New Books – An Overview for January 2020

A new decade begins, and the outlook for print books still looks pretty healthy, particularly from the world of self-publishing and the smaller niche publishers’ limited editions. That said the bigger players will still offer a few titles, so there is a wide range of reading on offer. It will take a while to take a look at everything that has arrived recently or is on its way to us, but it is a job that has to be done, so please bear with me to the end. You are bound to learn something that will be of interest to you.

This time, the twenty second occasion on which I have penned this feature, I will start with our friends at Pitch Publishing from whom, as far as I am aware, there are at least five books due in 2020 although I remain hopeful that Mark Peel’s biography of Mike Brearley will join them at some point. The first of the five, due in February, is Lightning Strikes: The Loughborough Lightning Story thus Pitch, not for the first time, are publishing a book on women’s cricket. The author is Jamie Ramage

The next Pitch title, Ashley Gray’s The Unforgiven, I have already mentioned so will not dwell on it again other than to say that it has the potential to be a genuinely interesting read and not just within the cricket world, dealing as it does with the stories of the so called West Indian rebels who toured South Africa in 1982/83 and 1983/84.

Also due is another book from Tim Quelch whose previous efforts, Stumps and Runs and Rock and Roll, and Bent Arms and Dodgy Wickets I much enjoyed. Good Old Sussex by the Sea promises to be more of the same albeit the sporting issues, and doubtless the news items also, will be of a rather more local flavour, dealing with Sussex County Cricket Club and the football clubs that are Brighton and Hove Albion and Hastings United.

Fourth up from Pitch is the autobiography of Ian Gould, Gunner. Gould enjoyed a long career behind the stumps for Middlesex and Sussex before becoming a coach and then an umpire, his swansong being the 2019 World Cup. His will doubtless be an interesting story, if only because he seems to play an entertaining role in the stories of every single cricketer of his generation and is clearly therefore quite a character.

Finally May will see the appearance of Barbed Wire and Cucumber Sandwiches. It is a book about the 1970 South African tour and the events leading to its cancellation. For those of us who remember the tour, as I do, it is a sobering thought that the book appears half a century on from the events it chronicles. It is however the case that significant anniversaries tend to attract interest, and this one is not the only book on the Stop The Seventy Tour campaign that we will see in 2020.

A rather less significant anniversary is forty seven, but that has not stopped Colin Babb writing 1973 and Me, due to be published by Hansib in March. Babb describes himself as a British Born Caribbean and is rather more than just a writer. Rohan Kanhai’s 1973 West Indies side (they shared the summer with Bev Congdon’s New Zealanders) beat England to end something of a barren spell for the men from the Caribbean although, having read Babb’s previous book, They Gave The Crowd Plenty Fun, I am confident that there will be as much social history and Caribbean culture as cricket in a book that should be well worth reading.

We have seen two books recently on the subject of India’s rich spin bowling heritage, Fortune Turners by Adityan Bhushan and Sachin Bajaj, and Wizards by Anindya Dutta. Hopefully they will be joined on my shelves in the not too distant future by a book on the history of Indian pace bowling co-authored by our friend Gulu Ezekiel. For Speed Merchants Gulu deals with the pre Kapil Dev era, with Vijay Lokapally taking up the story from there. Gulu is also working on another project, but details of that will have to wait for next time.

The Indian market also produced the predicted autobiography from Alvin Kallicharran, Colour Blind, as well as a fine collection of pen portraits from Bangalore, Playback. I was also delighted to receive Harimohan Paravu’s The Renaissance Man, a fine biography of MV ‘Doc’ Sridhar although the rumours that I reported last time that books about Abbas Ali Baig,  Nari Contractor and Laxman Sivaramakrishnan have, so far at least, turned out to be nothing more than tittle tattle. I live in hope however as all three are men with interesting stories.

Due for release next week in India is WV Raman’s first book, The Winning Sixer. Raman played eleven times for India over nine years without ever establishing himself in the side. In the last decade he has become an acclaimed coach, currently to the Indian women’s team. The book’s sub-title, Leadership Lessons to Master, suggests the book is not an autobiography as such, but at the same time Raman will doubtless draw on his cricketing experiences for at least some of his lessons.

There have been some interesting biographical projects published in England, none more so than Andrew Bradstock’s Batting for the Poor, a fine book about the life of David Sheppard. Recently we have also had a biography of the first man to score a First Class double century, Stephen Saunders’ self-published William Ward: A Forgotten Man and, rather more up to date, Back From The Edge, a thought provoking account of his travails by former Somerset, Derbyshire and Lancashire wicketkeeper Luke Sutton.

If ever there was going to be a renewal of interest in publishing books about a summer’s cricket it was going to be in England in 2019. Ben Stokes account of a remarkable year, On Fire, was the first to hit the bookstores and dealt with the entire summer. A day later came The Times’ England’s World Cup: The Full Story of the 2019 Tournament which, presumably, deals only with the first part of the summer. Also about to appear is another account, World Cup Triumph: The Inside Account of the England Cricket Team’s Victorious Campaign by Nick Hoult and Steve James. This one is rather different in that it does not confine itself to the events of the summer and instead charts the England side’s famous victory all the way back to the despair of the 2015 campaign.

Two county museums have been active in recent months. The Gloucestershire museum has produced three excellent new booklets dealing with aspects of the county’s history all of which are recommended. The titles are Dealing With A Dead Man, The Tour That Never Was and Delayed in Transit. From Sussex we have had two pamphlets regarding a couple of last season’s matches on the subjects of tall individual scores in one day cricket, and a record seventh wicket partnership. At the other end of the scale in terms of time is a very recent top quality limited edition book by noted historian John Goulstone dealing with cricket in Regency Brighton. On The Level is not going to appeal to the casual reader, but is an engrossing piece of research for those interested in the game in the eighteenth century.

What are the museums up to next year? Gloucester’s has no immediate plans for any new publications, although the county club itself will be producing a 150th anniversary brochure. From Sussex on the other hand we can expect a number of books and booklets to appear. First of all the previously announced biography of John Wisden should be with us in time for the start of the new season, and the first part of the complete Who’s Who of Sussex Cricketers should be with us. The book covers 1946-1968, so presumably it is a series that will go backwards as well as forwards. In addition to those two substantial works Clive Paish will also begin a series of booklets celebrating Sussex batsmen who have scored a double century, a project that is expected to take two years to complete.

On the subject of counties’ Who’s Whos the publishers of the four Somerset volumes that started off these books, Halsgrove, have just moved a few miles due north to Wales, and the first volume in a similar series devoted to Glamorgan covering the years 1889-1920. The author is the well known historian Andrew Hignell.

Looking forward to next year there are a few titles expected. John Hotten, he of the splendid The Meaning of Cricket has a new book due in May. Of The Elements of Cricket publishers William Collins describe it as a cricket book unlike any other published before, an extraordinary, eccentric guide and charming visual representation of the game, from the weather and wood that make it possible to the achievements of its greatest and most famous players.

The book is divided into the three parts that make up the fundamental elements of cricket: bat, ball and field. Their harmony produces cricket’s unique environment; their centuries’ long conflict provides its innovation, adaptability and vast psychological hinterland. These sections unite to map out in a completely original way the story of the sport that began as a country pursuit and is now followed by billions across the world.

In April Little, Brown will be publishing a book by the well known journalist, not exclusively for his writing on sporting matters, Michael Henderson. The blurb in respect of That Will Be England: The Last Summer of Cricket explains that  when Michael Henderson visited Trent Bridge for the first day of the 2019 cricket season, he used 800 words to tell The Times readers that this would be the last season of county cricket as we understood the game. Next year we shall have The Hundred, whatever that may be, and championship cricket will be diminished to the point of invisibility.

The summer of 2019 is interesting in other ways. There was a World Cup in this country, which England weren’t expected to win. And there was the Ashes series. But this book would not be about the World Cup or the Australia series, with one notable exception. That Will Be England Gone is a tour d’horizon of cricket in England from April to September. Partly autobiographical, Michael Henderson revisits the places that shaped his love of the game, in order to understand how cricket has changed in his lifetime.

Whilst on the subject of change there is, for once, no book in 2019 on the subject of the summer just passed of the county champions. There is however one for the runners up, Somerset’s Summer by Anthony Gibson. I hope the motivation for publishing the book is not as some are suggesting, and that by reason of the imminent demise of the County Championship it is now, with their points penalty for 2020, almost certain that the Championship never will fly over the County Ground at Taunton.

If anyone needed reminding that cricket is played beyond its established centres we had a book on Canadian cricket in 2019.  John Schofield’s Sticky Wicket is a history of the game on Vancouver Island. There will also be a book on North American cricket in 2020, although Inside The Selection Room is a very different sort of book. It is written by US based Peter Della Penna. The summary sets the scene thus In the summer of 2015, amateur cricketers across the Americas were thrown a lifeline to a career-changing opportunity: an open trial for a chance to make a 15-man squad that would play in the West Indies regional 50-over competition and open the door to one of six rookie contracts in a T20 franchise league

Some readers may have listened to a series of podcasts entitled A Flash Outside The Off Stump that were (and are) available online from Andy Carter. The content of the podcasts and additional information are now available in book form entitled Beyond The Pale. For the uninitiated it is the sub-title that gives the clue to the subjects covered, Early Black and Asian Cricketers in Britain 1868-1945.

Amongst our favourite small publishers the plans of Red Rose Books for 2020 have not yet been finalised with one exception, that being an account of a match between Lancashire and Kent at Old Trafford in 1906 when the great JT Tyldesley recorded his highest First Class score, 295, in a thumping ten wicket victory. Rather ironically it was only earlier this year that a full length book appeared on the equally one sided return fixture at Canterbury when Kent had their revenge.

Always popular round these parts are David Battersby’s self-published monographs and there has been one of those in the last six months, The Sporting Solicitor. In the past David has played his cards close to his chest when it comes to his future plans but this time we have had the thumb screws out and been able to extract the information. We can expect two ‘Battersbys’ in the coming months.  The first, limited to seventy five copies, is Jessop’s Son which is biographical in nature and, as the title suggests, deals with the life and times of the son of the legendary Gloucestershire all-rounder Gilbert Jessop. A man of the cloth Jessop Junior made little impression in the four First Class matches in which he appeared but in club cricket he had, apparently, the potential to be just as dominant as his father had been.

David’s other title will be The 1927 New Zealand Tour to the UK. There is a full length account of that tour by Mike Batty which, being published in New Zealand in a limited edition of ninety nine copies, crops up once in a Preston Guild, and I have never seen a copy advertised in the northern hemisphere. The profusely illustrated Battersby monograph will be limited to just fifty copies, so will doubtless prove just as tricky to source in years to come. The thumb screws removed David has promised to entertain advance orders for both these monographs, and he can be contacted by email at dave@talbot.force9.co.uk

From Australia we have had Ronald Cardwell’s book on The Tied Test in Madras as well as a second book on that subject, Michael Sexton’s Border’s Battlers. Two other books published recently are Roland Perry’s latest book, Tea and Scotch with Bradman, Ashley Mallett’s The Magic of Spin and For Cap and Country by Jesse Hogan.

Jonathan Northall kindly reviewed the Perry for us here. As for the Mallett that is limited to Australians spin bowlers and the Hogan book is a series of interviews with Australian cricketers on the enduring spirit of the Baggy Green. Having shamelessly pinched that brief summary from www.cricketbooks.com.au I should also mention a recent book from Ken Piesse with a self-explanatory title, Australian Cricket Scandals. What I don’t know in relation to the Hogan book is the extent, if at all, to which it tells Hogan’s story. In 2016 he suffered a severe stroke and the swelling of his brain so severe that he needed surgery to remove part of his skull. 

Expected shortly from Australia is Rick Smith’s biography of Arthur Coningham and, whilst not due in the immediate future, biographies of Frank Tarrant and Jack Walsh are well advanced. Coningham’s place in the record books comes from his taking a wicket with his first delivery in his only appearance for Australia against England in 1894/95, although the more interesting part of his story arises from his brushes with the law, more particularly a famous divorce case as well as a sentence of imprisonment for fraud.

Tarrant was, possibly, the best Australian cricketer never to have worn the Baggy Green his having chosen to emigrate to England in 1903 following which he enjoyed a very successful decade with Middlesex. Whilst probably not being quite as good a player as Tarrant left arm wrist spinner and serviceable batsman Walsh is another man who would almost certainly have played Test cricket for Australia had he not chosen to pursue a career in England, in his case with Leicestershire between 1937 and 1956.

And what of our great favourites, the Cricket Publishing Company and the Cricket Press? After a strong end to 2019 with a fair wind it seems as if there may be as many seven books in the first half of 2020 with another half dozen in the rest of the year. I will leave those six until next time but the first of the Magnificent Seven is a biography of Mark Burgess by Bill Francis and that is due in February.It is due to be followed by a book looking at all the First Class players who have played for Glenelg, and biographies/monographs of Jim Burke, Doug Freeman, Bill Playle and Murray Webb. In addition it seems we can finally expect to see the autobiography of Jack D’Arcy that I have mentioned in this piece before. I can guarantee that all will be reviewed here just as soon as the relevant postal services can get copies to us.

I have also, for the first time in a while, noticed a book from Pakistan, Gamechanger. This is the autobiography of Shahid Afridi written with the assistance of an experienced journalist Wajahat Khan. My copy has yet to arrive but is on order. I understand that Afridi does not hold back, so am hoping it will be an entertaining read.

There are six new books in the offing from the ACS, although sadly none in the splendid Lives in Cricket series. In February two regular annuals will appear, the International Cricket Year Book 2020, and the 2020 First-Class Counties Second Eleven Annual. Also due in February is Tour de Farce by Mark Rowe. This is the second book to mark the fiftieth anniversary of what was scheduled to be a tour of England by South Africa. I have reviewed books by Mark Rowe before, here, here and here. I have also read Colin Shindler’s enjoyable book about the Lancashire, Warwickshire and England batsman Bob Barber and I suspect that the widely differing styles of the pair will mean that their books are very different.

Moving forward to May another three books are planned. The Minor Counties Championship 1914 continues a series which began with the 1895 season giving full scorecards for every Minor County game together with detailed biographical player information. It will include a Minor County World War 1 roll of honour. Cricketscapes by Andrew Hignell will look at the geographical dimensions of first-class cricket in the UK, analysing the variety of grounds used by First Class counties over time, especially how the number of outgrounds/festival locations have changed, and the reasons why. Rather more esoteric is Old Hurst Johnian Cricket Week by Roger Moulton, a book which celebrates the centenary of a cricket week which was founded in 1920 by former pupils of Hurstpierpoint College. Doubtless it will be as much a piece of social as cricketing history.

Those interested in Yorkshire cricket will have to wait a while longer for anything from the ACS, but towards the back end of 2020 they will be publishing Jeremy Lonsdale’s A Game Divided: Triumphs and Troubles in Yorkshire cricket in the 1920s, a follow up to his earlier offering, A Game Sustained: The Impact of the First World War on Cricket in Yorkshire 1914-1920. The new book looks at why one of the most successful and talented county sides ever was nevertheless controversial and unpopular with many at a time of great change in  English cricket (and society).

The year just gone saw the last book from Fairfield Books and, presumably therefore, from Stephen Chalke. In addition one wonders whether the new edition of David Frith’s biography of Archie Jackson might be the last major book we see from him. There will however always be other great writers around and, after his wonderful biography of Neville Cardus appeared this year, we will have the pleasure of another cricket book from Duncan Hamilton next July. One Long and Beautiful Summer sounds like the title of a joyful celebration, although the sub-title, A Short Elegy for Red-Ball Cricket confirms its subject matter is pleasures past, rather than anticipated future enjoyment of the hundred or the sadly further emaciated County Championship that will be on offer in 2020.

And what of the English dealer/publishers? I can confirm that Boundary Books have a couple of projects are underway, although sadly they may be the last two we see from them. One is a memoir of David Rayvern Allen that Mike Down himself is writing, and the other is a new book from Tony Laughton. Having done much new research Laughton has written an account of a tour of the West Indies by an MCC side led by Lord Brackley in 1905. The trip is long forgotten but was an important step along the road to the West Indies becoming a power in the world game. Brackley’s side contained a sprinkling of Test players, including the underarm bowler George Simpson-Hayward, and enjoyed a successful trip but the fledgling home side gave them a fright in the second representative match and during the tour Barbados and Trinidad (twice) recorded comfortable wins.

John McKenzie, who issued his 200th catalogue last year also has a couple of books planned. The first is by Vic Rigby and is a biography of Richard Keigwin. An unfamiliar name but Keigwin was one of those multi-talented people who we no longer see in this age of specialisation. He wasn’t a great cricketer but was certainly a good one. He was a hockey international who excelled also at racket sports. Keigwin also had distinguished a academic career and was largely responsible for the game gaining a foothold in Denmark – oh, and if that isn’t enough he was decorated for his naval service in the Great War.

The other McKenzie title due is by Paul Akeroyd and this one should certainly prove popular. It is a biography of the great West Indian fast bowler, Wesley Hall. There is already a book about Hall, one of those not very good 1960s ghosted autobiographies, Pace Like Fire. A full account of Hall’s life will be a welcome addition to my bookshelf and, I am sure, of many other cricket lovers.

A couple more recent releases will close this piece. The first is a 400+ page history of the women’s game written by Raf Nicholson. I believe that Raf is currently looking for a mainstream publisher, but in the meantime Ladies and Lords is obtainable from Peter Lang International Academic Publishers. And finally, but by no means bringing up the rear, is from Mayukh Ghosh. In a League of Their Own: Celebrating Cricket’s Great Characters is a collection of short and entertaining pieces about interesting cricket people. Most of those featured are, naturally, players, but not all.

from Cricket Web https://ift.tt/2Zz9dDU

Colin Croft – A Quick One From The Seventies

Colin Everton Hunte Croft is quite a name for a West Indian cricketer, albeit more suggestive of a batsman than a bowler. Whatever the names may indicate however Croft was a fine fast bowler and one of the early components of the West Indies pace packs that were so dominant from the mid 1970s onwards.

Unusually amongst his peers Croft was Guyanese, but like most of them he was tall, around six feet five inches, with an unusual action. The run to the wicket was straight enough, but as he got to the wicket Croft’s delivery stride took him out towards the return crease as he slanted the ball in towards the right hander. There was plenty of short stuff, and in addition Croft had the ability to make the ball straighten up as it passed the batsman.

Croft was only 19 when, in January 1972, he made his First Class debut for Guyana against a strong Jamaican side containing four Test batsman. The youngster was given the new ball, not something he relished, and that may have contributed to a disappointing return of 0-75. It was another four years before Croft played for Guyana in the Shell Shield again, and he didn’t take a wicket on that occasion either, although that wasn’t his fault as rain meant he didn’t even get to turn his arm over. Thus it was a further year later, in January 1977, that the first Shell Shield wickets came against the Combined Islands.

West Indies had picked up a drubbing in Australia in 1975/76 so their selectors were looking for fast bowlers and after two more modest outings in the Shell Shield Croft was invited to play for a scratch side against the touring Pakistanis. Opening the bowling with another tall rookie pace bowler, Joel Garner, the tourists were beaten by an innings. Croft took 4-43 and 6-66. The first Test began just over a week later and, with Michael Holding and Wayne Daniel both injured, Croft and Garner came into the side to join Andy Roberts and Vanburn Holder in a four man pace attack.

In the Pakistan first innings Croft shared the new ball with Roberts and took 3-85. First change in the second innings he was more effective, taking 4-47, but shared in the collective responsibility for his side allowing Wasim Bari and Wasim Raja to put on 133 for the tenth wicket which meant it took an obdurate innings from the last wicket pair of Croft himself and Roberts to enable West Indies to hang on for a draw.

The second Test of the series was scheduled for Port of Spain, and the home side even selected a specialist spinner, Raphick Jumadeen, as well as employing the bowling services of Viv Richards (off spin) and Roy Fredericks (leg spin) in the Pakistanis second innings. In the first innings though Croft was the great destroyer with his 8-29 from 18.5 hostile and accurate overs unsurprisingly remaining the best of his First Class career. As the wicket slowed down further he added only one more scalp in the second innings, but by then he had already done enough to secure victory for his side.

The third Test was drawn before Pakistan drew level in the fourth leaving Lloyd’s men 2-1 winners when they took the final Test. The series would have been drawn had it not been for Croft the batsman in the first Test, but the striking feature of the series were his 33 wickets at 20.48. He comfortably led his teammates on both aggregate and average.

In 1977 Lancashire, after the retirement of Indian wicketkeeper Farokh Engineer, had a vacancy for an overseas player. A side in transition had lost one former England pace bowler, Ken Shuttleworth, in 1975 and the previous summer had been the last for another, Peter Lever. They still had Peter ‘Leapy’ Lee, one of those hugely effective county seamers who took a big haul of wickets every summer without ever getting into the selectors’ discussions, but no one else above medium pace. A fast bowler was the obvious target and on Clive Lloyd’s recommendation the county opted for Croft.

County skipper David Lloyd wrote that Croft’s first summer with the county was a big disappointment, and a look at the county’s averages certainly supports that view. Croft managed no more than 47 wickets at 28.40 and in the averages was well behind Lancashire spinners David Hughes and Jack Simmons as well as the ever reliable Lee. There is much however to contribute by way of mitigation. 1977 was the year of the Queen’s Silver Jubilee, and was dismally wet, Lancashire losing as many as 125 hours to the weather. In addition to that there were also the events of 4 June, guaranteed to raise a man’s stock in the eyes of the county’s supporters.

Television has never been much interested in the County Championship. Back in those days BBC Wales would cover some Glamorgan matches, but that was it, until ITV, the UK’s only commercial broadcaster decided to take an in interest in the Roses encounters between Lancashire and Yorkshire. ITV only had one channel, but it was organised on a regional basis, so in the north there were a few short windows of opportunity to snatch a few overs.

The 1977 Old Trafford Roses encounter was badly affected by rain but the elements relented long enough for there to be a full day’s play on the first day and, despite early struggles, the home side scored 270-4 before, as per the playing conditions of the time, they had to close their innings after 100 overs. Yorkshire had just over an hour to negotiate on a benign pitch in reasonable light. In Croft they were up against a man with a big reputation, but who had impressed no one in the first month of the season.

Perhaps it was the atmosphere of the Roses encounter, or perhaps some foolish Yorkshireman chose a few ill-advised words, but whatever the reason just as I got home from school and turned the television on I saw three remarkable overs from Croft. Bowling at tremendous pace he flattened the stumps of Geoffrey Boycott, Bill Athey and Jack Hampshire so with Lee chipping in too Yorkshire were suddenly 39-5. Sadly the next day the rain came and there was no play until late on the final afternoon. There was just time for Croft to take one more wicket before, in order to spare his tailenders an ordeal by Fire from Babylon, Boycott declared the innings on 65-6.

If the Roses match was a new dawn for Croft in Lancashire it ultimately proved to be a false one. There was to be just one more occasion when he fired on all cylinders, he and Lee bowling right through the 25 overs of the Nottinghamshire innings at Trent Bridge in July to dismiss them for 121 before lunch on the first day. Croft’s contribution was 7-54. It was enough to bring the Red Rose its second Championship victory of the summer, but there were no more, and only Notts finished below them.

It may be the case that Croft’s lack of consistency in 1977 was caused by the distraction of what was going on behind the scenes in the game. The fact is that Croft did sign for World Series Cricket, although it seems considerable pressure was brought to bear on him not to. Initially the West Indians who signed were still available for official Tests, so Croft and the others were selected for the first two Tests of the 1977/78 against Australia. The Australian second string, led by the veteran Bob Simpson, were brushed aside in the first two Tests, and Croft had another nine wickets at 18.88 to show for his efforts, but then the West Indian packer players were banned and the West Indians had, essentially, a new team for the rest of the series.

The West Indies pace pack in World Series Cricket comprised Croft, Garner, Roberts and Holding. Of the four of them Croft was the least successful, but he still took 30 wickets at 28.88 in seven Supertests, so still a highly respectable return.

Through the northern hemisphere summer of 1978 Croft had the second year of his contract with Lancashire to fulfil. He did a little better than the year before, but 56 wickets at 22.60 was not enough to win him another contract. The Red Rose tried, unsuccessfully, to recruit first Dennis Lillee and then Rod Hogg before finally securing the services of another Australian for 1980. As a taster they did have Mick Malone for a couple of Championship matches at the end of the 1979 summer and he promised much for the future, 18 wickets at 10.61 being just the sort of return that a county expected from its overseas bowler. In the event when he was available for the following summer he was no more effective than Croft had been.

Once peace had returned to the world of cricket the game, particularly in Australia, was in need of a financial boost so for 1979/80 the full strength of Australia had simultaneous three Test series scheduled against both England and West Indies. The first match was against West Indies, and the visitors then took it in turns to play the hosts. Mike Brearley’s 1978/79 England tourists had won the Ashes 5-1, but a year later had no answer to Greg Chappell’s side and lost all three Tests. The contests against the West Indians were rather different.

The first of the three matches was drawn, West Indies taking a substantial first innings lead before some fine batting by Chappell and Kim Hughes rescued the Australians as a placid pitch drew the West Indies sting. Moving on to the MCG for the second Test there was a crushing ten wicket victory for West Indies the unrelenting pace attack of Roberts, Holding, Garner and Croft sharing the twenty wickets between them. They did the same in Adelaide, winning by the small matter of 408 runs. Croft’s contribution to the series was 16 wickets at 23.62. His average was slightly inferior to those of Holding and Garner, but he was his team’s leading wicket taker.

From Australia the West Indians moved on to New Zealand where, to the amazement of all save a few die hard Kiwis, they lost a three match series 1-0. It was to be their last series defeat for fifteen years and was a controversial one, Croft being involved in one of the big talking points as the West Indians sportsmanship was placed under the spotlight.

The match that gave New Zealand victory was the first, in Dunedin, and the margin of victory just a single wicket. Lloyd won the toss and, probably wrongly, chose to bat. Keeping the ball well up and making the most of the conditions the New Zealand attack, inevitably led by Richard Hadlee, dismissed the West Indians for 140. When their turn came the West Indians dished out a bumper helping of short bowling to the home batsmen who batted bravely and eventually took a lead of 109. Had they learned the lesson that Hadlee taught them about how to bowl in the conditions they were faced with it would doubtless have been a good deal fewer.

In West Indies second innings Desi Haynes made a fine century to go with his 55 in the first but no one followed his example and the New Zealand victory target was just 104. There was an unsavoury incident early on when Holding, after having a confident appeal for a catch at the wicket rejected, wandered down to the striker’s end and flattened two of the stumps in that famous kick, the force of which is superbly captured in a well known photograph and which today would doubtless have brought Holding a lengthy ban. In that series however it was simply one of what became a collection of displays of open dissent. After Holding’s display of petulance West Indies did reduce New Zealand to 54-7, but in an ill-tempered finale the last pair scraped home.

In the second Test it was Croft’s turn to show the nasty side of his character. Again the West Indians were unhappy at the standard of the umpiring and, as the New Zealanders accumulated a first innings total that would put them beyond defeat, the real trouble started just before the tea interval on the third day as an appeal for a catch at the wicket from New Zealand captain Geoff Howarth was turned down.

The West Indians refused to resume the game unless umpire Fred Goodall was replaced, although they were persuaded to take the field twelve minutes late not least by Howarth assuring Lloyd that he would instruct all his batsmen to walk. When there was a similar appeal, Howarth again staying put and getting the benefit of the doubt the West Indians bowled a barrage of bouncers amidst a deliberate and obvious slowing down of the game. They did not expect to resume the match after the rest day which was scheduled to follow.

After considerable diplomacy however the West Indians were again persuaded to return, and before long another appeal for a catch behind the wicket was turned down as Croft beat Hadlee’s bat. Croft let Goodall know what he thought of him and in his next over delivered a series of bouncers at Hadlee and was no balled by umpire Goodall. Clearly angry Croft flicked off the bails as he walked back to his mark and then, as he approached the wicket for his next delivery, simply barged Goodall out of his way. Not unnaturally Goodall wanted to speak to Lloyd about the incident, and the West Indian captain did not cover himself in glory by standing firm at slip thereby forcing Goodall to come to him.

In the end the New Zealanders, who had been expected to be cannon fodder for the West Indians, thoroughly deserved the draws they secured after their frantic victory in the first Test but the sour taste remained. For the forthcoming tour of England the rather more decisive Clyde Walcott was installed as manager, and clauses introduced into players contracts about their behaviour. Croft’s return in New Zealand was ten wickets at 26.40.

The West Indians, including Croft, have all subsequently accepted that their behaviour was unacceptable, although at the same time have maintained their complaints about the umpiring. Croft has always denied the shoulder charge was deliberate however, stating that he had lost his run up and that the contact was simply an unfortunate result of his unusual action. Howarth for one has always questioned that, but Goodall did not subsequently gain himself much sympathy with some of his comments about the incident some of which were interpreted as being racist. The incident can be seen on youtube and readers can make up their own minds as to whether they are prepared to give Croft the benefit of the doubt, or whether his actions amounted to a deliberate or reckless assault on Goodall

In England in 1980 Croft had a disappointing time and, with a young Malcolm Marshall in the party, one fine fast bowler was going to miss out. For the first Test an injury to Croft made the decision for the selectors. He was brought back at the expense of Marshall for the second Test, and for the only time in his 27 Test career bowled badly, failing to take a wicket and conceding 101 runs. Unsurprisingly he was dropped in favour of Marshall for the third Test before injury freed up a place for him in the last two when he bowled much better. He ended up with nine wickets at 34.00 which, after his travails at Lord’s was a creditable comeback.

By 1980/81 Sylvester Clarke was another top class fast bowler to have emerged from the Caribbean but, with Roberts coming to the end of his reign and niggling injuries providing a natural rotation Croft played in all eight of West Indies Tests, four in Pakistan and, the Guyanese government forcing the cancellation of their Test by refusing a visa to Robin Jackman, four at home against England.

There was no Roberts in Pakistan but he was not missed. Despite the grassless pitches that were prepared the West Indies pacemen were as effective as ever. Croft took 17 wickets at 17.76, more than Garner, Marshall, Holding or Clarke, albeit at a marginally higher cost than Clarke paid for his 14. The West Indians won the second Test, and were never in great difficulty in any of the other three, all of which were drawn.

Against England the situation was much the same. Croft took 24 wickets at 18.95 to be the leading West Indies wicket taker. Going into the final Test he had 21 at 13 and it was only the decisions made by Graham Gooch in the first innings and David Gower in the second to take him on that rather marred his series. Before that he had been superb and 5-40 in the first innings of the first Test and his match haul of 7-104 in the third Test were major contributions to his side’s two victories. His second best Test figures, 6-74 came in the fourth Test with only Peter Willey’s second Test century preventing his figures being even more impressive.

Not yet 30 Croft should by this time have been at the peak of his powers, but his next and, as things turned out, last Test series was very different to those that had gone before. The destination was Australia for a three match contest but, this time, the Australians held Lloyd’s men to a 1-1 draw thanks to an innings of exactly 100 by Hughes in the first Test that even the curmudgeonly Croft later acknowledged to be the best played against him. Holding was magnificent all series, but Croft fell away completely his series bringing him just seven wickets at 51.57. With neither Roberts or even Garner bowling as well as in the past Lloyd was no doubt pleased just to avoid defeat.

In 1982 Croft was back in England, and once more playing for Lancashire. This caused some controversy in particular amongst the strong League fraternity in the county. In 1979, following his last unsuccessful stint with Lancashire, Croft had signed for the Central Lancashire League side Royton. He had bowled well and the club had been challenging for the title when, with a month of the season left, he broke his contract and walked out never to return and was banned from the League as a result. The League’s protests fell on deaf ears however as Lancashire found themselves compromised by a change in the regulations regarding overseas player. They wanted to play Lloyd for the season, but to achieve that could only play a second overseas player whose registration they already held and, never having cancelled Croft’s, he suddenly became a much more valuable proposition.

Sadly for Lancashire injury meant Croft missed the second half of the summer, but his performance in the first half, 33 wickets at 30.39, suggested that not a lot had changed and that 1982 summer was just about the last knockings of Croft’s career. His back problems would not go away although he had surgery and, eventually, was persuaded by Ali Bacher to join the second, 1983/84, West Indian rebel tour to South Africa. Injury meant his Test career was probably over anyway, and there is no doubt from comments that he has made since that Croft, understandably, resented the meagre rewards which the West Indian stars of his time played for and was attracted by the $30,000 he received for the trip. On the other hand he went with his eyes wide open, having seen the ferocity of the reaction to the first rebels a year previously.

One famous incident involving Croft on the tour was an occasion when he was ejected from a whites only train carriage despite having the status of an honorary white. One white South African intervened on his behalf and both of them pointedly had to travel the rest of the journey in the third class compartment. The government was embarrassed, Croft must have had much to think about, and two years later he wrote to the United Nations acknowledging that his belief that sport and politics should not be mixed was wrong. His name was subsequently removed from the UN blacklist that it had been added to as a result of his participation in the tour.

By then Croft’s career was over and he had relocated to the USA. An intelligent man he had qualified as a teacher in 1971, a job he turned to briefly between 2007 and 2008 at a school in Berkshire. He later qualified as a pilot, having worked in air traffic control, but best known has been his work in the media. Never a man to hold back his views are brutally honest, a fine example being one quoted by Ian Botham, the subject of Croft’s comment being the 1994 version of Angus Fraser; his bowling is like firing at F-16 fighters with slingshots. Even if they hit no damage would be done. Like an old horse he should be put out to pasture.

Another interesting quote from Croft is about his own game; My purpose was to get people out. The batsmen were never my friends. I never even talked to some of my teammates, never mind the opposition. Cricket at the highest level is not a joke. It is my job. If a batsmen gets a hundred, it means that two things have happened – he has batted exceptionally well and/or I have not done the damn job they have selected me for. It is simple as that.

Colin Croft seems not to have been a particularly popular man amongst his peers nor for most who remember the cricket of the 1970s, but there are a few of us left who can recall that early evening at Old Trafford on 4 June 1977, and for us Croft has always been a reet good lad.

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GD Martineau

As far as I know nobody has put together an anthology of Gerard Martineau’s poetry in almost a century, which is a great shame because his cricket poems are really quite good. Poetry is not an area of creative writing that, generally, I have great fondness for although the emotions captured by the likes of Wilfred Owen, Rupert Brooke and Siegfried Sassoon were to inform much of what I learned as a youngster about the Great War. I won’t claim that Martineau’s cricket poems had the same effect on me, but they certainly made me realise that cricketing poetry could be enjoyed.

I do not propose to quote at length from Martineau’s work, but a few snippets will demonstrate my point. His first published work was The Old Bat, a six verse poem that appeared in The Cricketer in 1924, the last verse of which reads

You’ll bear no ignominious slur

Of firewood – dead and rotten,

But, still my old Excalibur,

You’ll slumber, not forgotten

There is a touch of pathos about much of Martineau’s work, another example being the closing stanza of The Beaten Side,

There is no true defeat today,

Though no one stayed to stop the rot,

If your true cricket heart can say

That you were tried and faltered not.

A different type of effort was Good Luck, a message in verse to the side that Arthur Gilligan took to Australia for the 1924/25 Ashes,

Good luck to you, then, may the Gods be kind,

And may the best side win.

You are leaving the winter mists behind,

With the drudge’s round and the office grind,

And dark days closing in

There’s a hopeful note in our loud “Godspeed”

You are the pick, the best.

Your veterans blend with the younger breed, With the years to stiffen and youth to breed

Fit for the toughest “test”

Old cricket’s a riddle; the finest side

Can make the smallest score.

May your luck, which hangs on the fitful tide,

Bring a taste of the fortune long denied,

The “Ashes” home once more!

Sadly of course Gilligan’s men lost 4-1, but did at least win a Test against Australia for the first time since 1912.

Martineau was born in Lahore, half a century before partition in 1897. His middle name is Durani. Martineau’s father was a High Court Judge who had married a granddaughter of a King of Kabul. He shared that name with the Indian Test cricketer Salim Durani who, until recently, had been the only Test cricketer born in Afghanistan.

In common with most Anglo-Indian children Martineau was, at age seven, packed off to England for his education. He went to Charterhouse and, at 17, progressed to the Royal Military College in Sandhurst. From there he secured a commission in the Royal Sussex Regiment. He served on the Somme, in Germany and in Ireland before he left the Army in 1923. He then went into teaching, a profession in which he was to remain until 1939.

His previous military experience brought Martineau an emergency commission on the outbreak of World War Two although two years later, not as a result of any wounds in action, he was invalided out of the Army. He went back into teaching until 1949 when, despite being only 52, ill health seems to have brought about his retirement.

His passion for cricket began at school and, in his younger days, Martineau was a useful right handed batsman. A tall man he seems not to have aspired to play above a decent club level but, having spent the summer holiday of 1927 coaching at the well know Aubrey Faulkner school, he must have had a thorough grasp and understanding of the game’s techniques.

Although I have only cited examples of Martineau’s cricketing output his poetry touched other subjects as well and the no doubt modest income derived from it would have been a useful addition to his meagre teaching salary. In addition to The Cricketer Martineau’s poems appeared in such well known periodicals as Punch, The Spectator, Country Life and The Boy’s Own Paper.

In 1926 Martineau started to contribute an occasional article to The Cricketer and by the late 1930s  he was contributing historical articles on a regular basis. That continued during the Second World War and in 1946 a total of 26 short essays, a number of which had already appeared in The Cricketer were gathered together and Martineau’s first cricket book was published. The Field is Full of Shades, a line from Francis Thompson’s famous poem, was the title of a book that was produced by Sporting Handbooks Limited, publishers of Wisden, and the famous Ravilious woodcut was used on the dust jacket.

It is likely that, following Martineau’s death in 1976, his Wisden obituarist had The Field is Full of Shades in mind when he made the observation that Martineau’s books were not works of much original research. The original articles were not lengthy, and build largely on what had been uncovered by others about the game’s earliest days, and increasingly more diligent and wide-ranging writers have added much to some of Martineau’s findings and indeed cast doubt on the veracity of a number of them.

The next Martineau book, Bat, Ball, Wicket and All was a very different book. In a few discrete areas it built on its predecessor but was effectively a self-contained project. Martineau himself commented in his preface that; the present volume ……… has entailed more exhaustive research than I have previously undertaken. I became involved in apparently interminable inquiries and correspondence.

The sub-title of the book reveals its subject matter more closely, an account of the origin and development of the implements, dress and appurtenances of the national game. Ironically that rather long winded summary would suggest a lengthy book, whereas in fact it is a concise one of little more than 30,000 words. John Arlott described it as a graceful, balanced, informative and often evocative  picture of an aspect of cricket history ….. no one before has brought together so extensive, so varied or so relevant a collection of historic facts and references on cricket gear and it is difficult to believe that anyone could have arranged it more divertingly, or drawn sounder conclusions from it.

Through the 1950s, his teaching days behind him, Martineau confined himself to a bit of lecturing on cricket history. He researched the life of Lord Frederick Beauclerk, but could not find a publisher. In the end he left his unpublished manuscript with the Beauclerk family, where more than half a century later it assisted Mike Thompson in the research for Lord of Lord’s, his biography of Beauclerk that appeared 2017. Martineau had more luck with two other projects however, They Made Cricket, which appeared in 1956 and, a year later, The Valiant Stumper.

Post war paper restrictions now gone They Made Cricket was, in many ways, a more detailed and longer version of The Field is Full of Shades which, once again, had as its theme those who had contributed to the development of the game. The book was well received and much enhanced Martineau’s reputation. In Wisden Arlott observed that; Mr Martineau’s writing has the unhurried air of work done with delight, side by side with the solidity of study in which no research has been neglected.

The Valiant Stumper was the first history of wicketkeeping to be written. Martineau’s personal favourite was Les Ames, but the book was a full history of its subject. There are some interesting photographs in the book amongst a number of familiar ones. I have in mind firstly a reproduction of an x-ray of the hands of Harry Butt, a Sussex man whose career began in 1890 and who, on three occasions, kept for England in South Africa.

On the same page as Butt’s gnarled fingers there is also a snapshot of an eleven year old Paul Gibb. As an amateur with Yorkshire (he later played professionally for Essex) Gibb kept wicket for England either side of World War Two, but the image is there because Gibb was the most successful cricketer of Martineau’s charges at the first school at which he taught. Interestingly, for its time, The Valiant Stumper does not disregard the women’s game, Martineau devoting one of his chapters to England ‘keeper Betty Snowball.

There were to be no more books from Martineau after The Valiant Stumper, although he certainly read plenty. For readers of The Cricketer his reviews were a regular part of their magazine and they were always fair, thorough and perhaps even kindly. Martineau did however have some strong views, and I suspect would not have much enjoyed the cricket literature of today. He clearly wanted to read only about the game. In 1967 RS ‘Dick’ Whittington published an account of Australia’s tour of South Africa. One of the selling points of Simpson’s Safari was its coverage of some controversial off field episodes. Martineau concluded his review with the admonishment:-

Mr. Whitington’s style of writing is too well known to readers to require comment; they either like it or dislike it, and will not welcome an elderly reviewer’s direction on this point. It only remains to reassert that controversy and literature worthy of cricket are not synonymous, and to emphasise the opinion that the facts given in the first half of the above review deserve more attention than the remainder.

I do not know the details of the illness from which Martineau suffered, but by the end of the 1960s he was no longer able to use a typewriter or indeed wield a pen for any period of time so, although he continued to read his writing and reviewing ceased. He died in 1976 at the age of 79. His friend and sometime colleague Irving Rosenwater described him as essentially a simple and modest man who made few demands on others.

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Women’s Cricket – A View From 1933

My playing days ended some years ago and for that reason if no other my interest in instructional books is limited. A couple of weeks ago however I read The Club Cricketer by Neville Cardus, a book that I found sufficiently interesting to write this post.

I subsequently picked up, in the hope that it might have some autobiographical content, a book simply entitled Cricket. It was written by the Somerset batsman and sometimes wicketkeeper Dar Lyon and published in 1933. In terms of Lyon giving much of himself in the book I was to be disappointed but, like a number of these books there are one or two entertaining chapters to be found at the end. In Lyon’s case he has some interesting thoughts on the future of the game and also on the way it was reported.

The part of the book that particularly caught my eye however was a chapter on women’s cricket, something I thought worth reproducing in full. The title of the chapter is Should Women Play Cricket? and it reads as follows:-

A few years ago the title of this chapter might well have been: Can women play cricket? But nowadays there can be no mistake about it. They can play cricket, bless them. And why shouldn’t they?

Women who don’t play accuse those who do of aping the man.

I disagree – but with this qualification.

Women will only remain immune from that criticism as long as they continue to play cricket among themselves.

No word of mine shall be taken as discouraging them or belittling their skill. I have already seen many remarkable women players.

But mixed cricket, unlike mixed bathing, will never do.

And here we find one of the vital differences between cricket and lawn tennis. In the latter game that abortion the mixed double (sounds like some ghastly drink) is played everywhere.

But stop to think what might happen should the fairer sex force its way into First Class cricket.

Think once more of the poor umpire!

We have already seen how susceptible he may be to the demeanour of the players. Imagine his added difficulties with the ladies.

Some ox-eyed lady player takes guard. In her first over she snicks a ball and is caught at the wicket.

“How’s that?”

She glances at the umpire, that is all. And the poor man, dazzled by her beauty, checks his hand which was on its way above his head and scratches his ear thoughtfully before calling,”Not out.”

And suppose a lady player were opening the innings for Australia in a Test and that she vamped Tate, for example.

We should then find a maiden bowling the bowler over instead of the bowler – well, you know the rest.

The whole code of cricket laws would require drastic modification.

For instance, would a player be allowed to use her lipstick or powder nose while at the wicket? It would all need careful consideration. And I suppose the poor dear was being tied in knots by a particular bowler would constantly be getting flies in her eye. All of which would be most disarming.

Even the duty of reporting a mixed game would involve grave risks of action for libel.

Imagine reading that Hobbs had carted Venetia Venables all over the ground. Or that Florence Flighty began to bowl with a square leg but carried on later with a man in the gully. You see the kind of misunderstanding that might arise.

No. I am sure it would never do.

The ladies must play by themselves, rather like Kipling’s cat.(Oh dear! Another bloomer. You see how difficult it is.)

But then I hope they will not begin to take the game too seriously. Let the married players at least try not to disturb their own domestic bliss. We don’t want to hear mother saying: “You bath the children tonight, George. I must have a net. My foot work seems to have gone to blazes.”

What use is a woman who is head of the averages, if she neglected her duties as head of household?

And likewise with other games.

What use is the woman bridge fiend who can make four hearts, doubled, if she spurns the one heart that her life partner has laid at her feet?

What use is the woman golfer who can lay her approaches dead, if her long absences from the home cause the premature demise of all domestic affection?

But judging by the present position and the admirable work already done and being done by the Ladies Cricket Association, we need fear none of these dangers. In fact, the woman’s attitude towards cricket is far more sensible than the mere man’s. For she treats it as a game that can be played as if the people taking part were simply out to enjoy themselves.

It is unwise, I know, to attempt to advise a woman about anything. But supposing by some wild flight of the imagination a young bud of the willow were prepared to listen to the counsels of an older cricketer (and no woman will surely will object to that adjective when I have carefully used the comparative) I should with the greatest deference make the following suggestions.

Let the woman player concentrate upon the final arts of the game. Let her, if bowling, consider length and spin, but not pace. And let her, if batting, look to the gentler shots, the deflecting shots and wristy shots, rather than the full blooded drive which to a certain extent requires brute strength.

In fielding there is no reason that I can see why women should not become as good as men. There would be little difficulty in their becoming better than a good many first-class players. But at present their throwing is not what it should be.

I suspect that women players, like boys, think it rather grand to bowl over arm. I suspect that they think underarm bowling is far beneath their dignity. Underarm bowling, chiefly because of its very rarity, would, I firmly believe, be successful today, especially among the ladies.

Don’t misconstrue what is written there. One has to be so careful. I do not subscribe to the view that there is anything underhand about the fairer sex.

Lastly I hope no offence will be taken from the advice that women should play only with other women. This is not said out of any sense of superiority. It is my opinion that the ladies themselves will enjoy their cricket more in this way, and that cricket itself will gain more by the incursion of these brave and talented recruits into the limited field I have suggested.

I won’t claim to have read the whole of the book, and I suppose it might be that even in 1933 Lyon, a far from conventional man, was parodying the attitudes of the time, but I suspect he was probably sincere in the views expressed.

So who was Lyon? His father had been a successful entrepreneur, making a fortune out of rubber and although in time he lost everything he retained his wealth long enough to privately educate both his sons at Rugby School before Dar (his given name was actually Malcolm) went on to Cambridge and younger brother Beverley to Oxford.

Bev Lyon was also a decent batsman, and an inspirational and unconventional captain of Gloucestershire. Dar led Somerset occasionally but was never available sufficiently frequently to be a realistic choice for the captaincy. He was already forty when he played his only full season in 1938. In the early 1920s however he had been a semi-regular and was certainly considered a better batsman than his sibling and, had he not had such a maverick personality he might well have played for England.

Prior to his excursion into instructional books Lyon had also written a novel and subsequently scripted and appeared in a film. Ashes was a somewhat irreverent look at a Test match that went on for more than 60 years until the last two surviving players passed away. Lyon himself filled the role of Australian Captain. Primarily however Lyon’s career was in the law.

A barrister, Lyon must have been a good one because in 1927, when he was only 29, he defended John Robinson on what was, at the time, a notorious murder charge. Robinson’s victim was a prostitute, Minnie Bonati who, the prosecution alleged, Robinson had struck on the head and then dismembered before putting her remains in a trunk that he took to the left luggage facility at Charing Cross station where, when the trunk started to smell, the crime was discovered.

The police investigation led them to Robinson who claimed that Bonati had, when visiting his office, demanded money from him and then attacked him. Robinson explained that, acting in self-defence, he had pushed Bonati away causing her to fall, crack her head on a grate and die. After that he panicked and took the steps he did to dispose of the body.

Unsurprisingly the jury were having none of it and Robinson was convicted and hanged, although it seems that no blame could be attached to those charged with the duty of defending him as they had managed to trace and call to give evidence Bonati’s estranged husband, who had confirmed that Bonati was an alcoholic, and prone to outbursts of violent temper. In light of that evidence it seems likely that, had Robinson held his nerve and gone directly to the police with his story, he might well have got the benefit of the doubt.

Lyon’s days at the bar ended in 1932, and the remainder of his working life was spent in a variety of judicial appointments around the commonwealth during which he continued with his at times outspoken remarks about those in authority. He eventually retired back to the UK and died in Sussex at the age of 65 in 1964.

As he never went into print again in book form we have no more clues as to whether Lyon’s tongue may have been in his cheek when he wrote that chapter on the women’s game other than that in one chapter he wrote of inviting to Lord’s a charming and intelligent friend of the fairer sex. As to his personal life he was married twice. His first bride was a divorcee, the former wife of Somerset teammate Guy Earle. It was Lyon who had been the cause of the breakdown and when that marriage broke down Lyon’s second marriage was to a woman almost twenty years his junior. It seems therefore that Lyon was not any sort of misogynist, and that his views on women’s cricket were simply ‘of his time’.

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Why is Fantasy Cricket so Popular in India?

Different sports are popular in different countries. For example, basketball, baseball, and football are the most popular sports in the US. When it comes to India, one of the most popular sports there is cricket. Coincidently the Indian Premier League is one of the most-watched leagues in India. Both the younger and older generations have favorite players that they love to see play but because they’re from different teams they can’t be seen together. This was impossible up until the legalization of fantasy sports. Fantasy cricket makes every player that ever played cricket available so fans can make any kind of combinations. Fantasy IPL is so popular in India that people place bets on fantasy matches.

Why Do Indian People Use Websites to Bet on Fantasy Sports?

When it comes to betting and gaming, Indians can’t do either of those things because they’re prohibited by law. The confusing thing is that the Constitution allows the states to create their laws regarding betting and gaming and so far Sikkim and Goa are the only two places where people can visit casinos legally. This tricky situation forces Indian players to look for an alternative online. This alternative is technically legal and that’s why so many Indian people use websites to play casino games and bet on fantasy sports. But why are they so popular?

The Advantages of Fantasy Cricket

Fantasy sports are played online and when it comes to Indian law it’s tolerable in their book. There aren’t any laws against it so players won’t get punished if they play fantasy cricket. The fact that they’re available online means that people can play them whenever they want from the comfort of their home or any other place. What makes them exciting to play is that each player is in charge of their team and has to take care of them as a real manager would.

Fantasy cricket is a game of skill so grouping your favorite players in a team won’t make it a good one. You have to constantly improve your team, take care of your players and keep an eye on sites that regularly update fantasy cricket statistics i.e. sites that show you which place your team’s in the leaderboard, who won the last fantasy IPL and so on. Constantly keeping up with the current affairs of your favorite fantasy sport will increase your chances of your team becoming one of the top teams.

Making a fantasy cricket team that does a good job on the cricket pitch and competing isn’t enough. The big prizes offered are the best part. They are the perfect stimulation that fantasy team managers need to defeat other teams and rise to the top. All in all, fantasy sports are a fun way to spend your free time and a great way to learn about competitiveness. Combining your resources, in this case, players and money to buy them, and constantly improving them teaches you a lot about what it means to be ambitious.

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AA Thomson

There are not many people who are known only by their initials, but perhaps cricket, thanks to the way the scores of the game are presented, has more than its fair share. Even then however most enthusiasts know that WG Grace was christened William, and that CB Fry was Charles. A few generations on MJK Smith was universally known by his initials but even then was, occasionally, referred to as Mike.

I have on my shelves copies of all the books on cricket that AA Thomson wrote. In his pomp, for the fifteen years before his death at the age of 74 in 1978, he was one of the most popular cricket writers of his era, yet it wasn’t until I did some research for this post that I found out his given names were Arthur Alexander.

Of Scottish heritage Thomson was born and brought up in Harrogate, a town in the West Riding of the Broadacres that many Lancastrians of my generation pay a somewhat back handed compliment to by describing it as ‘Yorkshire Nice Part’. Thomson was educated at the local grammar school and then at Kings College in London. He, apparently, at one time, had ambitions to join the teaching profession. The Great War ensured he never did so.

Joining the West Yorkshire Regiment Thomson spent the war in France and Mesopotamia. What he did there is not entirely clear, although in the introduction to one of his cricket books he states that he spent most of the Second World War, by which time he was in his late forties, in rather more dangerous places so it sounds unlikely he was on the front line. They must have been interesting times, though other than that he came through both conflicts seemingly unscathed I can shed no further light on Thomson’s war service beyond the observation of his Wisden obituarist that in the second his employment was first at the Air Ministry and then as a lecturer with the Ministry of Information.

Between the wars Thomson spent some time in the civil service. He was a drama critic for ten years, wrote for Radio Times for a dozen years and his work appeared in a Sunday newspaper for two decades. He also wrote plays and poems. In addition there were upwards of 25 novels and 15 non fiction books on various subjects, so Thomson was clearly a busy man. His abiding passion was cricket however, although he wrote nothing that could be termed a ‘cricket book’ until 1953 when a friend suggested that he publish a collection of the many cricketing stories he had picked up over the years.

The success of Cricket My Pleasure was such that after it’s release Thomson gave up writing fiction altogether, and most of the remaining books that he had in him were about cricket. In 1958, at 64, he joined the press corps and his day job was for The Times, cricket in summer and rugby union in winter. He wrote one book on the subject of the oval ball game in 1955, the unimaginatively titled Rugger My Pleasure.

In its obituary of him Thomson’s former employer observed that no other cricket author since Sir Neville Cardus in his prime had a closer following. Comparisons are frequently drawn between the two, coming as they did from opposite sides of the Pennines. Both wrote lyrically about the game and were, perhaps, not overly consumed by the importance of accuracy. In addition Thomson was very much a cricket lover rather an analyst and he never subjected the techniques and tactics of the game to a great deal of scrutiny in his writing.

The debut release contained an introduction from Len Hutton in which he describes the book as enthusiastic, good-tempered and very amusing. There follows a foreword from one of Thomson’s earliest heroes, George Hirst, who makes the astute observation on the book that I think the man who wrote it enjoys watching cricket nearly as much as I enjoyed playing it. Thomson begins with an account of a remarkable Gentlemen v Players match at Lord’s that he attended in 1950. There were a couple of Yorkshiremen on show, although neither achieved anything of note. After that the stories do slip back to pre war days and the ‘Golden Age’ and the county of Thomson’s birth feature a great deal. John Arlott described the book as taking an enviably high place in the literature of the game.

In 1954 the Thomson offering was Cricket My Happiness and, effectively, more of the same, with most of the content focussing on Yorkshire. An introduction was written by the octogenarian CB Fry, who wrote it is a pleasure to meet with a book which at once delights the literary faculty and pleases the reader who knows the game. Arlott told his readers that the author had a feeling for character and for cricket, and that a professional integrity in his prose make Mr Thomson the happiest of cricketing writers.

There was no cricket book from Thomson in 1955, although he did publish that book on his winter sport, Rugger My Pleasure. He was back on the subject of cricket the following year however. As Australia found themselves Lakered by England in 1956 Thomson produced Pavilioned in Splendour, another collection of essays on familiar topics, some of which had been published before, albeit not in book form. Thomson dedicated Pavilioned in Splendour to Neville Cardus.

In 1957 there was a new departure for Thomson as his cricket book for that year was a biography. The Great Cricketer, of which a second edition appeared 11 years later. It is a biography of WG Grace. The book received considerable acclaim and although, in common with everything Thomson wrote, it did not seek to expose the character flaws and less agreeable aspects of his subject’s personality it is nonetheless an excellent read. For a time it was generally recognised as the best biography of the grand old man, HS Altham observing that never before has the whole story been told in such compelling intimacy and charm, nor the status and the personality of the champion been so arrestingly analysed and revealed.

Effectively there was another Thomson book in 1957, Happy Go Johnny, the autobiography of the mercurial Yorkshire left arm spinner Johnny Wardle which, at a time when ghostwriters were seldom acknowledged, added on its title page as told to AA Thomson. As a result of publicly criticising his county captain Wardle was sacked by Yorkshire the following year and consequently deselected from the England side that toured Australia in 1958/59. Had Thomson still been writing the book it would have been interesting to see how he would have dealt with the attendant controversies, the sort of subjects normally rather outside his comfort zone.

Odd Men In: A Gallery of Cricket Eccentrics was released in 1958. As the title suggests this was an ideal subject for a man with the lightness of touch and innate humour that Thomson had. Particularly entertaining is his writing on the subject of ‘Hex’ Hesketh Prichard a man who, amongst other intrepid overseas trips, once travelled to Patagonia in pursuit (unsuccessful) of the giant sloth.

Two men who Thomson idolised, and who were playing in the first cricket match he ever watched in 1904, were the great Yorkshire all-rounders George Hirst and Wilfred Rhodes. In 1959 he published Hirst and Rhodes, a double biography, perhaps surprisingly the first full study of either. Remarkably a few months later another full length biography of Rhodes appeared but, strangely, no writer has attempted another look at either since. Swaranjit Singh reviewed Hirst and Rhodes for us here.

Following a blank 1960 there were two Thomson offerings in 1961.The first was Cricket Bouquet, sub-titled Comedy and Character in the Counties. It is something of a whistlestop tour, the longest chapter being the concluding one on Yorkshire, and the book is very much in the mould of its predecessors. Cricket: The Golden Ages was a little different, amounting to a history of the game from Thomson, based on the premise that each generation has a tendency to look backwards for what it considers a ‘golden age’ and suggesting that perhaps the 1950s had been another.

Another double biography flowed from Thomson’s pen in 1963, this time Hutton & Washbrook. There have been many books written by or about Hutton but, other than an autobiography that was published in 1950 Thomson’s effort remains the only narrative account of Washbrook’s career.

A year later and there was another Thomson offering, although a very different one this time. When I was a Lad is a short sixty page offering that is, essentially, an autobiography that deals with Thomson’s childhood. There is a young boy depicted on the cover who is holding a cricket bat but the game plays a fairly minor role. The book’s opening is; Beware of nostalgia. Beware especially of an elderly gentleman who buttonholes you and begins: ‘When I was a lad ……’, as true today as it was in 1964.

In 1965 Thomson published Cricket – The Great Captains, a survey of the game’s great leaders. The subjects are predominantly English with a smattering of Australians and a few men from elsewhere. Thomson suggests that he felt the best of all was Donald Bradman, and he clearly rated Len Hutton highly but interestingly the man who gets the closing chapter to himself is Frank Worrell.

There was no book from Thomson in 1966, but he made up for that with two in 1967. The first was Cricket: The Wars of the Roses, the subject matter of which is obvious. There is a similarly titled book that gathers together Neville Cardus’s match reports on the classic encounter, but Thomson’s book is rather different in presentation. It is a wide ranging and discursive story of the history of a cricketing contest that dates back to 1849.

In a nod backwards to John Nyren and the earliest days of cricket literature Thomson’s second 1967 book was titled Cricketers of my Times. He divided the book into three eras. He began with the years between his first match in 1904 to the outbreak of the Great War, the interwar period, and finally the postwar years. As always the stories of the players are told with affection and, not unusually for critics, whilst appreciative of the later years it is clear that Thomson’s fondest memories are from his youth.

When Thomson died in June 1968 he was working on his next book, Vintage Elevens, an expansion of a series of articles that had been appearing in Playfair Cricket Monthly. The format of the book was that Thomson chose what he considered the greatest team, by year, from each of the seventeen First Class counties, thus the 1936 Derbyshire side, that of Essex in 1897, and so on. At the time of his death Thomson had completed fourteen chapters and his friend and fellow writer Denzil Batchelor completed the book with chapters on the Warwickshire side of 1911 and Worcestershire of 1964. As far as his beloved Yorkshire was concerned Thomson had, presumably, left behind nothing to indicate what choice he made and, perhaps wisely, Batchelor ducked the task of nominating a particular team  and concluded the book with an overview of the White Rose’s distinguished history.

As a cricket writer Thomson had much in common with Neville Cardus. Both relied much more on the evidence of their own eyes and their imaginations. Neither was particularly strong on technical examination nor likely to getting bogged down in historical research and, important on a practical level both wrote books that sold well to the general public. Beyond that however Thomson is largely forgotten today whereas interest in Cardus and his work seems as strong today as it ever was.

from Cricket Web https://ift.tt/2DSUPMR