MAGAZINE
OF mARylEbOnE CRICkEt Club
Autumn/WIntER 2013
ISSuE 8 £3.50
SPORtS WRItInG
SPECIAl ISSuE
PIntER And
thE PlAyWRIGhtS XI
Dramatists handy with bat and ball
REAdInG thE GAmE
The future of cricket journalism
SPInnInG A StORy
Enter the great cricket novel
Programme
highlights inside
MCC MAGAzine issue 8
3
Contents
Regulars
5. FROM THE CURATOR
6. COnTRibUTORs
34. COLLECTiOns nEWs
Adam Chadwick explains how
MCC amassed the world’s most
comprehensive collection of books,
plus an online catalogue is launched
37. EATinG OUT
38. MY LORD’s
Michael Palin tells David Rayvern
Allen about his affection for the game
and the Ground
Features
8. PiTCHinG A PAGE TURnER
nicholas Hogg awaits the arrival of
the definitive cricket novel
14. THE PLAYWRiGHTs Xi
Michael Billington picks a batting
order of cricket-loving dramatists
18. GHOsT sTORiEs
simon Wilde reveals the secrets of
writing books on behalf of players
22. FROM PRinT TO PiXELs
Jon Culley investigates cricket
journalism in the digital age
27. FiRsT PAsT THE POsT
neil Robinson talks to William Hill
award co-founder John Gaustad
25. THE OnE DAY GAME
Paul newman on his working day
in the Media Centre at Lord’s
30. WARRiOR sPiRiT
COuRTesY BLOOMsBuRY. PHOTO CLARe sKinneR. COuRTesY BARneY DOuGLAs AnD KAT DAWsOn
Barney Douglas takes us behind the
scenes on his film about Maasai cricket
8.
Romesh Gunesekera’s 2006 novel
‘The Match’ weaves together
cricket and conflict, using the
game to explore the effects of the
sri Lankan Civil War
32. sPORTs On A PAR
Christopher Lane uncovers longstanding
links between golf and cricket
30.
38.
An aspiring Kenyan
batsman, introduced to
the game by the outreach
work of the Maasai
Cricket Warriors team
Michael Palin tackles a
Victoria sponge in the
MCC Library during his
interview for this issue
MCC MAGAZINE
From the Curator
It’s Not Just
Cricket
Editorial
Publishers
Jane Grylls 020 7300 5661
Kim Jenner 020 7300 5658
Editor Sam Phillips
Designer Joyce Mason
Advertising
Janet Durbin 01625 583180
MCC Arts & Library
Department
Curator
Adam Chadwick 020 7616 8655
[email protected]
Research Officer
Neil Robinson 020 7616 8559
[email protected]
Collections Officer
Charlotte Goodhew 020 7616 8526
[email protected]
Tours and Museum Manager
Antony Amos 020 7616 8596
[email protected]
Filming and Photography Manager
Clare Skinner 020 7616 8522
[email protected]
Published on behalf of Marylebone Cricket Club by Royal
Academy Enterprises Ltd. Colour reproduction by adtec.
Printed by Tradewinds, London. Published September 2013
© Marylebone Cricket Club 2013. Text © The Authors 2013.
The opinions in this particular publication do not necessarily
reflect the views of Marylebone Cricket Club. All reasonable
attempts have been made to clear copyright before
publication. Publication of an advertisement within this
magazine does not imply the approval of the publishers or
MCC for goods or services offered.
The task of compiling A Portrait of Lord’s, which was published this summer, has given
me a fantastic opportunity to showcase the wonderful 200-year-old cultural landscape of
Lord’s through its architecture and collections. The mosaic of images and stories, revealed
by the hard work of the Arts & Library team, proved just what wide-ranging and little-known
associations the Ground has.
It is therefore particularly pertinent that MCC welcomes the inaugural London Sports
Writing Festival to Lord’s in October. I hope it will prove to be a fitting celebration not only of
authors’ endeavour but of the kaleidoscope of sport at an entirely appropriate location.
As well as containing details of the programme and how to book tickets, this issue also
prefaces this four-day gala with articles on the William Hill Sports Book of the Year, the art of
ghost-writing and the sporting novel, as well as the changing times of the cricket journalist.
A Playwright’s XI is complemented by Cricketing Golfers and Michael Palin adds his thoughts
on Lord’s.
In Collections News we celebrate the new Lord’s website and the ability of both Members
and the public to now access an unprecedented amount of the Ground’s history online,
including the entire listing of the Club’s Library; I hope it will prompt renewed interest and a
wealth of visits during the bicentenary year of Lord’s in 2014.
Adam Chadwick
Curator of Collections
A programme of the
highlights of the London
Sports Writing Festival
(17th to 20th October) is
included in the centre of
this magazine
Cover image
Joe Hill, Harold
Pinter, 2006, oil on
canvas (© the artist).
The painting is based
on a photograph of
Pinter batting in the
nets at the Alf Gover
Cricket School in
Wandsworth
MCC MAGAZINE
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Contributors
Michael Billington
Michael Billington is a theatre and film critic,
and has written several biographies of well-known
playwrights. Following his time as a director for
Lincoln Theatre Company in the 1960s, Billington
has worked as a critic for publications that
include The Times, Birmingham Post, Country
Life, The New York Times and The Guardian.
Jon Culley
Jon Culley has been writing about cricket since
the mid-1980s, when he was appointed cricket
correspondent of the Leicester Mercury, following
Leicestershire home and away without the aid of
mobile phones and laptops. For the last 22 years
he has reported freelance for The Independent
and, more recently, for espncricinfo.com.
Barney Douglas
Barney Douglas is a producer and director
currently completing the documentary film
Warriors. He is also an ECB video producer and
the man behind Swanny’s Ashes Diaries. He had
an article in the 150th edition of Wisden and a duck
at Trent Bridge, and has never forgiven Richard
Halsall for dropping him from Sussex Under-16s.
Nicholas Hogg
Nicholas Hogg is the co-founder of the Authors
Cricket Club. His debut novel Show Me the Sky was
nominated for the IMPAC International Literary
Award. A Leicestershire Schools and County
Under-19 player, he claims once to have trapped
Chris Broad plumb lbw in a match at Grace Road –
not that the umpire agreed with him.
Christopher Lane
ELECTED 1986
Christopher Lane has worked for Wisden for 25
years. He was Managing Director and is now
Consultant Publisher. As a golfer he has a handicap
of five and is a member of Hankley Common
Golf Club. As a cricketer he represented British
Universities and took ten wickets in an innings in a
Universities Athletic Union match.
Paul Newman ELECTED 2012
Paul Newman has been Cricket Correspondent of
the Daily Mail for the last six years, having previously
been the paper’s Deputy Sports Editor. He grew
up supporting Essex, before writing about them
when he began his career on his local paper, the
Waltham Forest Guardian. He has also covered
cricket for the Daily Telegraph and Sunday Telegraph.
Neil Robinson
Neil Robinson studied librarianship at Robert
Gordon University in Aberdeen and has worked at
the MCC Library since 2006. He has also written
for Wisden Cricket Monthly and The Journal of
The Cricket Society, and published Long Promised
Road, a book about a walk across Europe.
Simon Wilde
Simon Wilde has been the cricket correspondent
of The Sunday Times since 1998 and has reported
on 200 Test Matches. He is the author of nine
books, including biographies of Sir Ian Botham,
Shane Warne and Ranjitsinhji. Three of his books
were shortlisted for the William Hill Sports Book
of the Year award.
MCC MAGAZINE
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Pitching a
Page Turner
Authors Cricket Club vice-captain Nicholas Hogg asks why,
despite the game’s close connection with the written word,
the great cricket novel has yet to be penned
More mighty than the bat, the pen,
And mightier still as we grow old,
And hence I needs must scribble when
I’d fain be bowling – or be bowled.
Alleviation, 1898,
E.V. Lucas
In his foreword to The Authors XI:
A Season of English Cricket from Hackney
to Hambledon (2013), Sebastian Faulks
notes that “cricketers tend to be vain,
anecdotal, passionate, knowledgeable,
neurotic and given to fantasy. So do writers.
The game is made for the profession.”
Last winter I travelled to India with the
Authors Cricket Club, a wandering team
of cricket-obsessed scribes that includes
Faulks and whose season was the subject
of the book. The culmination of our fivematch tour was a game against a Rajasthan
Royals XI, a team including IPL stars such
as former international bowler Sreesanth
and, until his last minute withdrawal from
the starting line up, the speed-gun-breaking
paceman Shaun Tait.
With hopeless optimism, fuelled by
a boyhood reading Roy of the Rovers and
scoring Test Match board games on my
kitchen table while watching the explosive
talents of Sir Ian Botham and Sir Viv Richards
turn lost causes into heroic wins, I took the
ball in Jaipur with the scent of a famous
victory. I’d already pictured my hat trick
MCC MAGAZINE
and the dazzling five-for. Then my first
ball, a swinging delivery on a length just
outside off stump, was lifted over the
cover boundary with effortless grace.
Our paltry hundred from twenty overs
was knocked off in sixes and fours, and
the rather dismayed and confused locals
trudged home early, no doubt muttering
that the posters advertising our game,
featuring shots of professional cricketers
superimposed besides desk-bound writers,
promised a more sporting contest.
In Cricket, Literature and Culture (2009),
Anthony Bateman explains that during the
nineteenth century the sport “demanded a
body of canonical texts just as the Christian
Church venerated its scriptures in order
to justify its ongoing existence.” Historian
Benny Green makes an equally grand
statement that “it is almost as if the game
itself would not exist at all until written
about.” From William Goldwin’s 95-line
Latin poem, the earliest surviving literary
work on cricket, dating back to 1706, to a
plethora of Ashes-related tomes published
this summer, cricket and literature have
enjoyed a long and unbroken marriage.
Despite this loving relationship (surely
cricket is the only sport to have a bibliography
of cricket bibliographies) and luminary
authors such as Sir J.M. Barrie, Sir Arthur
Conan Doyle, Harold Pinter, Charles Dickens,
William Wordsworth, James Joyce,
Sir Tom Stoppard, George Orwell and
Above F.H. Townsend, Two Gentlemen of
Warwickshire, 1911, showing Shakespeare and
captain Frank Foster, victorious in that year’s
County Championship
Opposite Lawrence Toynbee, The Appeal, 1976,
oil on canvas, from the MCC Collections
P.G. Wodehouse all confessed lovers of
the game (when Orwell met Wodehouse
in Paris, “They just talked cricket,” noted
Malcolm Muggeridge), the great cricket
novel has arguably yet to be written.
© PUNCH LIMITED. COURTESY MCC
8
MCC MAGAZINE
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Pitching a Page Turner
To flesh a character with substance and
to propel a reader to the scene, whether it
be the baize of a sunlit outfield at Lord’s or
the pastel hues of a village green, the writer
must live and breathe the actions of their
protagonist. And here, perhaps, we trivialise
the maturity and seriousness of the novel
with the sporting daydreams of childhood.
When we read the startling truth of Sir Don
Bradman’s 99.94 average, Jim Laker’s ten for
53, we have the sanctity of the scorer’s pen
to confirm the act. If the author conjures up
a stat-defying ton – the 30-ball fireworks of
a Chris Gayle century – or a flurry of sixes to
avoid a follow-on – Kapil Dev banishing the
portly Eddie Hemmings from Lord’s four
hits in a row – or even more dramatic still, a
Test Match performance of swashbuckling
bravura that overturns victory odds of 5001 – yes, that game at Headingley in 1981
– the reader might well accuse the writer
of fantasy. A problem with the novelist’s
double-hundred, the last ball smite to win
the game, is that the cricketing author, and
by this I mean the scribe who would trade
MCC MAGAZINE
their sedentary craft for the life of a Test
Match hero, is investing his failed ambition
into the fictive glory.
Two of the best known and successful
cricket stories are the overt fantasies created
by Doyle and Wodehouse. In Doyle’s
Spedegue’s Dropper (1929), former county
cricketer Walter Scougall is ambling
through the New Forest when he comes
across two oak trees spanned by a cord
fifty feet above the ground between a pair
of stumps. From behind a holly-bush
Scougall observes a thin young man in
spectacles who “lobbed up ball after
ball” over the cord and “either right on
to the bails or into the wicket-keeper’s
hands”. Not for one moment is the reader
expected to believe the story as this
‘
Below Sir Arthur Conan Doyle bowled out by A.P. Lucas,
in a 1909 illustration by Arthur Twidle. Doyle wrote
that the ball was propelled to “a height of at least
thirty feet” before “it fell straight and true on to the
top of the bails”. It is said that this unusual delivery
inspired Doyle’s 1929 story Spedegue’s Dropper
PHOTO JONATHAN RING. COURTESY PHOTOGRAPHERS DIRECT
Above The Authors cricket team at Lord’s.
Back row, from left to right: Anthony McGowan,
James Holland, Dan Stevens, Nicholas Hogg
(vice-captain), Peter Frankopan, Ed Smith, Sam
Carter, Jon Hotten. Front row, from left to right:
Tom Holland, Amol Rajan, Charlie Campbell
(captain), Thomas Penn, Will Fiennes
spectacled teacher bowling donkeydrops is called up for England and wins
the Ashes. Or, in Wodehouse’s Psmith in
the City (1910), that a bored clerk walks
through the Long Room and scores a
century at Lord’s.
Or do we? And when I use we I mean
that daydreaming cricketer. The boy in
a maths lesson staring blankly from the
window and imagining a stadium of fans
wildly celebrating as he hits a fearsome
West Indies pace attack out of the ground.
So back to Fantasyland, and
The complexity
of cricket renders
it a specialist
subject for fiction
‘
appropriately the USA. In an article for
The London Magazine, Mihir Bose argues,
“There is nothing in English cricket
literature that matches The Natural [1952],
Bernard Malamud’s great novel about
baseball.” In a country that collectively
aspires to a dream, the sporting novel
is more keenly received by readers and
reviewers than on this side of the Atlantic.
Recent publications, Chad Harbach’s
The Art of Fielding (2011) – baseball,
unfortunately, not a masterclass from Jonty
Rhodes – and Jaimy Gordon’s horse racing
winner Lord of Misrule (2010), drew praise
and plaudits for their sporting prose.
The magisterial opening sequence to
Don Delillo’s Underworld (1997) follows the
trajectory of a home run struck in the 1951
World Series between the New York Giants
and the Brooklyn Dodgers. Delillo expands
the narrative from an iconic baseball game
into a wide-ranging treaty on Cold War
politics, the atomic bomb, modern art
and infidelity. As the fans stream from the
stadium we follow them home, with Delillo
tracking the match ball as a literary device
to tell the stories of those who come to own
the fabled sphere. Here, as Anthony Quinn
highlights discussing Half of the Human
Race (2011), his fictionalised romance
between a suffragette and a cricketer before
and during the First World War, “Sport in
novels is seldom just sport. It’s a way of
talking about something else.”
Although the breadth of Underworld
veers from the Vietnam War to the rundown Bronx, Delillo is happy to linger on
the finer points of the baseball – as are
a host of other American writers when
fictionalising their chosen game. For a
moment, let us imagine that Delillo is
a cricket-loving Englishman. Could he
have begun his magnum opus at a packed
Lord’s? Instead of Frank Sinatra and J. Edgar
Hoover consorting at the World Series,
Above left Wodehouse At The Wicket:
A Cricketing Anthology by P.G. Wodehouse
(cover of Arrow edition, 2011);
Above centre Underworld, 1997, by Don DeLillo
(cover of Picador edition, 2011)
Above right Netherland, 2008, by Joseph O’Neill
(cover of Pantheon edition, 2008)
he could have peopled his chapter with
Prime Minsters and rock stars. A baffled
Groucho Marx once visited the home of
cricket in 1954, asking if the slumbering
crowd before the Tavern was “where they
put the dead bodies?” A contemporary
writer could call upon Sir John Major, Sir
Mick Jagger, or even a Hollywood actor or
two – Daniel Radcliffe, Damian Lewis and
Downton Abbey’s Dan Stevens have all
been interlopers among the striped blazers.
Surely cricket, with its stratifications of
class, a history of institutionalised racism,
the grubby deals with bookies and dressing
room spats between egos ballooned with
IPL riches and internet fame would be ripe
material for a novel on the state of Britain.
Or simply cricket itself? I don’t see why a
work of fiction packed with the minutiae
of a game that revels in its detail shouldn’t
be a page-turning success – and neither
did Ted Dexter, once penning a forgotten
thriller called Test Kill (1976).
But I am biased, a boy with a bat in
his hand before I could walk. How many
readers could follow characters obsessed
with the scuffed varnish on a five-and-a-half
ounce ball, or empathise with, no matter
MCC MAGAZINE
11
Pitching a Page Turner
12
how well written, the dogged last stand to
save a series, replete with the agricultural
descriptions of a fifth day turning wicket?
A glowing review posted on Amazon for
Half of the Human Race grumbles that
despite its brilliance it contains “a bit too
much information about cricket for my
liking”. Similar complaints have been made
about Joseph O’Neill’s Netherland (2008),
the Obama-praised tale about the cricketplaying financial analyst Hans van den
Broek. Writing for The Millions, Elizabeth
Minkel observes that O’Neill uses Van
den Broek, the sole white man in a club of
Commonwealth immigrants, to draw “some
fairly unsubtle but potent metaphors about
cricket and those who play it in America.”
Netherland is novel including leather
and willow, but not a tale about the game.
However, Sri Lankan authors Romesh
Gunsekera and Shehan Karunatilaka have
both written works of fiction focused on
cricket – and not just cricket revolved by
what may be perceived as the real drama of
the narrative, the action that occurs off the
field rather than on. In the opening lines
of The Match (2006), Gunesekera suggests
a bat for a sixteenth birthday present, a
COURTESY OF FILM4
Coincidentally,
five days is a good
amount of time to
read a novel
‘
gift timed with the imminent tour of Sri
Lanka to England and a ceasefire in the
country’s civil war. Before Karunatilaka
has even begun Chinaman (2012), his tale
of spin bowler Pradeep Matthew, we have
the voice of Geoff Boycott in the epigraph
lecturing on the overuse of the word “great”,
and how that we denigrate its meaning by
using it on “normal things that happen in
every game”, when “it should only be used
for the real legends.” It is brave novel that
opens with a quote from Sir Geoffrey, but
this is a book that ignores the cricketless
and rewards the enthusiast. Karunatilaka
is wise and humoured enough to joke –
when he lists a star-studded line-up of
his protagonist’s victims, including Allan
Border, David Gower, Imran Khan and
MCC MAGAZINE
Javed Miandad – that a mystified reader
may seek a refund.
The complexity of cricket, the subtleties
and game-changing mini-dramas that
make the sport as baffling to an outsider as
it is intriguing to the loving fan, render it a
specialist subject for mainstream fiction.
This could explain the wider success
of other sports in British novels. Nick
Hornby’s Fever Pitch (1992) and David
Peace’s wizardly ventriloquism of Brian
Clough in The Damned Utd (2006) are
popular classics, and not only books about
issues beyond the playing field, but also
about their sport. Risking the ire of football
fans, I would contend that football is the
hit single and cricket the symphony, the
nuanced score with subtle arrangements
and depth of meaning. An art form that
takes knowledge to fully appreciate.
COURTESY SCALA PRODUCTIONS. COURTESY WWW.APUNkACHOICE.COM. COURTESY OF THE LINDSAY ANDERSON ARCHIvE, UNIvERSITY OF STIRLING
‘
Left Advert for Fever Pitch,
1997, the film adapted from
Nick Hornby’s 1992 bestseller
Below Publicity image for
The Damned United, 2009, the
Brian Clough biopic based on
David Peace’s 2006 book
Opposite Director Lindsay
Anderson with actor Richard
Harris on the set of This
Sporting Life, 1963, the film
of David Storey’s 1960 novel
about a rugby league forward
Yet this argument doesn’t explain the
dearth of fiction on rugby, a sport, along
with football, where the spectator need not
be a learned fan to enjoy the game. David
Storey’s This Sporting Life, his 1960 novel
detailing the mud and blood travails of
Rugby League star, Arthur Machin – played
on screen with a bristling physicality by
Richard Harris – is a rare example. Its
success was due as much to the forensic
examination of a failing relationship as
its fleeting and colourful passages on the
pitch – despite their visceral and brutal
authenticity, for this is a book written
by an author who played professionally
for Leeds.
Considering Storey’s success, on
and off the field, perhaps we need the
former county pro to pick up the pen and
fictionalise a cricketing life. Storey wrote
about league with bracing intensity because
he’d been there. When the cricket-loving
novelist is waxing lyrical about cover
driving at Lord’s or facing the wrath of a
sizzling paceman on a concrete track in the
Caribbean, he’s inventing. Not only are we
lacking authenticity – despite a talented
author’s imaginative powers – but we’re
back to that frustrated club player-turnedwriter with grand plans on his village green.
“In truth,” contends Quinn, “cricket is
its own drama, with its own characters and
settings, its sub-plots and grand narrative
sweep.” Although a work of non-fiction,
Jonathan Agnew’s diary of his 1988 season
with Leicestershire, 8 Days a Week – with
its highs and lows from last-ball victories in
the John Player League to his snub by the
England selectors and quarrels with teammates, including his memorable tiff with
Phillip Defreitas, concerning a salt shaker
and a kit bag unceremoniously dumped
over the Grace Road balcony – has more
than enough drama to qualify as a novel.
Those entranced by a Test Match may
well agree with the assertion that cricket
does not need fictionalising. One could argue
that the sport’s novelisation is unnecessary
while we still have the thrilling, beguiling
and occasionally tedious – three adjectives
often called upon by critics in book reviews
– long form of the game. Coincidentally,
five days is a good amount of time to read
a worthy novel. A compelling international,
played out between teams with talent and
character, starred by protagonists with bat
and ball, with walk on roles for coaches,
umpires, groundsmen, the raucous crowd and
the drunken streaker, all poetically narrated
by commentators and journalists while set
against the backdrop of changing weather
and scrolling news, is as close to a novel as
any single sporting event can compare.
In my second novel The Hummingbird
and the Bear (2011) – I dared not include
cricket in my début – I very briefly use
cricket as a bond-forming moment between
my protagonist and his prospective fatherin-law: “One evening, after I’d clipped a fifty
to claw back a match he thought we’d lost,
we were driving back to their quiet house,
both fuzzed with a couple of pints of cider.”
In the original draft this sentence was a
paragraph, with lyrical shot descriptions
and unnecessary details of the opposition
bowling, including, of course, how fast and
unplayable it was. I had let the bat get hold
of pen, rather than the pen the bat. By trying
to relay an innings – well, more a composite
of several scores – I had actually played,
I was showing off. The fact had invaded
the fictive dream, and the wistful cricketer
possessed the artist.
On the cusp of 40, I’m still running in
and bowling away swingers. I can still hit
sixes – when the boundary rope is brought
in – and take wickets, when those slip
catches are held. Perhaps, when my playing
career is nostalgia and I must scribble when
I’d fain be bowling – or be bowled, that
cricket novel will pad up and walk to the
crease, with the reader striding in with a
shiny new ball to decide its fate.
MCC MAGAZINE
13
15
14
The links between cricket and theatre are famous. Most theatre companies boast
a cricket team. Stroll round Lord’s on any big match day and you are bound to run
into a bevy of actors. And playwrights, in particular, have a passion for a game
that contains all the ingredients of theatre: elaborate ritual, swift reversals of
fortune, subtext and aesthetic grace. Theatre critic Michael Billington selects a
team of playwrights made up of the living and not-so-long dead that could take
on all-comers – and he’s even devised a batting order
1. Harold Pinter
As someone who hero-worshipped Sir Len
Hutton and had an obdurate defence, Harold
Pinter has to open the batting. Pinter, who
played truant from drama school in the 1950s
to sneak off to Lord’s, had a fanatical passion
for the game. He captained and later managed
the itinerant Gaieties team, wrote a beautifully
evocative essay about Somerset all-rounder
Arthur Wellard and once memorably referred
to “the hidden violence of cricket”. The
game also permeated Pinter’s work: the four
characters in No Man’s Land (1975) (Hirst,
Spooner, Foster, Briggs) are all named after
legendary players and the famous Pinter
pause, heightening the dramatic tension
sometimes to the point of the unbearable,
clearly pre-empted the sight of Jonathan
Trott taking guard. Since Pinter regarded
cricket as “God’s greatest invention, after
sex”, he is an automatic choice for captain.
2. Samuel Beckett
The sight of two Nobel Prize winners striding
to the crease would be enough to intimidate
any opposing team. Like Pinter, Samuel
Beckett was a dedicated cricketer. He toured
England with a Dublin University team in
1925 and 1926, and Wisden records that,
against a Northamptonshire XI in 1925, he
scored 18 and 12 and bowled eight tight
overs for 17. As with Pinter, cricket also subtly
pervades his work. Waiting For Godot (1953),
in which two characters pass the time with
banter waiting for something that will make
sense of their existence, is readily understood
by anyone who has passed a long day in the
field. Best Beckett story: he was on his way
to a Lord’s Test on a perfect June summer
MCC MAGAZINE
morning with a friend who remarked, as they
strolled down St John’s Wood Road, “Doesn’t
it make you glad to be alive?” “I wouldn’t,”
the laconically pessimistic Beckett replied,
“go quite so far as to say that.”
3. Terence Rattigan
Stylish dramatist and graceful stroke-maker
who, as both playwright and cricketer,
possessed immaculate timing. Even though
I have him first wicket down, Sir Terence
Rattigan opened the batting for Harrow in the
annual match against Eton at Lord’s in 1929
and, although he scored only 29 and 1, he was
apparently pleasing to watch. Often regarded
as the ultimate exponent of the ‘well-made
play’, Rattigan had a sense of form and
structure that owed much to his passion for
cricket. This showed itself in his 1951 TV play,
and subsequent film, The Final Test, about a
legendary cricketer making his last England
appearance. The sight, in the film, of a faintly
arthritic Jack Warner taking guard in a mockedup Oval and exchanging changing-room
jests with Hutton doesn’t always convince.
But Rattigan was a superb dramatist famed
for the elegance of his cover drives.
4. Alan Ayckbourn
A lot of playwrights love cricket: Sir Alan
Ayckbourn is one of the few to have actually
put it on stage. The hilarious second scene
of Time and Time Again (1971) takes
place on the boundary edge where we
see the hapless hero, in outsize flannels
and undersize boots, hanging on to the
ball while making love to another man’s
fiancée. Tom Courtenay was hilarious in
the original West End production and when
5
Greg and Ian Chappell came to see it,
Ayckbourn felt he had finally achieved
validation. As an honorary Yorkshireman,
who has made Scarborough his working
base, Ayckbourn inevitably takes his cricket
seriously. He kept wicket for the town’s
Stephen Joseph Theatre team until 1984
when he found a newly recruited fast bowler
too hard to “take”. But, as the author of well
over 70 plays, Ayckbourn is the most prolific
dramatist since the Spanish Renaissance
writer Lope de Vega; and he, allegedly,
wasn’t much cop as a keeper.
5. Tom Stoppard
Bit of a dilemma here: a Jos Buttler v
Craig Kieswetter situation in that Sir Tom
Stoppard is a keeper as well as Ayckbourn.
But whoever takes the gloves, you’d want
Stoppard in any team for his wit as a
writer and his flair on the field: in a New
Yorker profile Kenneth Tynan records
how Stoppard, playing for a Pinter XI,
took four catches behind the stumps and
won the game with a briskly scored 20.
Once describing himself as a “bounced
Czech”, Stoppard also has a love of all things
English, especially cricket. Not only that:
Stoppard wrote one of the greatest of all
hymns to the game in The Real Thing (1982),
where an accomplished writer uses a cricket
bat to demonstrate the power of professional
expertise. Wielding the willow, he says, “If you
get it right, the cricket ball will travel two
hundred yards in four seconds, and all you’ve
done is give it a knock like taking the top off a
bottle of stout, and it makes a noise like a trout
taking a fly. What we’re trying to do is write
cricket bats, so that when we throw up an
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12th Man
Team Manager
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MARTIN ROSENBAUM/JUDY DAISH ASSOCIATES LTD. OXFORD SAMUEL BECKETT THEATRE TRUST. ALLAN WARREN. TONY BARTHOLOMEW. AMIE STAMP.
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The Playwrights XI
1
16
The Playwrights XI
idea and give it a little knock, it might…
travel.” Perfect.
6. Richard Bean
Put together an ageing rock legend, a gay
Hindu, an Oxbridge actor, a black British
Council desk-wallah and a BT engineer who
worships Enoch Powell and what have you got?
The core of a weekend cricket team known
as The Nightwatchmen in Richard Bean’s
stunning play The English Game. Using cricket
as a way of exploring the splintered state of
the nation, Bean’s play toured briefly in 2008
and has since disappeared from view:
a shocking injustice. But Bean, a former
occupational psychologist and stand-up
comedian who only took up playwriting when
he was 40, has real staying-power, as he’s shown
with his long-running hit One Man, Two
Guvnors (2011). He’s the theatrical equivalent
of the old pro who sticks at it. And, although
his playing days are over, his love of cricket
is unquestioned. Visiting a doctor to discuss
an arthritic complaint, Bean was told he had
bone-on-bone articulation. When the doctor
asked what could have caused it, Bean
replied, “Being a mediocre bowler for 30
years.” Definitely a man to have in your side.
7. Simon Gray
Passionate cricket-lover and remarkable
literary all-rounder: author of over 40 plays
for stage, screen and television and eight
volumes of memoirs. Since he was evacuated
to Canada during the war, Gray didn’t get to
play or see cricket until he was ten. But he
soon got the bug and once recalled “a perfectly
executed late cut in my fifteenth year that I
still evoke when I want to remind myself that
life isn’t all dross.” He also remembered how,
on his first afternoon as an MCC Member,
he was demonstrating how Doug Walters
ought to be playing the cover drive in English
conditions when he accidentally stepped
on the batsman’s toe as he was making his
way through the Long Room to the crease
after lunch. Gray records that Walters was
out immediately afterwards. That’s a typical
Gray story: wry, self-deprecating, faintly
absurd. Also characteristic of a dramatist
who, like Rattigan, wrote brilliantly about
the emotional detachment of the English
male and one of whose best works was aptly
called Close of Play (1979).
8. David Hare
Learned his cricket at Lancing College where
his contemporaries included Sir Tim Rice and
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Christopher Hampton. To this day he remains
a passionate Sussex supporter and sped down
to Hove in 2003 to celebrate their first-ever
success in winning the County Championship.
Hare, knighted in 1998, also gives the lie
(along with Pinter, Beckett and Bean) to the
notion that a love of cricket is associated with
the political right. Over the years Hare has
proved a sharp-witted analyst of British public
‘
Perhaps a stateof-the-nation play
about MCC is
called for
‘
institutions including the Church of England
in Racing Demon (1990), the law in Murmuring
Judges (1991) and the Labour Party in The
Absence of War (1993). That last play ends
with a thrice-defeated Labour leadership
deciding “let’s all just be Tories – after all,
they always win.” Clearly Hare has a gift for
mischievous prophecy as well as a perceptive
wit. Although often to be seen in a box at
Lord’s on Test Match days, Hare has rarely
written about cricket: perhaps a state-ofthe-nation play about MCC is called for.
9. Ronald Harwood
No English team is complete without at least
one South African and the Cape Town born
Sir Ronald Harwood admirably fits the bill.
But, since he came to London in 1951 first to
study at RADA and then to join Sir Donald
Wolfit’s touring company, his residential
qualifications are beyond doubt. Like his
immediate predecessors in the batting order,
Harwood is also another versatile all-rounder.
He has written 21 plays (most famously The
Dresser in 1980 that drew on his memories
of Wolfit), 16 screenplays (including 2002’s
The Pianist for which he won an Oscar) and a
variety of books including a history of theatre,
All the World’s A Stage (1984). Since he’s now
in his late 70s, Harwood may have to be hidden
a bit in the field. But of his resilience, toughness
and ability to read a game there is no doubt.
But then, as I said, he is a South African.
10. Richard Harris
I remember it as if it were yesterday. It was
the first night of Richard Harris’s cricketing
comedy, Outside Edge, at London’s Queen’s
Theatre in September 1979. The play itself was
a highly entertaining comedy about a group of
weekend cricketers and their marital problems.
The late sports writer Frank Keating trundled
up to me in the interval and, in his familiar
Gloucestershire burr, proclaimed his verdict:
“Ayckbourn off a shorter run.” Frank was right
in one way: there were obvious echoes of
Ayckbourn in the mixed-up lives of these
flannelled fools and the realisation that most of
them played away more often than they did
at home. But Harris’s play, which prefigured
Bean’s The English Game, also had a long
innings. It was turned into a one-off TV play
in 1982 and into an ITV sitcom in the mid1990s. For all that, Harris remains a slightly
shadowy figure among English playwrights.
We know that he is not, as he must be tired
of being told, the hell-raising Irish actor.
But who, apart from being the writer of one
of the best cricketing comedies and scores
of TV series, is he? I see him as the mystery
wrist spinner in the Playwrights XI.
11. Ben Travers
You could hardly have a team of playwrights
without the immortal Ben Travers. This, after
all, is not just the man who gave us such timedefying farces as A Cuckoo in the Nest (1925),
Rookery Nook (1926) and Thark (1927). He
could also regale any changing room with
great stories. As a boy, he saw W.G. playing in
the same match as Sir Jack Hobbs. He was at
The Oval in 1902 when G.L. Jessop scored 104
against Australia and straw boaters were flung
in the air “like boomerangs sailing into outer
space”, as Travers himself said. He also made
the first of his many visits to Australia in 1928
to see Percy Chapman’s side win the Ashes.
The sociable Ben even made friends with
the Don, once telling him over lunch that
there were two sorts of great batsman: those
who tell the bowlers they’ll slaughter them
and those who say you’re never going to get
me out. “You Don,” continued Ben, “are the
greatest ever in the first category. The greatest
ever in the second was Jack Hobbs.” Imagine
having a raconteur like that around on one of
these English summer afternoons when the
rain comes scudding in.
12th man: R.C. Sherriff
Sheriff wrote another fine cricketing play in
Badger’s Green (1930).
Team manager: Tim Rice
Lyricist Sir Tim Rice who could keep everyone
entertained from here to eternity.
19
Ghost
Stories
Following his books on Botham, Warne, Gower and Thorpe,
Simon Wilde describes the challenges of writing biographies
– and autobiographies – of cricketing greats
There is a fundamental difference between
writing autobiographies and biographies.
In one instance, the subject wants you to; in
the other, they’d really rather you didn’t.
I’ve spent many hours in front of a laptop
on both kinds of assignment. Among those
cricketers whose life stories I’ve ghosted
are two of England’s finest left-handed
batsmen, Graham Thorpe and David Gower,
while I’ve been self-appointed biographer
to Shane Warne and Sir Ian Botham, two
modern champions of the game with
off-field lives every bit as colourful as
their cricket.
The tasks are different in several
respects beyond merely whether they’d
rather you did or didn’t. Ghosting someone’s
book creates a special bond: for the
duration of the book at least, you are as
good as a co-opted member of their family.
To be asked is flattering: for some
reason they trust you to get it right, and
your overriding desire is to repay their
faith. There are add-ons too. If the request
comes from a current international,
there’s the prospect that he will prove a
useful long-term contact, although it’s
best not to count on it. An England player
of recent vintage managed to write his
autobiography by dealing exclusively with
his ghost through Skype; they never met.
When Thorpe approached me, he was
back in the England side following the
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wants to do is discuss his private life but
Thorpe didn’t need any prompting. The
trickier area was his cricket: I had to
research many of the Tests he had played
to remind him of the details, and cajole
reminiscences out of him.
One fundamental point about ghosting
a player whose career is still active (as
Graham’s was at the time we began work)
is that they will be averse to admitting to a
weakness against an opponent they might
come up against again. With Thorpe, I
detected his concerns about facing Glenn
Above Nick Botting, Sir Ian Botham, 2001,
oil on canvas
traumatic break-up of his marriage. His
cricket had suffered and he had spent a year
out of the side. But he had since rebuilt his
life and his game, and was ready to reflect
on his journey. Many sportsmen want to
write their autobiographies when they are
approaching the end of their careers; with
Thorpe, the initial motivation was that he
simply had a lot to get off his chest. As it
happened, by the time the book came
out he had retired, after losing his England
place to Kevin Pietersen on the eve of the
2005 Ashes. Often the last thing a sportsman
‘
Ghosting creates
a special bond: you
are as good as a
co-opted member
of their family
‘
McGrath in the forthcoming 2005 Ashes
and it was clear that that topic was off limits.
Understandably, he didn’t want to articulate
the concern, let alone commit it to print.
In the event, of course, he and McGrath
never crossed swords again.
© THE ARTIST/COURTESY MCC. PHOTO MATT BRIGHT
18
With someone such as Gower, whose
autobiography I was writing twenty years
after he stopped playing, there was less
need to hide whatever chinks there might
have been in his game’s armour. In this
instance, my task as ghost was different:
the personal flaws or shortcomings needed
to be addressed. Now that he was retired,
there was no excuse for not coming clean.
In fact, Gower conceded that he might –
indeed probably should – have done more
to achieve a compromise with Graham
Gooch, the captain with whom he had such
fundamental differences of opinion.
The biggest challenge was getting
David to recall incidents from matches
played, in some cases, more than 30 years
ago, no easy task for someone who took
part in hundreds of games. The trick is to
keep prompting because, as I discovered,
some worthwhile anecdotes will suddenly
surface. David struggled to remember some
of his 117 Test Matches but then, late in the
process, retrieved from the memory a fiery
encounter with Wayne Daniel in a Second
XI match at Lutterworth in the mid-1970s.
Above Shane Warne bowls for the Rajasthan Royals
against Middlesex at Lord’s in July 2009
Ultimately, the book that appears
does so with the subject’s name on it, and
not the ghost’s. You might get a mention
somewhere if you are lucky, although
much to my annoyance Collins Willow left
my name off altogether from the initial
print-run of Thorpe’s book. The mistake
was rectified but that incident served as a
reminder as to the ghost-like nature of the
ghost writer. Your involvement pretty much
MCC MAGAZINE
Ghost Stories
COURTESY ECB
20
stops with publication. After that, the book
becomes the sole property of the subject.
He is the one who leaves for the round of
promotional interviews, not you.
As a biographer, on the other hand,
it’s your book and yours alone. You largely
control the project and every paragraph
is yours. With the Gower book, I gave the
book its original shape, but once that was
in place, David – after reading through my
version – was prompted to recall further
incidents which he inserted at relevant
points, so that the final version was an
amalgamation of my words and his.
No such collaboration is required with
biographies. Nor do you have to accede to
a request to remove some delicate subject
matter deemed, on reflection, to be too
sensitive for publication. Indeed, as a
biographer, you are constantly digging
for the kind of information that the
subject would prefer you not to unearth.
The corollary is that you must live with,
and stand by, whatever you do find and
publish – especially as Warne and Botham
were people whose paths I would cross
in media centres around the
world. I needed to be sure of
my facts if I wanted to avoid
one of those uncomfortable
“Oi, you!” moments.
I informed both Warne and
Botham in advance that I was
planning to write about them.
Warne, to his credit, advised
me only to tell those people I
spoke to about him that it was
not a collaborative exercise; he
told me that he had heard that
a recent biographer in Australia
(who produced a spectacular
hatchet-job) had been going
around claiming that he and
Warne were working together
on a book. Warne actually
strongly objects to biographies
– perhaps because of the
Aussie hatchet-man – and has
been quoted more than once
saying that he felt there should
be a law against books being
written about people without
their permission (good luck
with that one, Warney). In his
case, my brief was to write
a character portrait rather
than an exhaustive biography,
and I probably only spoke to
MCC MAGAZINE
around 25 key witnesses. With Botham, I
interviewed around 100.
As with Thorpe, the Warne book was
conceived at a time when he was still playing
but completed after he had announced his
retirement from international cricket. His
retirement was a huge help, triggering an
outpouring of tributes and analysis that
‘
As a biographer
you must live with,
and stand by,
whatever you do
find and publish
‘
provided rich material, while making an
assessment of one of the greatest cricketers
of all time timely. By a stroke of luck, the
book caught the moment.
The challenge with Botham was that
arguably too much had already been
written about him – and he, even more
than Warne, had published so many books
himself (ghosted, of course) that his version
of history was hard to argue with. I argued
nonetheless – and give you two examples.
One was Botham’s infamous bar-room fight
with Ian Chappell in 1977. Having tracked
down several key witnesses, I feel satisfied
that my version is the most complete yet
and bears little resemblance to Botham’s
colourful and self-serving account.
The other relates to his departure
from Somerset in 1986. Up to this day,
most people probably believe that
Botham left the club solely out of loyalty
to Joel Garner and Sir Viv Richards
following their sackings towards the
end of that season. But Phil Neale, then
Worcestershire’s captain, revealed to me
that Botham had spoken to him about
leaving Somerset three weeks before
the sackings and he was sufficiently
convinced as to Botham’s intentions
(prompted by his marginalisation under
Somerset’s new captain Peter
Roebuck) that he went away
and discussed Botham’s
recruitment with Worcestershire’s
chairman.
Rather than leave Taunton
because his face no longer
fitted, which would have been
rather demeaning, Botham was
able to depart under the banner
of ‘mate-ship’ – even though
both Garner and Richards had
told him not to get involved in
their case. Of course, the place
Botham eventually washed
up was indeed Worcester.
If I been writing a book with
Botham I would probably not
have discovered these details,
and certainly not written
about them.
‘David Gower: An Endangered
Species’ (Simon & Schuster)
and Simon Wilde’s ‘Wisden
Cricketers of the Year:
A Celebration of Cricket’s
Greatest Players’ (Bloomsbury)
are published in September
Left David Gower arms aloft during
England’s 1984-85 tour of India
22
23
From Print
to Pixels
Let’s begin by stepping back to the late 1980s.
As cricket correspondent of the Leicester
Mercury, my summer ‘office’ is the narrow
and somewhat steamy press box at Grace
Road, which seemed always to be filled
with either wasps or cigarette smoke. In
mid-afternoon, the door to the box opens
and the Mercury news vendor delivers the
latest edition before setting off on his walk
around the boundary.
He does a brisk trade, weaving between
the benches and the rose bushes and the
deckchairs, barking out the odd shouted
“Mercury!” to announce his presence.
MCC MAGAZINE
Elsewhere around the country, from
Taunton to Trent Bridge, Headingley to
Hove, the scene is repeated. At Edgbaston,
next to the main gate, a news stand was
a permanent fixture, stacked with either
the Post or Mail, depending on the time
of day. It found a ready market among
visiting cricket journalists, eager to glean
a factual snippet or two to inform their
own report later in the day. On most
grounds there would be somewhere to
buy national papers, too, the pile of
copies of The Daily Telegraph invariably
the fastest to disappear.
It is too long ago to remember now
when I last bought any newspaper on a
cricket ground, or had the facility to do so.
The number of spectators reading papers
has noticeably fallen, too, even though
attendance figures have changed little. It is
not difficult to work out why. When a single
copy of one national newspaper costs £1.40,
what once seemed an essential element of a
day at the cricket becomes a luxury. What’s
more, there is very little cricket news to
read, beyond the spotlight of the England
team. Test Matches, particularly Ashes
Test Matches, are covered exhaustively,
with match report and analysis, colour and
quotes. Yet even The Daily Telegraph and
The Times, the last to maintain the tradition,
no longer report from every county match.
It has raised questions about whether, away
from the international circuit, there is a
future for cricket journalism in newspapers
and, therefore, a future for the writers who
have entertained and informed cricket
lovers with sharp analysis and an elegant
turn of phrase almost since the game was
first played.
The change in the landscape has happened
with alarming speed as advertising revenues
have fallen. Reporting county cricket is
increasingly seen as disproportionately costly,
given the small space it occupies in the
paper. The number of writers covering county
cricket, particularly among the freelance
contingent, has dwindled dramatically,
with some national titles engaging only one
PHOTO BY J. A. HAMPTON/TOPICAL PRESS AGENCY/GETTY IMAGES. PHOTO RYAN PIERSE/GETTY IMAGES
There has been a revolution in the way that cricket journalism is produced
and consumed, in ways both positive and negative for writers and readers.
Jon Culley reports on these digital developments and looks to what the
future holds for the industry
or two where once they could give regular
work to eight or nine. Regional papers,
regrettably, have followed suit, often not
employing a cricket specialist at all.
Mike Beddow, the veteran Midlands
sports writer who has been reporting matches
from Worcester, among other venues, for 50
years, says that the sharp decline in regional
coverage has been the most obvious change.
“At one time, most local morning and
evening papers would have a man on the
road,” he said. “With Yorkshire, it was like
a touring caravan, led by the legendary
J.M. Kilburn and Bill Bowes from the
Leeds papers, and with the Bradford, Hull,
Sheffield, York and Scarborough papers
represented too. Nowadays, there are a
only handful who travel.”
The recession, though, has not been
the only factor behind cricket’s struggle to
remain visible on its original platform, the
printed page. Thanks to the internet and
the digital revolution, the ways in which
sport can be followed have mushroomed,
from sports websites, fan websites, social
networking sites and blogs, to dedicated
television and radio channels – most of
which are available on tablet devices
or smartphones. Scores, match reports,
post-match comments, statistics and video
highlights can be viewed almost as soon as
stumps are drawn.
It is changing the way that cricket fans
receive their news, with many younger
ones turning away from traditional media
altogether. ESPN Cricinfo, the largest and
most popular cricket website in the world,
has positioned itself as the online market
leader and there has been a surge in the
popularity of the social networking site
Twitter, which modern cricket supporters
use as a way to organise what they read and
watch, to check on scores and keep abreast
of breaking news.
Newspapers have had to adapt,
steering resources towards online
while at the same time trying
desperately to prop up their ailing
print editions. Cricket journalists,
in turn, have had to change the way
they operate, competing as writers
with a proliferation of bloggers (many
indifferent, some very good) and
acquiring new skills to retain their
usefulness. According to David Hopps,
Cricinfo’s UK editor, the demands on
cricket journalists have never been more
wide ranging.
“Cricket journalists now need to be multimedia trained,” he said. “You need a digital
voice recorder, webcam and preferably a
camcorder as well and it would help to know
how to use editing software. Any young
journalist who can write well and provide good
audio and video as well is going to kick on.
“It is tough for the older generation of
journalists, who need help to learn to do
audio and video. But at the same time the
‘
The number
of spectators
reading papers has
noticeably fallen
‘
new generation are equally ill-trained at
crafting match reports and news stories. The
generations have to learn from each other.”
Yet there are new skills emerging.
Where journalists traditionally had a whole
day to hone phrases and reach considered
judgments, the new breed need to report
and analyse almost instantly, as the play
develops before their eyes. Minute-byminute football updates and ball-by-ball
cricket commentaries are becoming a
staple of sports websites and to deliver
them under pressure, maintaining accuracy
while providing context and a little humour,
requires a talent that deserves to be
recognised as journalism of equal merit.
If such features have added a different
dimension to the coverage of cricket, then
Cricinfo was the real game changer. From its
beginnings in the early days of the internet,
as a project launched by a British researcher
at an American university that relied entirely
on enthusiastic amateurs around the
world to build its huge database of content,
Cricinfo grew so swiftly that investors began
to take an interest. In 2000, staggeringly,
it was valued at around £100 million. Its
comprehensive coverage of the game on all
continents, offering scores that are seldom
more than a ball or two behind real time,
along with a constantly replenished stock of
news stories, features and comment pieces,
an enormous archive of statistics, not to
mention blogs, ball-by-ball commentaries,
podcasts and videos, puts it at the top of its
class by a considerable distance.
With all this comes an emphasis on speed.
Where newspapers need to refresh their
printed content only every 24 hours, websites
eager to stay ahead of the competition must
update almost constantly. The worry in
this, for those who value cricket’s tradition
as a vehicle for more literary sports writing,
Opposite Newspapers sold in February 1933
proclaim England’s victory in the Ashes
Below British tabloids and broadsheets carry news
of Ashton Agar’s heroics in this summer’s series
MCC MAGAZINE
25
24
‘
Video highlights
can be viewed
almost as soon as
stumps are drawn
‘
on a site when that site is telling you nothing
and is only living on your stuff?
“It doesn’t matter how untrendy that view
is, it is backed up by what is happening on
Cricinfo. As far as we are concerned social
interactivity is an element of the future but
it is not the future. People who go down that
route are going to produce worthless pap.”
Perversely, although opportunities for
careers in cricket writing appear to be limited,
the number who aspire to be cricket writers
has gone up, thanks to the blog revolution,
which means that the lack of a job on a
newspaper or magazine is no longer an
impediment. Anyone who wants to write can
simply download some free software and
start a blog, the only cost a few pounds to
MCC MAGAZINE
The One Day Game
The job of a cricket journalist is as much tweeting as text editing,
says Daily Mail reporter Paul Newman, as he describes a typical
day’s work covering the first day of a Test Match at Lord’s
7.30am
I leave home in Chingford to head to St
John’s Wood and the best cricket ground
in the world. I grab papers at Blackhorse
Road Underground Station and hope to
find a seat on the tube to read what the
opposition have written before I arrive at
Lord’s. I have a jacket on and a tie in my
bag in case work takes me to the Pavilion.
register a domain name. With no quality
control, sorting the good from the bad among
the wannabe offerings is no easy task, but the
better ones find a following, usually because
Twitter spreads the word. It is another
challenge to the established order.
Yet if traditional cricket writers face an
uncertain future, so too does the traditional
reader, far more at home turning the pages
of a newspaper than tapping an iPad.
Mike Beddow fears a key sector of cricket’s
market could find themselves effectively
disenfranchised. “While you must accept
the different generation that has come with
the digital revolution, it is too easy to dismiss
the number of people who maybe have a
computer but don’t want to keep opening
it, or who don’t have one at all. Where does
this leave them?”
The answer is publications such as
The Cricket Paper, the latest addition to
a stable of sports weeklies published by
David Emery, the former sports editor of
The Daily Express and a publisher with
his heart in print journalism. The Cricket
Paper is 18 months old and, according
to Emery, his circulation target of 20,000
does not look unrealistic. There is also the
notable emergence of The Nightwatchman,
a quarterly publication from the Wisden
stable that flies the flag for what has been
dubbed ‘slow journalism’, publishing
beautifully crafted essays and long-form
articles about the game as an antidote
9am
I try to arrive quite early for the first day of
a Test to get myself sorted, get a coffee,
make sure the wifi is working (I’m a
complete technophobe and usually have to
be rescued by the staff at MCC) and then
to find out if there are any early news lines
(such as team news, injuries and gossip).
The industry has changed so much in
recent years: now we would start
tweeting nuggets of information
pretty much from when we arrive.
We are also expected to provide our
website with early news as and
when it occurs, and, in the case
of the Daily Mail, I provide small
opinion-based reports both at lunch
and tea for the website only, as well
as tweeting throughout the day.
Above In-depth reports on this year’s county cricket
season are published on Cricinfo
to the breathless, deadline-driven and
often needlessly quote-laden journalism
becoming increasingly prevalent.
Yet Hopps believes that the older
generations will in time catch up with the
digital age, not necessarily by packing an iPad
with their flask and sandwiches but because
so much information can now be delivered
through the piece of new technology that
is close to becoming a universal accessory,
irrespective of age, namely the mobile phone.
“Mobile reading is now 50 per cent
of Cricinfo readership and that cannot be
underplayed,” Hopps said. “On the new
generation of smartphones, Cricinfo is as
comfortable a read as it is online.
“In that respect, the older generation
– the age group of 50-plus – should not be
underestimated. At the moment, we see
more traffic in the 20-45 bracket, but we do
have an older readership, and now more
and more you see people of all ages looking
at their mobiles as if they were reading their
paper. The danger for us is just how much
there is a timelag – how long it takes for
them to start clicking on our app in the way
they used to buy a paper.”
Devise an app that walks around the
ground, among the benches and the
deckchairs, and shouts out its name and
it might have a chance.
1pm
I meet Bumble for lunch to discuss
his column, ‘Bumble at the Test’. This
involves the off-beat, the humorous
and the downright bizarre, as well as
proper cricket analysis, from where
to find the best curry in St John’s
Wood to why Jonny Bairstow was
bowled playing across the line.
© ESPNCRICINFO. COURTESY MCC
is that quality will suffer. David Hopps
understands those fears but says there are
encouraging signs that good writing can still
find a home, even in the digital age.
“Throughout every profession
nowadays, immediacy is all and knowledge
is less respected,” he said. “At the same
time, the power of the consumer is more
respected. People have more access to
more information; therefore they feel more
empowered. They have more access to
immediate information; therefore they
want it faster and faster. The negative in
this is potentially the loss of the in-depth,
intelligently written report.
“But what is encouraging for me at
Cricinfo is that the data says people still
want to read well-written match reports and
still want to read news. Below that in terms
of readership come the features and the
blogs and the interactive social media stuff.
The trick for us is to work out how to do it all
and still retain our intelligence.
“Social interactivity has a place. But if
people want to be socially interactive on your
site they will only come because your site
has a status. A site based on social interactivity
alone might sound appealing to accountants
but why should you be socially interactive
3.40pm
Meet Nasser Hussain for tea to
discuss his column, which is far more
serious than Bumble’s. This will be on
a particular feature of the day’s play,
usually involving the former England
captain’s verdict on the outstanding
innings or bowling of the day, or an
overview of where England went
right/wrong.
4pm
By the time tea is over you start to think
about the best angle for the match report of
the day, particularly on Fridays when you have
early newspaper deadlines – in the case of
the Daily Mail, we have to file everything by
6.30pm on Friday even if play has not yet
finished for the day (we can always update
it for later editions). Every other day you
have until 9pm to file, but the office prefers
it if you can file earlier than that to give
them maximum time to work on the
headlines, pick the right photos and
make the copy fit the page.
I talk to my news editor several times
during the day. They often throw in ideas
or make sure you have spotted something
that might be being highlighted on TV. Our
final conversation comes at around 5pm
when I’m pretty much deciding on my plan
of attack, and they brief me on how many
words they want me to write and what they
think the best angle is.
6pm
I try to start writing about half an hour from
the end of a day’s play (earlier on Fridays)
as I usually have around a thousand words
for my match report and if I leave it too
late I can create deadline trouble for
myself, particularly if the report doesn’t
flow easily. Increasingly now, there is also
a demand to immediately file an end of
play report, which goes straight up on the
website. The newspaper website
reports are more considered if
time permits and often include
quotes from the outstanding
performer of the day, who is
usually put up at a post-day press
conference. At the end of the day
we also shoot a video summary to
go on the website.
7.30pm
When I complete my report
(which is hopefully before MCC
are asking me to leave so that
they can lock up!) I tend to sit
in contemplation for a while,
rereading to try to make sure
I have got it right and haven’t
missed any news. There is
usually, in these modern days,
a quick trawl through Twitter
and a last tweet of the day.
I leave Lord’s by about 8.30pm or
9pm and get home to north-east
London by 10ish.
Left Journalists at work in the J.P. Morgan
Media Centre that overlooks Lord’s
MCC MAGAZINE
27
First Past the Post
PHOTO PHILIP BROWN
What makes an award-winning sports book? As the William Hill Sports Book of the
Year celebrates its 25th anniversary, the award’s co-founder John Gaustad reveals
to Neil Robinson the secrets behind the most prestigious prize in sports writing
How did the William Hill Sports Book of
the Year first get under way?
Graham Sharpe of William Hill and I both
came up with the idea independently.
I’d been running Sportspages on Charing
Cross Road since 1985, the only bookshop
in the UK specialising in sport. I had
already discovered that although there was
something like 350 annual book awards in
Britain, there wasn’t a single one for sports
books. It was one of my personal hobbyhorses: that you don’t have to be thick
to like sport; that there is a place for the
intelligently written sports book and they
should be given the same regard as
other areas of publishing. I had been
nurturing that concept but had no way
of pursuing it.
Meanwhile, Graham was at a Sunday
Express Literary Awards dinner around
that time, and he was sitting at a table with
a journalist called Graham Lord and said
to him, ‘Isn’t it funny that there isn’t a prize
for sports books?’ When the rest of the
table had finished hooting with laughter
Graham Lord turned to him and said, ‘You
ought to speak to a guy I know called John,
who runs Sportspages bookshop. He thinks
just the same thing.’ So Graham rang me
up and invited me out for lunch. It seemed
our ideas were utterly in tune, and the
whole thing was born. We designed it from
that point and have co-run it ever since.
era and almost certainly the nicest man I
have ever met.
So that was the first panel of four, with me
acting as Chairman. And I remember going
to that first judging lunch with these four
people whom I absolutely revered but had
of course never met before. I was so nervous.
Above John Gaustad, photographed in his
bookshop Sportspages in 2001
How did you go about recruiting that first
panel of judges?
We knew that if the award was to have any
credibility and make any kind of impact we
had to have people whose voices and
judgements would be respected. So Graham
and I put together a wish-list of four or five
names that we thought would be ideal, in
the hope that one of them at least would
say yes. Amazingly enough they all said yes.
The first name on the team sheet was Hugh
McIlvanney, simply the finest sports writer
of his generation, then Ian Wooldridge of
the Daily Mail, also a towering figure in
sports journalism. Then there was Harry
Carpenter, the famous BBC commentator,
and the late Cliff Morgan, another great
BBC man from the early outside-broadcast
So what is the secret of bringing together
the ideal judging panel?
That first year we had particularly wanted
to get people who were interested in a
range of different sports, not just a variety
of people involved in their own individual
sports. If we’d had a specialist in any
particular sport it might have felt as though
they were arguing for their sport, rather
than for the merits of a particular book,
and that could tilt the discussion in a way
that I didn’t think would be useful.
Some people have been critical of us for
keeping much the same panel from year to
year. But if we’d changed the judges each
year, fairly soon we’d have been getting rather
thin in terms of prestige and that wasn’t a
position I wanted to get into. In the end,
the elite level of sports media people is
a pretty small community. If you look at
some awards, the turnover of judges is so
rapid that the character of the panel can
change radically from year to year, so that
a book that might have won it one year
wouldn’t even make the shortlist the next.
MCC MAGAZINE
First Past the Post
28
Another positive effect of not changing
the panel too much has been that as time
has gone on people have been almost
pulling our hands off to say yes if we even
mention the possibility of their coming onto
the panel. And also I think over the years
keeping the panel stable has made the
whole process slicker; people get used to
how it works and get used to each other.
The panel we’ve got at the moment
includes people coming from wildly
different perspectives. We’ve got John
Inverdale, with all his TV experience, but
by contrast someone like Danny Kelly, who
was there in the early years of the internet
and was involved in popular music, and
fanzines, before he moved into sports media.
Then we have Clarke Carlisle, our newest
judge, an interesting guy who has just
retired from playing football professionally.
If we only had respected print journalists
that would limit us slightly, so we have a
range of ages, a range of backgrounds and
perspectives, all bringing different things
to the party but sharing a love of sport and
an appreciation of great writing.
What can you tell us about the judging
process itself?
First of all we invite the publishers to submit
books and then Graham and I go through
them all to arrive at an initial assessment.
At this stage we’re constantly comparing
notes on which ones we feel are likely
contenders. We also send lists of the entries
to the judges, asking if there are any they’d
like to look at. From time to time I’ll send
out long and detailed emails to the judges
summarising how our thoughts are developing,
listing, for instance, perhaps eight or ten
books Graham and I feel should make the
longlist and maybe a few other ‘reserves’,
again asking for their thoughts. Then there’s
a further exchange of views until a longlist
eventually emerges, generally twelve or
thirteen books, released sometime late in
September. At this point it all gets a bit more
MCC MAGAZINE
serious. The judges read the books and I ask
each of them to come back to me with their
top six in order. I then give them all weighted
marks reflecting their position on each list
and add them up and a shortlist evolves.
Some years it will be five books on the
shortlist, some years six. We don’t have a
strict rule on the number – it reflects the
spread of support from the judges – but
there is a kind of unwritten rule that if any
book is a judge’s number one choice, then
there ought to be a very good reason for it not
being on the shortlist, because we feel they
should at least have a chance to champion
the book that they think is the best.
On the evening of the judging meeting
we’ll sit down to dinner about 7.30pm. I
generally start the ball rolling by asking each
judge for his top two or three. Very often
this reveals that there are one or two books
with either zero or very little support. So
we just have a polite word about them and
they disappear from view. And then we just
start chipping away. Typically we get down
to about three fairly quickly and then the
argument and the shouting begin! Happily,
we’ve never had anyone leave the room in
fury; the debate may rage, but we’ve always
all stayed until we’ve reached a consensus.
There have been a couple of times when
the winner has emerged within about ten
minutes, but there have been others when
it’s been daggers drawn and it takes much
longer. Our longest ever discussion led to a
winner at 1.30am. That year we actually had
six on the panel and had reached a 3-3 tie,
split between two books. It had got to 1.30 and
so, to break the deadlock, I announced that,
as Chairman, I was giving myself a casting
vote. Extraordinarily, I got away with it!
How has the award changed since it
started in 1989?
While Graham and I meet every year to
review how the last one has gone, and fine
tune things, in general it goes on in much
the same way. We actually held the award
presentation in Sportspages for the first 15
years, although people said it was too small
and felt a bit like standing on the terraces at a
football ground, but it felt like the right place
to me and I loved having it there. From 2004,
after I’d parted company with Sportspages,
Waterstones generously hosted it in their
flagship Piccadilly store, but this year William
Hill has decided they want to make it an
even bigger affair so we’re holding it at the
Hospital Club on Endell Street. It will be slightly
different from its rather humble beginnings.
The prizes have got bigger too. We started
out with just £1,000. That increased quite quickly
and this year the winner will receive a cheque
for £25,000. Not life-changing exactly, but quite
a pleasant amount to have in your pocket.
The impact of the award has grown
hugely. Publishers love it because it really
sells books. Typically publishers say that a
winning book will go on to sell four or five
times as many copies as they would have
expected it to sell had it not won.
the most writing, and probably the best
writing. I suppose it was already beginning
to peter out in book terms, and then the
onrush of football took over. With the
hooligan nonsense finally declining in the
late 1980s, and the Premiership starting
in 1992–93, the whole character of the
game was transformed. We reflected that I
suppose with Fever Pitch, but if I’m honest,
I’m embarrassed about the forerunner
that we managed to overlook: Pete Davies’
book All Played Out, the story of the 1990
World Cup in Italy, told from a fan’s-eye
view. Nobody had ever published what a
fan thought before. Now football has won
the award more times than any other sport.
Another intriguing one is cycling, which
had zero publishing when we started out,
and when Paul Kimmage won with Rough
Ride in our second year it just came out of
the blue. But now we’ve had a cycling book
on the shortlist almost every year for the
last ten years or so.
So in addition to that handy cheque the
winner also receives a massive increase in
sales and in profile?
Yes, the royalties they are going to receive for
the book will be greatly increased. And when
they sit down with a publisher to discuss
their next book the figures being talked
about will be quite a bit bigger because on
the cover they will be able to put “William
Hill winner”. There were a few of the early
winners, particularly, whose lives were
transformed. I hesitate to say Nick Hornby
[winner in 1992 for Fever Pitch], but it was
the first award he’d won and it helped to
bring the book the attention it deserved. He
was a very lucky man because he caught the
Zeitgeist so perfectly.
Is there a sense of excitement when
a book about a sport that hasn’t been
represented before suddenly hits the
shelves?
There is for me. I’ve probably read 50
sports books at least every year for the
last 30 years. That’s 1500 plus, and it’s
difficult not to get a little jaded. I’m harder
to impress, shall we say. But last year we
had a real first on the shortlist – a selfpublished book about squash, Shot and
a Ghost by James Willstrop, and I found
it fascinating.
Has the representation of different sports
changed at all?
That’s been quite interesting. When we
started out in 1989 I think we were at the
tail end of cricket being the sport that had
Is that expansion of the number of sports
represented one of the major ways in which
sports writing has changed since 1989?
I think it’s been a combination of things.
There’s no doubt the award has made
publishers more adventurous. Some
editors will now think to themselves “is this
a William Hill book?” when looking at a
manuscript or an idea, and we’ve certainly
given sports writing more respectability
and proved it can sell. Now it’s become
a much more central strand of the
publishing industry.
Some categories go on much as before,
such as the sportsman telling his story
with the help of a journalist – that’s been
going on since time immemorial. But
there is definitely a wider range of points
of view being reflected than before, the
fan’s viewpoint in particular. Sport touches
extraordinarily different people in very
different ways, yet can be a meeting place
for them. Publishers are beginning to
reflect this.
We’ve obviously been affected by
the digital revolution. You can now
produce small runs of copies much
more cheaply so we’ve gone from being
dominated by big monolithic publishing
houses to a proliferation of small, one- or
two-man operations, and they bring to
it all sorts of quirky ideas that they are
willing to represent in print. Each year
now we receive books from ten or twelve
publishers I’ve never heard of, and quite
often it will be the first book they’ve
published. It’s livened up the mix a lot. I
had anticipated the year the credit crunch
hit would be a bad year for publishing but,
from having typically had about 70 books
submitted each year, that year we had 152 –
that was something that amazed me. It just
never stopped and it was down to this huge
proliferation of small publishers.
What qualities do you look for in a good
sports book today?
I think being on this panel for 25 years
has made me very conscious that my own
views are sometimes out of tune with
those of my colleagues. For instance, I
have an absolute anathema for what I
call the Chariots of Fire stories. The story
arc is always the same: suffering, trial,
failure, then ultimate vindication, success,
triumph. I think that’s perfectly suited to
film-making but to me it always seems
very trite in a book. Nor am I keen on those
misery memoirs. I remember one book by
a prominent sportsman and the pivotal
element in the first chapter was how every
night before a game he couldn’t sleep. I
just thought, “What has publishing come to
that you’ve constructed this poor guy’s life
around that?”
But what I do want is honesty, and the
most painstakingly accurate depiction of
the truth of whatever is being written about.
And for that reason I suppose the books
that I enjoy the most are the diaries: not so
much the autobiographies, but the diaries
of elite performers that somehow take you
inside their world and make it come alive.
I suppose I’m something of a sports star
groupie: I would love to be there, part of it
all, but I know I’m not.
I also want to be shown something new,
or something familiar that’s sort of twisted
around and given another dimension. That’s
part of the attraction of having new sports
coming through. Reading Rough Ride, it was
the first time I really understood what went
on in the peloton.
Are there any books over the years that you
have felt were unlucky not to win the award?
I think that very first year I argued strongly
for Simon Barnes’ book A Sportswriter’s
Year, then in 2008 there was Jonathan
Wilson’s Inverting the Pyramid, which I had
a lot of time for. It was an analytical history
of football tactics, which might sound
unlively, but I found it fascinating.
So how do you see sports writing
developing in future?
I really don’t know. I just hope it surprises
me, that’s all I can say.
The William Hill Sports Book of the
Year 2013 shortlist is announced on
27 October, with the winner revealed
on 27 November
MCC MAGAZINE
29
31
30
Warrior Spirit
COURTESY BARNEY DOUGLAS AND KAT DAWSON
A group of Maasai are playing cricket not just for pleasure but to
improve their communities, says Barney Douglas, who, with the help
of Jimmy Anderson, is making an inspirational film about their journey
It all started on World Aids Day, back in
December 2011. I had been looking for a
film project for a little while, something
that would grab me and something I felt
passionately about. When I happened
upon a wonderful photograph in a national
newspaper, I felt I’d found it.
The photo was of a Maasai warrior:
robes and beads flowing in the breeze;
cricket bat in hand, pads and gloves on,
and feet off the ground playing a stroke.
The caption described him as one of
a group of warriors who had formed a
cricket team on the plains of Kenya, and
that they were attempting to use the
game to fight HIV/Aids and better their
community. It said they were coached by
an inspirational South African woman
called Aliya Bauer, and that they saw the
ball as the spear, the bat as their shield. The
image was incredible, and I immediately
had kaleidoscopic visions in my head of
a possible film. I set out to discover more.
What I found shocked me.
For there is a dark heart to their story.
The Maasai are male-dominated and
women have few rights, even to their own
bodies – girls as young as six have suffered
female genital mutilation and early
marriages. Traditional practices such as
these have also contributed in particular to
the spread of HIV/Aids, and now many in
the region believe the future of the Maasai
is under serious threat.
However, the remarkable Maasai
Cricket Warriors team are trying to use
their new-found unity on the field as an
inspiration to those off it, attempting to
educate and give young people a sense of
belonging, support and hope. Whereas
before some of the Maasai might have been
fighting among each other and raiding
each other’s villages for livestock, now they
MCC MAGAZINE
promote peaceful conflict resolution and
education through sport. They think that
changing some of their harmful traditions
is the only way to safeguard the future of
their children, and they are using cricket
to do this.
But it’s not just a tool. They love the
game, have a real passion for it, and
they also have a dream: to play on the
hallowed turf of the Home of Cricket.
That’s right – the Maasai want to play at
Lord’s. And can they play? Yes. Of course
they’re not technically perfect, nor are
they going to trouble the Kenyan national
side quite yet, but there is real talent
there. Real athleticism. Bowling is their
particular strong suit – they like dealing
out some “perfume deliveries”, as their
captain Sonyanga Ole Ng’ais describes
them. They practice on a bumpy, uneven
clearing. Their few remaining cricket balls
are ragged and scratched. Some of the
team even have to walk four hours just to
a Maasai piece of wisdom: “the eye that
leaves the village sees further than the eye
that stays.”
Over the past year we’ve been
following the team, discovering more
about the Maasai way of life, their love of
the sport and their dream of playing at
Lord’s. There is an amateur tournament
at the Ground called the Last Man Stands
World Championships at the end of August
2013, and hopefully by the time you’re
reading this, the team will have made the
journey to play in the competition. Titled
Warriors, the film is not a traditional
talking-head style documentary, with
some sports action and a linear story: it will
emphasise colour and poetic imagery, and
will even include dream sequences. Our
influences range from Terrence Malick’s
The Thin Red Line (1998) to Tarantino, beat
poetry and African psychedelic music.
It features the Maasai and much of it is
based in Kenya, but it’s not simply a film
about Africa. It’s about how sport can make
a social impact, however big or small;
how young people can find a voice; and
how cricket can awaken the bear in your
chest. Jimmy Anderson has taken a role
as an executive producer, volunteering
his time as a sounding board and putting
us in touch with some excellent contacts,
including some in the film world.
“When you think of all the stuff that
goes on around international cricket these
days, it’s refreshing that the spirit of the
game can still inspire,” explains Anderson.
“I am fascinated by the story of the team’s
journey, them trying to get to Lord’s, but
also in how brave they are to stand up to
try and improve their community. HIV/
Aids is an ongoing problem – not just in
Kenya but globally – and we’re hoping the
film will provide a different way of raising
awareness about the virus. I’ve been to
meetings with Barney, discussed rough
cuts of footage while we were in India, and
I’ve been hearing all about the ups and
downs of the shoot. I’m trying to help in
any way I can.”
Warriors has had some great coverage
in the press so far, including articles in
The Independent and a fantastic full-page
spread in The Times written by Mike
Atherton. It was also a proud moment
to have an article published in the 150th
Wisden Almanack. People seem to be
enthused by the team and the film, and
what’s refreshing is the interest is not just
from cricket fans. We’re still looking for
further investment for the film, so if you’re
inspired by the story, please get in touch
and become part of this special project.
Opposite Maasai Cricket Warriors captain
Sonyanga Ole Ng’ais
Below Warriors all-rounder Daniel Ole Mamai
plays a shot during practice
For more information about ‘Warriors’,
email [email protected],
follow @warriorsfilm on Twitter or
visit www.warriorsfilm.co.uk
reach training – avoiding local wildlife like
elephants along the way.
Swirling around them though, like
the clouds circling Mount Kenya, is
resistance. The elders of the community
are sceptical. They are steeped in tradition
and threatened by the fast changing world
around them. The team are hoping that by
making it to the UK and playing at a place
as drenched in history like Lord’s, it will
have resonance with their community.
A phrase that often crops up in the film is
‘
The eye that leaves
the village sees
further than the
eye that stays
‘
MCC MAGAZINE
33
32
Sports
on a Par
On 31st August 1903, an unusual
twelve-a-side match was staged
at Lord’s between a team of first
class cricketers who also played
golf (the Cricket Golfers, or the
“cricketers” as we will call them
here) and a team of golfers who
also played cricket (the Golf
Cricketers, or the “golfers”).
It was the first of four annual
Lord’s games between the two
teams, all of which were drawn.
The inspiration for these
matches was the strong bond
between the two sports – a
bond that persists today. Both
place an emphasis on fair play, etiquette
and sociability. Further, by coincidence,
both sports were first codified in 1744.
Although they have little in common in
either origins or technique, the games
have many subtle similarities. In his
autobiography, Christopher MartinJenkins wrote: “Old cricketers turn
to golf… it lacks the element of team
involvement provided by cricket, but
it offers most of the other challenges,
especially the mental ones. Cricket
requires a batsman to strike a moving
ball, golf only a stationary one, but both
games reward strategic thinking, presence
of mind, concentration and, perhaps
above all, confidence.”
The cricketers in the 1903 match had
three Test players – Audley Miller, Stork
Ford and Bunny Lucas – while the golfers
had four first class cricketers including
MCC MAGAZINE
Above Five of the Golf Cricketers, a team of
golfers who played at Lord’s against cricketers in
August 1903 (from left to right): James Braid, Sandy
Herd, J.H. Taylor, Jack White and Alfred Atfield
George Beldam, the pioneering sports
photographer, and Osmund Scott who,
two years later, was runner-up in the 1905
Amateur Golf Championship. Batting at
numbers four and seven in the golfers’
team were J.H. Taylor and James Braid,
who each won the Open Championship
five times. Further down the order for the
golfers were Jack White, who was soon to
win the 1904 Open, and Sandy Herd, the
1902 Open champion.
The photograph published here
from that first match in 1903 comes from
Taylor’s own collection, and has been
recently acquired by MCC. On the back
of the print, Taylor’s own handwriting
identifies the players pictured
as the four Open champions
(from the left): Braid, Herd,
Taylor himself and White.
On the right is Alfred Atfield,
who played cricket for
Gloucestershire in 1893.
The number three,
Horace Hutchinson, had
been Amateur champion
on two occasions and had
just lost in the 1903 final
to Robert Maxwell. The
top scorer across both first
innings was the golfers’
opener, Cecil Hutchison, who
would be runner-up in the 1909 Amateur
Championship (like Hutchinson, defeated
at Muirfield by Maxwell) and later
designed Gleneagles with James Braid.
In the 1904 match, Harry Vardon,
who won the Open a record six times,
joined Braid and Taylor in the golfers’
team. The Great Triumvirate, as they are
still known, won the Open sixteen times
between them. Unfortunately they could
muster only a collective nine runs in
the match, while Gilbert Jessop, one of
cricket’s greatest stars of the time, scored
73 not out and took four wickets for the
cricketers.
Other personalities to appear for the
golfers in at least one of the four matches
included the artist George Swinstead, and
one of the leading music hall comedians
of the time, George Robey (‘the Prime
Minister of Mirth’). And in 1905, when
COURTESY MCC. COURTESY ROGER MANN COLLECTION
Inspired by a photograph of four Open champions astride the turf of Lord’s,
Christopher Lane looks at those who excelled at the wicket as well as on the fairway
Sir Arthur Conan Doyle played for the
cricketers, the golfers’ team included the
Test players Henry Taberer and Alfred
Archer alongside Harold Hilton, who had
twice been Open champion and would
go on to be the US Amateur champion as
well as, on four occasions, winning the
Amateur Championship.
Many professional cricketers
today play golf recreationally to a good
standard. Sir Ian Botham, Shane Warne,
Brian Lara, Andrew Strauss and Steve
Waugh all competed in the 2012 European
Tour Alfred Dunhill Links pro–am at St
Andrews, while the Australians Ricky
Ponting, Greg Blewett and Dean Jones
are all current scratch, or near-scratch,
golfers. In Barbados, where Sir Garry
Sobers has spent much of his retirement
on the fairways, Franklyn Stephenson
is now a professional golfer. W.G. Grace
was reputed to be a good golfer, while Sir
Donald Bradman reduced his handicap to
scratch after retiring from cricket.
Glenn Turner’s brother, Greg, and
Rod Marsh’s brother, Graham, were both
successful professional golfers, winning
many tournaments worldwide. But high
achievement in more than one sport by
an individual (rather than by brothers) is
a thing of the past. A decade ago James
Morrison was one of the most talented
young cricketers in Britain, playing in the
same England youth teams as Alastair
Cook, Ravi Bopara and Tim Bresnan. But
when he was sixteen he was forced to
choose between golf and cricket, and golf
won. He went to the University of South
Carolina on a golf scholarship, turned
professional in 2006 and won a European
Tour event in 2010.
Golf has grown enormously as a
sport in the last century, and it has long
been the most popular second sport for
cricketers. But the professional structures
of both sports are a world apart from
the amateur age in which the 1903–06
Cricketer-Golfer games were played. It is
impossible to imagine such games ever
being staged again at Lord’s.
The photograph opposite is held in
the collections of the MCC Museum.
To search the MCC Collections online,
visit www.lords.org. Scorecards for
the four Cricketer-Golfer games can
be viewed on Cricket Archive online at
http://tinyurl.com/ovdxe33
Seven of the Best
Many pre-war cricketers had the opportunity to compete in other sports at a high
level. Some played international rugby, while many doubled up as professional
footballers. But despite cricket’s affinity with golf, relatively few played it at the
highest level. The following were among the exceptions to excel at both.
1 Charles Hooman scored 1,070 first class runs in 1910. Twelve years
later he played for Great Britain and Ireland in the first Walker Cup match,
in which he became the only player in the competition’s history to win his
singles tie in extra holes (halved matches have been permitted ever
since). The Walker Cup is the biennial amateur match between the USA
and Great Britain and Ireland: the amateur equivalent of the Ryder Cup.
2 John Evans played one Test for England, against Australia at Lord’s in
1921. In 1928 Evans completed all four rounds in the Open Championship
at Royal St George’s. A month later he was back playing for Kent
alongside Frank Woolley and Les Ames.
3 Leonard Crawley, who won the English Amateur Golf Championship
in 1931, was arguably the finest golfer to have played first class cricket
(certainly of those with more than 100 matches). He scored eight first
class centuries, and averaged over 30 with a highest score of 222 against
Glamorgan in 1928. In 1932, when he topped Essex’s batting averages, he
was reportedly asked if he was available for England’s tour of Australia
(the Bodyline tour). He declined because he had already been selected
for the Walker Cup match in Massachusetts in September. He went on to
play in three more Walker Cups.
4 Norman (‘Mandy’) Mitchell-Innes was one of many Oxbridge students
to win a Blue at both sports. In 1935 he won his Varsity golf match for
Oxford by 12 &10 (which stands today as the fourth-highest win ever), and in
the same year he was selected to play for England against New
Zealand at Trent Bridge (though like John Evans, he never played another
Test). Mitchell-Innes had a great golfing heritage: his father won the
Championship of India and his grandfather was instrumental in taking
the Open Championship beyond his own club of Prestwick where the first
twelve were staged.
5 Eric Dalton played fifteen Tests for South Africa, averaging 31.72 with
the bat and scoring 117 against England at the Oval in 1935. Dalton
retired from cricket in 1947 and turned his attention to golf. In 1950 he
won the South African Amateur Championship, and in 1954 he reached
the last sixteen of the Amateur Championship at Muirfield.
1
2
3
4
5
6
6 Ken Graveney, who took all ten wickets in an innings for Gloucestershire
against Derbyshire in 1949, was his county’s golf champion in 1968. He
achieved the unique double of being both captain and president of his
county in both golf and cricket. His brother Tom, one of England’s greatest
Test batsmen, was also a fine one-handicap golfer. At the age of 57 Tom
finished fourth in a national long-driving competition open to all-comers.
7
7 Ted Dexter who averaged 47.89 in his 62 Tests, and captained England
in 30 of them, was widely regarded as a supremely talented golfer whose
ball-striking stood comparison with the many professionals with whom he
often played. Twice winner of the President’s Putter (open to all Oxbridge
Blues), he competed in many top amateur events, winning the Prince of
Wales Challenge Cup at Deal in 1978.
MCC MAGAZINE
35
34
Collections News
that the collector in question would honour this in due course.
Unfortunately this was never to be the case.”
Happily, of the great number of books and pamphlets that
were presented to MCC, the majority have an Ashley-Cooper
provenance, including many unique manuscripts.
These major bequests have naturally attracted many further
smaller, individual offers and perhaps none more symbolic than
that of E.W. Swanton’s copy of the Wisden Almanack for 1939.
Unique among Wisdens, this one was kept by the well-known
author and commentator for three-and-a-half years while
working on the Burma to Siam railway as a Japanese captive
during the Second World War. Lovingly rebound several times
with tattered remnants of gas cape, held together with rice
paste, it bears a Japanese stamp to indicate that the book was
In an extract from his new book on MCC’s rich array of artworks and historic objects,
Adam Chadwick examines the origins of the Club’s Library – and highlights one of
its most exceptional volumes
‘
It bears a Japanese stamp
to indicate that the book was
considered “non-subversive”
‘
foremost statistician. In a life devoted to cricket Ashley-Cooper
assembled a collection of over 400 books and pamphlets,
spanning well over 200 years of the game’s history and covering
the total geography of the cricketing world. He was a less
selective collector than Ford, refraining only from acquiring
duplicate copies. He understood Ford’s preference, given
the practical limitations of space, but contended that many
annuals, especially those from certain Australian associations
which contained a breadth of detail, were essential to the
understanding of the history of cricket in a particular location.
MCC MAGAZINE
This is an edited extract of ‘A Portrait of Lord’s: 200 Years of
Cricket History’ (MCC/Scala, £35), which is available from the
Lord’s shop (0845 862 9840; www.shop.lords.org). The MCC
Library operates as a private library for MCC Members on
match days, and is open by appointment on non-match days
throughout the year (020 7616 8559; [email protected])
Access All Areas
Left The new online
catalogue allows the
public to access the
Club’s Collections of
cricket heritage, from
its archive material to
portraits of players
Neil Robinson welcomes
online the Club’s
world-class Collections
In May this year, some seven months ahead
of schedule, an online catalogue of the Club’s
historic collections was launched through
the revamped www.lords.org website.
It was the culmination of many years of
work, during which it had been the main
focus of the Curator’s Department, its
permanent staff augmented by a team of
cataloguing and documentation assistants
and a number of temporary volunteers.
The origin of the online catalogue can
be traced back to the end of 1989, when
the MCC Library collection and the Club’s
archive of photographs from the Sport &
General collection were catalogued on
a basic database. Over the next eighteen
years this database was added to as new
stock came in, but functionality was
limited and coverage restricted to these
Above E.W. Swanton kept this copy of the 1939 edition of Wisden while a
captive of the Japanese during the Second World War
This is a key point in understanding Ashley-Cooper’s collection,
as it was the library of a working historian. Ashley-Cooper was
editor of and a contributor to Cricket: A Weekly Record of the Game,
and compiled, edited or wrote over 100 books and pamphlets
himself. His collection contains many of the manuscript notes
which preceded each published volume as well as his personally
annotated copies of the publications themselves.
Shortly before Ashley-Cooper died, his friend A.W. Shelton
persuaded Sir Julien Cahn to take the collection “lock, stock and
barrel” for his large house, Stanford Hall in Nottinghamshire.
The Ashley-Cooper volumes then formed the backbone of Cahn’s
library and, though this library was an adjunct to his other
cricketing activities, Cahn did supplement it with items from
other renowned collections, such as that of Robert Stratton
Holmes, who died a few months after Ashley-Cooper in 1933.
Following Sir Julien’s sudden death in 1944, his vast
collection was dispersed, in circumstances which today are not
completely understood. His grand-daughter Marina Rijks in her
biography The Eccentric Entrepreneur attempts to explain:
“Lady Cahn offered the MCC the opportunity to select any
item it did not already possess. As it was wartime… the Club
could not send a representative and instead chose a local
Nottingham firm to act on its behalf. It was Ashley-Cooper’s set
of books that was chosen. Unfortunately due to the haste with
which the selection was carried out, it was later discovered that
the Lord’s collection contained about half of the Haygarth and
half of the Ashley-Cooper sets substantially diminishing the
value of the gift. Somewhere, a private collector had the balance.
E.E. Snow, writing in 1964, pointed out that ownership of the
Ashley-Cooper set morally resides with MCC and it was hoped
parts of the Collections. The database did
not include Museum objects, for which
the only records were on an outdated
card catalogue, while the Club’s archive,
not centrally housed until 2006, was not
recorded at all.
In early 2008, a new system was
acquired capable of documenting all
elements of the Collections to professional
standards. From that point the long
process of minutely documenting the
world’s most significant collection of
cricket heritage began, under the guiding
hand of Collections Officer Charlotte
Goodhew. Five years on and visitors
to the Lord’s website are at last able to
access details of the Club’s holdings:
almost 20,000 improved Library records,
supplemented by 1,400 plus Archive entries
and the highlights of the Museum collection.
But the work does not end here;
cataloguing is very much an ongoing
process. More records will be added to
the site in the coming months and more
detailed information will be added to
those already listed. As the project moves
on, we hope it will gain momentum and
add still more colour to the fascinating
stories contained in this treasure house of
cricket history.
Special Offers
Bloomsbury, publishers of The Authors XI: A Season of
English Cricket from Hackney to Hambledon, are delighted
to offer a special discount on the book to readers of
MCC Magazine. It is available to purchase now for £10.50
plus p&p (RRP £16.99) from the website www.bloomsbury.
com. Just type in code “authorsmcc” at the check-out to
redeem the discount. See advertisement on page 17.
COURTESY MCC
When Diana Rait Kerr took over the curatorship of the MCC
Collections in 1945, the “bulk of the library [was] packed away
in lockers”. Wartime precautions had dictated its removal
from the modest space within the Pavilion, today described
as the “Old Library”. It included the major collection of Alfred
Lawson Ford, a serious collector of cricket memorabilia from
his teens until his death at the age of 80 in 1924. His library was
originally bequeathed to Alfred’s nephew, Hugh R. Ford, who
subsequently presented it to MCC in 1930.
As a book collector he was very selective, eschewing
annuals and periodicals entirely, but his collection, while not
extensive as some – amounting to no more than 800 volumes
by the time of his death – was notable for including much of
the rarest and most valuable printed material on the subject of
cricket. His collection of artworks was rather more extensive.
When Alfred J. Gaston wrote about Ford’s collection in 1905,
it already numbered more than 5,000 prints and paintings,
many of them mounted in a series of massive and expensively
bound scrapbooks. In later years Ford shunned modern prints,
concentrating exclusively on older material, and his bookplate
symbolises the art of collecting to highly selective criteria.
The second major donation came in 1944, upon the
death of Sir Julien Cahn, though his collection needs to be
prefaced with a note on Frederick Samuel Ashley-Cooper
(1877–1932), another lifelong collector of books and pictures,
but also a noted scholar on the history of the game and its
considered “non-subversive”. As a result of constant circulating
among his fellow prisoners, it has claim to being the most widely
read copy of Wisden ever. Though it contains no annotations in
the style of Ashley-Cooper, its personalisation is distinct thanks
to its wartime popularity among Swanton’s fellow prisonersof-war and its wryly humorous reference to “Foster & Gould
Bookbinders” in Nakawn Paton, Thailand, in 1944.
Ken Faulkner is offering readers of MCC Magazine a 10% discount
on his collection of specialist cricket books, copies of Wisden
Cricketers’ Almanack and cricket memorabilia. This includes
signed prints, which make for a perfect birthday gift. There is
new stock of Wisden from 1901 to 1999 available, including pre-war
editions in near fine condition with complete bat bookmarks.
See advertisement on page 6.
Knights Sporting Auctions are established auctioneers of cricket
memorabilia and editions of Wisden Cricketers’ Almanack. To
celebrate twenty years of trading in 2013, they are offering a free
auction catalogue for their October auction to the first twenty
Members who email [email protected] requesting a copy and
mentioning “MCC Magazine”. See advertisement on page 6.
MCC MAGAZINE
Restaurant Listings
Eating Out
This is an advertisement feature.
To advertise call Janet Durbin
on 01625 583180
L’Aventure
Opened 30 years ago by Catherine
Parisot, L’Aventure continues to
be a much-loved neighbourhood
restaurant that exudes charm
and intimacy and has a loyal
following. Using fresh seasonal
produce and fish brought daily
from Cornwall, chef Sebastien
Colleux creates superb classic
French cuisine. There is a set
lunch and dinner menu and an
extensive list of fine wines from
which to choose. Open weekdays
12–11pm; Sat 7–11pm. 3 Blenheim
Terrace, NW8, 020 7624 6232.
tHe FOX CLuB
The Fox Club restaurant is located
on a quiet side street in Mayfair and
is ideal for business and pleasure.
The Fox Club is exclusively offering
all MCC Members a lunchtime
special. Any two people having two
courses will receive a complimentary
glass of wine and if having three
will receive a complimentary
bottle of wine. The modern
European menu changes on a
weekly basis to incorporate
seasonal produce. Please call
020 7495 3656 to make a
reservation and quote “MCC”
in order to be entitled to this
fabulous offer. 46 Clarges Street,
W1, 020 7495 3656.
foxclublondon.com
FrAnCO’S
Franco’s evolves and provides
a menu for all occasions. Open
all day, the restaurant has been
serving the residents of and
visitors to St James’s for over
60 years. The day starts with
a full English and continental
breakfast on offer. The à la carte
lunch and dinner menus offer
both classic and modern dishes
from across Italy. The afternoon
menu offers a full afternoon tea
as well as salads and more
hearty dishes for those that like a
late lunch, while the pre-and posttheatre menu offers exceptional
Restaurant pic.indd 1
value. Above all, our relaxed and
friendly service ensures there is
always somebody to greet you with
a smile. 61 Jermyn Street, SW1,
020 7499 2211. francoslondon.com
Getti
Getti has established itself as
a firm favourite with the locals
of Marylebone. Offering simple,
honest Italian cooking in a relaxed
environment, it is an ideal place
to relax with friends or family.
The pavement terrace is a perfect
spot to watch the world go by.
Set over two floors,the restaurant
has a light and airy feel to it, and the
lower floor lends itself perfectly to
groups and parties. Open Mon–Sat
12–11pm; Sun 12–10pm.
42 Marylebone High Street, W1,
020 7486 7084. getti.com
Twitter @metrorest
HArDY’S BrASSerie
Hardy’s Brasserie (est. 1984) is
an independent, family-run
Marylebone institution. Chef
Sam Hughes, a Raymond Blanc
protegé, presides over a menu of
British classics and seasonal
bistro dishes, accompanied
by owner Dominique’s diverse
wine list. An ongoing literary
dinner programme includes
Henry Blofeld on 8th October.
Open seven days for breakfast,
lunch and dinner. Private
dining rooms and a terrace are
available, seating 6-60.
53 Dorset Street, W1, 020 7935
5929. hardysbrasserie.com
KAnDOO
Kandoo is London’s most
traditional Persian restaurant,
using fresh, natural ingredients
accompanied by irresistible
freshly baked flat bread, served
in a friendly and welcoming
atmosphere. It is an ideal venue
for lunch or dinner and has a
lovely secluded garden. You can
bring your own alcoholic drinks
and there is no corkage charge.
The traditional atmosphere is
enhanced by live music and a
terrific belly dancer! Kandoo
also offers dining in style in a
private room.
458 Edgware Road, W2,
020 7724 2428.
kandoorestaurant.co.uk
OrrerY
Orrery is one of London’s finest
French restaurants, located on
Marylebone High Street in the
heart of Marylebone Village.
Both elegant and sophisticated,
Orrery serves classic French
food with an award-winning
wine list. Situated on the first
floor of a converted stable
block, the main dining room
overlooks St Marylebone Church
gardens through large arched
windows. Orrery also boasts a
stunning rooftop terrace, bar and
private dining room. Head Chef
Igor Tymchyshyn’s Michelinstarred pedigree is evident
in the creativity and careful
presentation of every dish.
55 Marylebone High Street, W1,
020 7616 8000.
orrery-restaurant.co.uk
tHe POttinG SHeD
The Potting Shed is a great place
for drinks. It is on the original
site of Thomas Lord’s cricket
ground, so there are signature
cocktails with a cricket-twist
such as the Bodyliner and Silly
Mid-Wicket. The restaurant is
open all day, serving simple
brasserie-style classics such
as Potting Shed fish pie and
Hereford côte de boeuf with
béarnaise sauce. Afternoon tea
is served throughout the day.
Dorset Square Hotel,
39 Dorset Square, NW1,
020 7723 7874. thepottingshed@
dorsetsquarehotel.co.uk
dorsetsquarehotel.co.uk
tHe rOtiSSerie St JOHn’S WOOD
Situated five minutes from
Lord’s, The Rotisserie has
a philosophy of excellence
28/9/10 16:15:34
that is reflected in its food
preparation, menu and
service. From Aberdeen
Angus beef to fresh seafood
and rotisserie grilled chicken
to crispy Barbary duck, all
served in a relaxed and friendly
atmosphere. It is considered an
institution among locals, with
a reputation for outstanding
quality. Open for lunch during
all Test Matches and for private
hire on any day. Open Mon–
Thurs 5.30–10.30pm; Fri–Sat
12–10.30pm; Sun 12–9.30pm.
87 Allitsen Road, NW8, 020
7722 7444. therotisserie.co.uk
tOreSAnO
Isidro Cenizo has brought
authentic regional cuisine
to London from the Spanish
village of Toro in Castilla Leon.
This popular restaurant on the
Boundary Road serves a wide
range of delicious tapas as well
as main courses and traditional
and modern desserts. Each
course may be accompanied
with a fine Rioja wine or
choose from the distinctive
selection of wines from the
acclaimed region of Toro itself.
Open Mon-Fri 6pm-11pm; Sat
12-3pm 6-11pm; Sun 12-3pm
6-10pm.130 Boundary Road,
London, NW1, 020 7624 3217.
toresano.co.uk
WiLtOnS
Wiltons (est. 1742) enjoys a
reputation all over the world as
the epitome of a fine English
restaurant. The menu proudly
features a wide range of
seafood, shellfish, game and
meat dishes. The predominantly
French wine list offers wines to
suit all palates. Open for lunch
and dinner, Monday to Friday. To
secure your reservation please
quote “MCC”. 55 Jermyn Street,
SW1, 0207 629 9955.
[email protected]
www.wiltons.co.uk
MCC MAGAZINE
37
38
My Lord’s:
Michael Palin
PHOTO CLARE SKINNER
David Rayvern Allen meets the writer, actor and
broadcaster for tea and cake – and learns of a
passion for cricket that began in the back garden
It was Clare Skinner’s cake that stole the show.
MCC’s Filming and Photography Manager
had made it especially for the occasion. It
looked delicious. Despite the temptation, we
agreed to wait until we had finished talking
before beginning consumption. Memories
had come to mind of TMS with Johnners
mischievously demanding answers from
those whose mouths were full…
Middlesex were playing Yorkshire when
the easy winner of any poll for ‘Britain’s nicest
man’ first visited Lord’s. “I think it was 1966
when I walked through the gate and found
this marvellous, pristine ground in the middle
of an expensive residential neighbourhood,”
recalled Palin. “It was exciting, although
there were not many people watching. It was
an odd feeling: there was all this space, yet
it was somehow intimate – very impressive,
but not intimidating. You knew that nothing
nasty was going to happen to you.”
He had become attracted to cricket
much earlier. “We lived in a pleasant leafy
suburb of Sheffield and when I was a nine
or ten-year-old I used to play in the back
garden. I couldn’t be a bowler because
there wasn’t much room, but as a batsman
I was often Len Hutton. I’d acknowledge the
applause as I walked slowly round the hedge.
The drainpipe was the wicket and I’d pass
the dustbins on my way to the crease. I’d go
through the entire ritual – adjusting pads,
taking guard, spending a long time looking
around the field – and then after all that,
I was often out first ball having nicked to slip.
It didn’t matter, because it was the detail that
appealed to me. It was an early indication of
looking at cricket like a writer and actor does
– I loved the drama of it all.”
MCC MAGAZINE
The Hallam Cricket and Football Club
was nearby and the young Palin witnessed
many high quality Yorkshire League matches.
Occasionally, too, there was a visit to Bramall
Lane with his father to watch Yorkshire.
“My father led me to believe that cricket
defined Englishness in a way and, of
course, I’d read school stories in which
cricket was an intrinsic part.”
At his preparatory school, he acted as
scorer, but when arriving at Shrewsbury, he
wanted a more prominent role. “I thought
I must have a go, because that’s what these
schools are all about. And then one night a
prefect came round and said, ‘Palin, do you
play cricket?’ And I said ‘Well, er… not very
well, but...’ – and I hadn’t got further than
the ‘but’, when he said, ‘Right, rowing for you.
Tomorrow morning, there’s a scull going out
and you’re going to be in it.’ And so the decision
was made. Now, I grew to enjoy rowing, but
I felt rather conned as I never had the chance
to put on white flannels and pads and walk
out on to the superb pitch at Shrewsbury.”
When reading modern history at
Brasenose College, Oxford, for a time Palin
stuck to football at which he says he was a
solid centre-half, but then quickly was seduced
by the charms of comedic writing. His
subsequent career is indeed part of… hem…
modern history: unparalleled success as one
of the comedy group Monty Python and as a
travel writer and documentarian, where his
journeys have taken him to practically every
part of the globe. No time to watch cricket then?
“I started to come to Lord’s more regularly
from the 1990s, when generous people like
Michael Parkinson and Paul Getty invited
me to spend a day in their box. I also enjoyed
other days away from the champagne and
canapés among friends in the crowd. There
are two ways of spending a day at Lord’s.
You either go just to socialise, eat and drink
and then doze off just when a vital moment
arrives, or you go as an audience and watch
every ball and give it the same application
as the players out on the field. I’m rather
torn between the two, but I rather favour the
‘
The drainpipe was the
wicket and I’d pass
the dustbins on my
way to the crease
‘
careful attention to whatever is going on.
I think there is a nerdy man inside me who
wants to see every delivery.”
He would surely then disapprove of the
comestible-chomping corporate groupies
with their backs to the game? We both
chuckled at the thought and then agreed
that watching a five-day Test at Lord’s was
the equivalent of sitting through Wagner’s
opera cycle The Ring of the Nibelung twice
and some sustenance was necessary. At last
a cue to attack Clare’s four-egg butter cream
Victoria sponge. No mere nibeling here, but
real voracious bites from both Michael and
myself, together with MCC Library staff who
had been anxiously whetting themselves while
waiting for the conversation to conclude. Umm...
wha… (cough)… wha… d’you say?... (splutter)…
wunner… yes, yes… wonderful cake!