They're just devilish hard to come by. Even in SA.
In fact all provincial unions are required, by the UCBs transformation
charter, to produce a book relating the history of non-white cricket in the
province. AFAIK 3 such books have been produced: Across The Great Divide
from Gauteng, Whites In Blacks from KZN, and a third book from Western
Province. They are hard to find and not available over the counter. There's
little demand for them. They were, I'm told, on sale at airports during the
CWC.
I managed to get a copy of Across The Great Divide by driving over to the
Wanderers one lunch time and asking some questions. It's a poor book really,
and goes to prove that the GCB should be running a cricket team, not
publishing books. It hasn't been proof read (not by anybody with any
reasonable kind of knowledge of the English language), is disjointed and
poorly organised. I'm not surprised they can't sell it.
But it achieves it's main goal, which is to show that the history of
non-white cricket extends back past the (then) SACUs development program. In
fact there is a record of a match between "Hottentots" and "Boers" in 1854
(which suggests that Afrikaans involvement in cricket also goes back a lot
longer than most people thought). The Hottentots won.
The book is very sketchy about the reasons for the break-down of the brief
mid-70s unification and totally silent on the backlash against township
cricket in the aftermath of the Gatting tour.
It's hard to put a complete picture together.
There are some snippets in Omar Henry's autobiography, but books by the
white players of the time, Mike Procter, say, or Peter Pollock., are very
vague about the whole affair. They seem to have had the typical white SAn
lack of knowledge about all things black SAn (apart from riots and domestic
servants) and basically say "we were young, typical white Sans who swallowed
the Nationalist propaganda" which is honest, I suppose, but hardly
illuminating. They too don't offer much of an explantion of why unity broke
down.
I'm wary of the KZN book, or, to be more accurate, wary of it's author. But
I believe it's a much better work. Now all I have to do is find a copy.
I wish I could say that I know people who could tell me a thing or two, but
I don't really. A large number of records have been destroyed and a lot of
what is known has been passed down by word of mouth.
What do you expect in a country where the grave of the composer of the
national anthem is unmarked because the Nats levelled the black section of
the Johannesburg cemetary to provide a picnic ground for visitors to the
adjoining white section and didn't even bother to keep the plans and
records?
Neil
on.
Thanks again.
Neil
alvey
Or a law which has the "author" put into stocks and pelted with sodden
copies of their work if it exceeds a certain Factual Errors level.
See, I got into bed with Garry Sobers the other night...let me re-phrase
that. I started reading Sobers auto t'other night (and I'm assuming here
that it's only been relatively recently thrown together), and was
impressed to find not one but two glaring fuckups on the one page. One
was just an ordinary glaring wherein Sobey said that the WACA pitch was
sooo quick that it made ordinary meds like Sam Gannon & Michael Bevan
into Wes Halls or somesuch. Well that's Bad Enough, but the second was
bloody near criminal in that GStAS attempted to deprive the cricket
world of one of it's greatest quotes by his referring to a certain
immortal NZ trundler as "Bob Tunis". I just can't wait to resume reading
and tote up the number of errors. Maybe 376 is his target.
alvey
in brisbane, where a recent Qld Uni Press publication, 'A History of
Brisbane' genre opus by some local worthy, has been withdrawn after a
rival architect produced a criticism which listed over 800 factual,
grammatical & other assorted errors.
Michael Seth
alvey wrote:
> Well that's Bad Enough, but the second was
> bloody near criminal in that GStAS attempted to deprive the cricket
> world of one of it's greatest quotes by his referring to a certain
> immortal NZ trundler as "Bob Tunis".
Tunis not being neither here nor there but definately somewhere, I would think
that Bob Tunis would be a rather different player/coach/commentator
than the original. Could we have him?
Cheers
Michael
Andrew Dunford
"alvey" <alvey_johnho...@yahoo.com> wrote in message
news:bj5i4e$fbvkb$1...@ID-155113.news.uni-berlin.de...
Totally agree. Factual errors seem to abound in most many cricket books.
I'm beginning to see a link between Sobers' autobiography and the wonderful
Dizzy Gillespie album 'A Night in Tunisia'. However I've yet to work out
why an Australian quick would want to spend a night in a long-retired NZ
medium pacer.
<snip>
Andrew
Yuk Tang
news:bj22d9$n04$2...@news7.svr.pol.co.uk:
Two essentials:
The Art of Cricket, by Don Bradman
(The Art of) Captaincy, by Mike Brearley
--
Cheers, ymt.
alvey
snip
> (The Art of) Captaincy, by Mike Brearley
>
Chapter 1. Avoid playing the West Indies.
alvey
JLichterm
All I can tell you are books I enjoyed.
Dazzler, by Darren Gough - I liked his honesty and simple style. Gough
realizes he's a cricketer, and his book does not pretend its anything
more than a story about one. No earth shaking revalations, but fun.
One criticism (and I have this with most biographical books) is that
it was written before his career was over. There may be an updated
version somewhere.
Mihir Bose's History of Indian Cricket is interesting reading. Can be
a bit "thick" at times, but worth having in a collection, IMO.
ANother "thick" book with lots of interesting info is "Patrons,
players and the Crowd" by Richard Cashman.
I also have Michael Manley's History of West Indies Cricket on my
shelf, but I have not gotten around to reading it yet (and I've owned
it for a year).
JLichterm
All I can tell you are books I enjoyed.
Yuk Tang
news:f127ed0b.03090...@posting.google.com:
> I also have Michael Manley's History of West Indies Cricket on my
> shelf, but I have not gotten around to reading it yet (and I've
> owned it for a year).
The definitive text on West Indian cricket?
And no, the question wasn't aimed at you; at anyone else who's read it.
Probably Mike H, John H and whoever from the Windian crew who still
read rsc.
--
Cheers, ymt.
John Hall
Yuk Tang <jim.l...@yahoo.com> writes:
>jlic...@yahoo.com (JLichterm) wrote in
>news:f127ed0b.03090...@posting.google.com:
>>
>> I also have Michael Manley's History of West Indies Cricket on my
>> shelf, but I have not gotten around to reading it yet (and I've
>> owned it for a year).
>
>The definitive text on West Indian cricket?
I should have thought that would be CLR James' "Beyond a Boundary", even
though it isn't a formal history.
>
>And no, the question wasn't aimed at you; at anyone else who's read it.
>Probably Mike H, John H and whoever from the Windian crew who still
>read rsc.
>
JL is ahead of me, in that at least he's got it on his shelves, which is
more than I can claim.
--
John Hall
"Banking was conceived in iniquity and born in sin"
Sir Josiah Stamp, a former president of the Bank of England
Mike Holmans
tapped the keyboard and brought forth:
>In article <Xns93EFDCB884DF5...@130.133.1.4>,
> Yuk Tang <jim.l...@yahoo.com> writes:
>>jlic...@yahoo.com (JLichterm) wrote in
>>news:f127ed0b.03090...@posting.google.com:
>>>
>>> I also have Michael Manley's History of West Indies Cricket on my
>>> shelf, but I have not gotten around to reading it yet (and I've
>>> owned it for a year).
>>And no, the question wasn't aimed at you; at anyone else who's read it.
>>Probably Mike H, John H and whoever from the Windian crew who still
>>read rsc.
>>
>JL is ahead of me, in that at least he's got it on his shelves, which is
>more than I can claim.
I think it's been on my shelves, as yet unread, for two years now.
Cheers,
Mike