Rodney Ulyate's Blog - Posts Tagged "cricket"
Burning Ashes by H. Lewis-Foster (Cricket Web book review)
http://www.cricketweb.net/cricketbook...
Burning Ashes
Written by H. Lewis-Foster
Published: 2013
Pages: 200
Publisher: Dreamspinner Press
Rating: 1 Star
Burning Ashes
Written by H. Lewis-Foster
Published: 2013
Pages: 200
Publisher: Dreamspinner Press
Rating: 1 Star
I have not—I confess it freely—been the most diligent contributor to this website's impressive book review, but I love the game and its letters as much as the next man, and certainly no less than my colleagues. In its fiction, however, I take little joy. The short stories, with three exeptions, are fair to middling—the exceptions are Conan Doyle, Wodehouse and Ian Peebles—and my only prior novel-length experience was of Maurice Moiseiwitsch's A Sky-Blue Life (1953). When last I saw that penny dreadful, it was parachuting out of my bedroom window. (I see now that it was resuscitated in 2006 by the misguided people at Coldspring.)
One area in which Burning Ashes, H. Lewis-Foster's debut novel, represents a clear improvement over Moiseiwitsch is that she knows whereof she writes. In A Sky-Blue Life, we read of a yorker-length delivery "liable to bounce up under [the batsman's] chin and knock him cold." Ms Lewis-Foster may refer to Test Matches, appallingly, as "test matches," but she can tell a googly from a golliwog, and she does not say this, for example, of a long-hop: "It seemed a loose one, but that was possibly deceptive the way Goodger could make them turn or hang." As John Arlott observed, rather generously, in his Wisden review, "When Mr Moiseiwitsch's characters are talking of life or rivalry, sex or ambition, they are convincing; as cricketers they live in an incredible world."
She may know more about cricket, but he is the better writer. Burning Ashes does nothing to elevate my grim opinion of cricket-themed novels. Had I but taken, before proceeding, a cursory glance at her publisher's back-catalogue, I might have been more tolerant. Dreamspinner Press deals in "Gay Romance Novels and Short Stories." Among its professed "best-sellers" is a volume entitled More Than Everything by one "Cardeno C." (I, too, would have hidden behind an anonym.) At first one thought—better say one hoped—that this would take the form of a rejoinder to Slavoj Žižek. One was wrong:
Then there is Bone Rider by "J. Fally," which explains itself (or attempts to do so) in these terms:
Burning Ashes is not nearly so woeful as any of that. Indeed, if we bear in mind the inherent shortcomings of the genre, it may be said of Ms Lewis-Foster that she possesses a rare art: the art of making a bad story plausible. The prose itself is less convincing. While she has a few good lines—one day I shall plagiarise "wine-warmed smile"—she cannot resist a cliché: Tours are invariably described as "whirlwind," bodies "quiver in anticipation," hearts are set "racing with excitement," and knights wear "shining armour." Maybe we do all have a novel inside us, but this one had better have stayed there. It was obviously typed rather than written, and must have been a great deal easier to type than it was to read.
Martin Amis observes somewhere that you can tell a lot about an author of fiction from the care she takes over the names of her characters. Ms Lewis-Foster might have given hers more effort. The cricketing escutcheon is already ornamented with such nominal masterworks as "Arthur Shrewsbury," "Curtly Ambrose" and "Warwick Armstrong." It gains nothing from the fabricated additions of "Charlie Greer" and "Tom Gardener." No-one in Burning Ashes is quite so unfortunate as "Maurice Moiseiwitsch"—and "Scott Alverley" isn't half bad—but I cannot abide "Nat Seddon," which sounds like the catchword of a hostile witness. One is tempted to adapt what Neville Cardus (unimprovable name) wrote about George Gaukrodger:
Take comfort, Cardus: Seddon plays for Australia. He is a rampaging fast bowler, ad modum Mitchell Johnson. His appearance is not described in any great detail, but in his English co-protagonist, Scott Alverley, we find a young batsman of curly blonde hair, "fine cheekbones," "honey-coloured skin" and "cherry-pink lips"—a fictive Joe Root. Drafted into the national side for the final one-day international of an Ashes summer, "he'd never been so excited in his life," but Seddon cleans him up first ball.
Scott and Nat meet at a bar after the match. There ensues a tortured romance, and a consummation at once sickly and dull. It is impossible to empathise with these mono-dimensional heroes. For most of the narrative, theirs are lives of unadulterated bliss. This is another way of saying that nothing happens. The following is exemplary of the dialogue:
This is revolting. (The dog's name is Tootsie, for goodness' sake.) Unfortunately, as I say, it is also representative. The bottom-numbing banalities of married life, even of gay married life, are not the stuff of literature. At most they make for padding. And Ms Lewis-Foster loves her padding like I love my pudding, or as Fred Susskind loved his pad-play.
Disbelief is occasionally knocked from its complacent suspension. When Alverley presses Seddon to describe "the man of [his] teenage dreams," he identifies a fictitious Australian captain named Bob Tatler:
This might have been redeemed—it might have been funny—had Ms Lewis-Foster opted instead for the real-world Australian captain Bob Simpson. But it remains the case that no queer stripling ever indulged a fantasy about an older man merely because he "seemed like a good bloke."
Sex features as heavily as one would expect. Burning Ashes treads carelessly that fine and disappearing line between romance and pornography. In neither genre is your reviewer conversant, but I would hazard that its purely erotic scenes are passable. I cringed only thrice. It is when sex is entwined with romance that things get a bit gross:
Kingsley Amis (father of Martin) would have described this as "cock-crinkling." But presumably one would not buy a book like Burning Ashes were one not into that kind of thing. And at times, I must admit, it is quite titillating. Reader, do not deny that you thrill to the idea of a fast bowler's venting his sexual frustration like so:
Or of a father thus scolding his son:
Charming, as I say, but ill-written and forgettable, Burning Ashes is cricket's first gay novel. But it is more gay than cricketing. The sport itself plays a minor role, a foil or backdrop to the main action, which occurs in the bedroom. This puts it beyond the reach and interest of most visitors to this site, but it does furnish an excuse for a long-overdue discussion of cricket's reserve about sexuality.
Our sporting codes are fast becoming more open and more liberal. Football has its anti-bigotry drives; rugby has Gareth Thomas. But cricket is oddly reticent. When Steven Davies came out in 2011, he was the first and is so far the only professional to do so. This brave decision—"If I can just help one person to deal with their sexuality, then that's all I care about"—was met with a rampart of silence. He has not played for England since. True, he suffered little or none of the abuse levelled at Thomas. It is also true that rugby is a more "masculine" game than cricket (at least to those who locate their manhood in grunting noises and excessive physical contact). But the silence is well-nigh conspiratorial. When Steve Waugh was asked how he would respond, as Australian captain, to the revelation of a gay player in the dressing room, he gave the most awkward answer I have ever heard him give. This is curious. Cricket, notoriously, is "a gentleman's game." It ought, if anything, to be at the forefront in these matters. It is difficult to believe that Davies is an outlier; more likely there are and have been others. Keith Booth has made defensible inferences about George Lohmann, and some of what Cardus wrote about Ted McDonald would erect an eyebrow today. But the literature of the game touches only obliquely on the subject, if it touches on it at all. The main achievement, then, of Burning Ashes—its only achievement—could be to break a silence that is calcifying into a taboo.
One area in which Burning Ashes, H. Lewis-Foster's debut novel, represents a clear improvement over Moiseiwitsch is that she knows whereof she writes. In A Sky-Blue Life, we read of a yorker-length delivery "liable to bounce up under [the batsman's] chin and knock him cold." Ms Lewis-Foster may refer to Test Matches, appallingly, as "test matches," but she can tell a googly from a golliwog, and she does not say this, for example, of a long-hop: "It seemed a loose one, but that was possibly deceptive the way Goodger could make them turn or hang." As John Arlott observed, rather generously, in his Wisden review, "When Mr Moiseiwitsch's characters are talking of life or rivalry, sex or ambition, they are convincing; as cricketers they live in an incredible world."
She may know more about cricket, but he is the better writer. Burning Ashes does nothing to elevate my grim opinion of cricket-themed novels. Had I but taken, before proceeding, a cursory glance at her publisher's back-catalogue, I might have been more tolerant. Dreamspinner Press deals in "Gay Romance Novels and Short Stories." Among its professed "best-sellers" is a volume entitled More Than Everything by one "Cardeno C." (I, too, would have hidden behind an anonym.) At first one thought—better say one hoped—that this would take the form of a rejoinder to Slavoj Žižek. One was wrong:
As a teenager, Charlie "Chase" Rhodes meets Scott Boone and falls head over heels in love with the popular, athletic boy next door. Charlie thinks he's living the dream when Scott says he feels the same way. But his dreams are dashed when Scott moves unexpectedly and doesn't return.
Then there is Bone Rider by "J. Fally," which explains itself (or attempts to do so) in these terms:
Riley Cooper is on the run. Misha Tokarev, the love of his life, turned out to be an assassin for the Russian mob, and when it comes to character flaws, Riley draws the line at premeditated murder. Alien armour system McClane is also on the run, for reasons that include accidentally crashing a space ship into Earth and evading US military custody. A failed prototype, McClane was scheduled for destruction. Sabotaging the ship put an end to that, but McClane is dubbed a bone rider for good reason—he can't live without a host body. That's why he first stows away in Riley's truck and then in Riley himself. Their reluctant partnership soon evolves into something much more powerful—and personal—than either of them could have imagined.
Burning Ashes is not nearly so woeful as any of that. Indeed, if we bear in mind the inherent shortcomings of the genre, it may be said of Ms Lewis-Foster that she possesses a rare art: the art of making a bad story plausible. The prose itself is less convincing. While she has a few good lines—one day I shall plagiarise "wine-warmed smile"—she cannot resist a cliché: Tours are invariably described as "whirlwind," bodies "quiver in anticipation," hearts are set "racing with excitement," and knights wear "shining armour." Maybe we do all have a novel inside us, but this one had better have stayed there. It was obviously typed rather than written, and must have been a great deal easier to type than it was to read.
Martin Amis observes somewhere that you can tell a lot about an author of fiction from the care she takes over the names of her characters. Ms Lewis-Foster might have given hers more effort. The cricketing escutcheon is already ornamented with such nominal masterworks as "Arthur Shrewsbury," "Curtly Ambrose" and "Warwick Armstrong." It gains nothing from the fabricated additions of "Charlie Greer" and "Tom Gardener." No-one in Burning Ashes is quite so unfortunate as "Maurice Moiseiwitsch"—and "Scott Alverley" isn't half bad—but I cannot abide "Nat Seddon," which sounds like the catchword of a hostile witness. One is tempted to adapt what Neville Cardus (unimprovable name) wrote about George Gaukrodger:
I regarded him (or rather his name—which amounted to the same thing) with open derision. "Gaukrodger!" I would murmur. And to this present time I have remained unshaken in the view that "Gaukrodger" was a heathenish name for a cricketer; I am glad he never played for England.
Take comfort, Cardus: Seddon plays for Australia. He is a rampaging fast bowler, ad modum Mitchell Johnson. His appearance is not described in any great detail, but in his English co-protagonist, Scott Alverley, we find a young batsman of curly blonde hair, "fine cheekbones," "honey-coloured skin" and "cherry-pink lips"—a fictive Joe Root. Drafted into the national side for the final one-day international of an Ashes summer, "he'd never been so excited in his life," but Seddon cleans him up first ball.
It wasn't the crowd or the occasion or the quality of the bowling that had been his undoing. His legs had turned to jelly and his brain to mush because of one unforgettable look.
When his eyes met Nat's, Scott saw something in his chestnut gaze he'd never seen before. He'd seen looks of lust from boys at school who hadn't even tried to hide it, but this was lust and warmth and concern all rolled into one. He'd heard the rumours about Nat Seddon, and now he knew they were true.
Scott and Nat meet at a bar after the match. There ensues a tortured romance, and a consummation at once sickly and dull. It is impossible to empathise with these mono-dimensional heroes. For most of the narrative, theirs are lives of unadulterated bliss. This is another way of saying that nothing happens. The following is exemplary of the dialogue:
Scott smiled curiously. "What's so funny?"
"I was just wondering what your mam and dad make of us two."
"How do you mean?"
"I mean, ending up with an Aussie bloke and a common-as-muck Geordie for in-laws. That's seriously bad luck."
Tootsie barked excitedly as Tom and Nat spluttered into laughter. Scott attempted to keep a serious face.
"Mum and Dad love you both to bits. You know that."
The two men stopped laughing to look incredulously at Scott.
"Okay, Mum loves you both to bits, and Dad loves you ... in his very own way."
When Debs walked in through the door, Tom and Nat were helpless with laughter. The dog was yelping, desperate to join in the fun, and Abi sat, merrily bemused by it all.
This is revolting. (The dog's name is Tootsie, for goodness' sake.) Unfortunately, as I say, it is also representative. The bottom-numbing banalities of married life, even of gay married life, are not the stuff of literature. At most they make for padding. And Ms Lewis-Foster loves her padding like I love my pudding, or as Fred Susskind loved his pad-play.
Disbelief is occasionally knocked from its complacent suspension. When Alverley presses Seddon to describe "the man of [his] teenage dreams," he identifies a fictitious Australian captain named Bob Tatler:
He knew the successful skipper wasn't the most glamorous of players, but Tatler had seemed like a good bloke, someone you could talk to and rely on. His wife and kids were a slight drawback, of course, but it hadn't stopped Nat dreaming about him, and quite frequently too.
This might have been redeemed—it might have been funny—had Ms Lewis-Foster opted instead for the real-world Australian captain Bob Simpson. But it remains the case that no queer stripling ever indulged a fantasy about an older man merely because he "seemed like a good bloke."
Sex features as heavily as one would expect. Burning Ashes treads carelessly that fine and disappearing line between romance and pornography. In neither genre is your reviewer conversant, but I would hazard that its purely erotic scenes are passable. I cringed only thrice. It is when sex is entwined with romance that things get a bit gross:
Sinking onto Scott's chest, Nat thought he could lie like this every night for the rest of his life. On top of Scott, inside him, with him in any and every way possible. Then he remembered, with a sickening pain in his gut, that this was their last night together....
Nat wondered how many times he could tell Scott he loved him. The answer? Never enough....
His body was arching, his face contorting in waves of impossible rapture. And he was telling Scott that he loved him, again and again and again...
Kingsley Amis (father of Martin) would have described this as "cock-crinkling." But presumably one would not buy a book like Burning Ashes were one not into that kind of thing. And at times, I must admit, it is quite titillating. Reader, do not deny that you thrill to the idea of a fast bowler's venting his sexual frustration like so:
Nat almost pitied the poor batsmen who'd faced him over the past few weeks. Even his own players were reluctant to take him on in practice. His bowling had always been aggressive, but now he was positively lethal. He always kept to the letter of the game's laws, but he knew he was pushing their spirit to the limit.
He couldn't help it. To say he was frustrated was an understatement. He'd only spent one week with Scott, but in that time Scott had become part of him: his voice, his laugh, the tickle of his hair against Nat's cheek. Nat could still feel the flicker of Scott's tongue, the touch of his fingers, his throbbing tightness closing around him. If he didn't see Scott soon, Nat might be the first bowler to decapitate a man with a cricket ball.
Or of a father thus scolding his son:
"You stupid, stupid boy. Do you honestly think you'll stay in the side once this gets out? You could have picked anyone for your little fling, but no, it had to be an Australian bloody cricketer. Is this why you gave up Oxford? For a shag with some muscle-bound moron? You utterly brainless child."
Charming, as I say, but ill-written and forgettable, Burning Ashes is cricket's first gay novel. But it is more gay than cricketing. The sport itself plays a minor role, a foil or backdrop to the main action, which occurs in the bedroom. This puts it beyond the reach and interest of most visitors to this site, but it does furnish an excuse for a long-overdue discussion of cricket's reserve about sexuality.
Our sporting codes are fast becoming more open and more liberal. Football has its anti-bigotry drives; rugby has Gareth Thomas. But cricket is oddly reticent. When Steven Davies came out in 2011, he was the first and is so far the only professional to do so. This brave decision—"If I can just help one person to deal with their sexuality, then that's all I care about"—was met with a rampart of silence. He has not played for England since. True, he suffered little or none of the abuse levelled at Thomas. It is also true that rugby is a more "masculine" game than cricket (at least to those who locate their manhood in grunting noises and excessive physical contact). But the silence is well-nigh conspiratorial. When Steve Waugh was asked how he would respond, as Australian captain, to the revelation of a gay player in the dressing room, he gave the most awkward answer I have ever heard him give. This is curious. Cricket, notoriously, is "a gentleman's game." It ought, if anything, to be at the forefront in these matters. It is difficult to believe that Davies is an outlier; more likely there are and have been others. Keith Booth has made defensible inferences about George Lohmann, and some of what Cardus wrote about Ted McDonald would erect an eyebrow today. But the literature of the game touches only obliquely on the subject, if it touches on it at all. The main achievement, then, of Burning Ashes—its only achievement—could be to break a silence that is calcifying into a taboo.
Letter to The Cricketer, January 2014, p. 15
As sent:
As published:
Dear Sir,
It is not the done thing to whine about bad reviews; less still is it kosher to quetch about kind ones. But Richard Whitehead (The Cricketer, December 2013) labours under a misapprehension. It sorely needs correcting.
His review of Masterly Batting: 100 Great Test Innings (edited by Patrick Ferriday and Dave Wilson, and available at fine bookstores everywhere) opens with the claim that this collaboration proved “damaging to personal friendships.” He cites as evidence the book’s acknowledgements, which “include three would-be co-editors—who fell by the wayside during the list’s assembly, making it sound more like going on the road with the Rolling Stones in the early 1970s than writing a cricket book.”
I am likened not infrequently to a young Keith Richards. (The comparison does him credit.) But it had never been suggested, before Mr Whitehead suggested it, that I shared the great man’s powers of separation. What do the acknowledgements say? Only this: “In the beginning we were five and without the efforts of Martin Chandler, Sean Ehlers and Rodney Ulyate the research would never have finished.” That’s it. And what it conveys, transparently, is not that five editors were whittled down to two, but that the project began, before the enlistment of the book’s celebrity essayists, with just us five. There was never any question of expanding the editorial office.
We disagreed about much, but we argued very little, and fought not at all, and we treasure the experience. I request of The Cricketer, on my colleagues’ behalf, that this information be conveyed to its misinformed readership, and that Mr Whitehead's wrist be slapped.
Fraternally,
Rodney Ulyate
As published:
Richard Whitehead's review (December) of Masterly Batting (edited by Patrick Ferriday and Dave Wilson) claims that this collaboration proved “damaging to personal friendships”. He cites as evidence the book’s acknowledgments, which “include three would-be co-editors who fell by the wayside during the list’s assembly, making it sound more like going on the road with the Rolling Stones in the early 1970s than writing a cricket book”. What do the acknowledgments say? “In the beginning we were five and without the efforts of Martin Chandler, Sean Ehlers and Rodney Ulyate the research would never have finished.” What that conveys is not that five editors were whittled down to two but that the project began, before the enlistment of the essayists, with just us five. We disagreed about much in assembling the book but we argued very little and fought not at all. In fact we treasure the experience.
Rodney Ulyate
Co-editor
Letter (as sent) to The Cricketer, January 17, 2014
Dear Sir,
You published in your January edition a heavily-redacted letter by your humble servant. It complains of the assertion by Richard Whitehead, in your December 2013 edition, that I fell out with my collaborators on Masterly Batting: 100 Great Test Innings over editorial responsibilities. The letter points out and proves, inter alia, that this is a falsehood. It also makes the point (in a passage you chose not to publish) that there was never any question of my joining Patrick Ferriday and Dave Wilson in the editorial berth. I signed my letter "Rodney Ulyate," but in your magazine I appear thus: "Rodney Ulyate, co-editor." Are you trying to make me look silly?
Rodney Ulyate
Mere Co-Author
You published in your January edition a heavily-redacted letter by your humble servant. It complains of the assertion by Richard Whitehead, in your December 2013 edition, that I fell out with my collaborators on Masterly Batting: 100 Great Test Innings over editorial responsibilities. The letter points out and proves, inter alia, that this is a falsehood. It also makes the point (in a passage you chose not to publish) that there was never any question of my joining Patrick Ferriday and Dave Wilson in the editorial berth. I signed my letter "Rodney Ulyate," but in your magazine I appear thus: "Rodney Ulyate, co-editor." Are you trying to make me look silly?
Rodney Ulyate
Mere Co-Author
The History of a Hundred Centuries by WG Grace (CricketWeb review)
http://www.cricketweb.net/books/the-h...
This is a short book—short in length and short on substance. I had no right to be surprised. Its author admits in his preface that it was rushed into print, and it bares all the telltale signs: The spelling is erratic, the syntax temperamental; facts and arithmetic go missing in action. The opening words, with their tortured tautology, are sadly representative:
We are not in the hands of a seasoned wordsmith. WG appears to have dispensed with his wonted ghost, leaving The History of a Hundred Centuries perhaps alone among his books in that he actually wrote it. By no means is this a Good Thing. As Arthur Porritt, the shade of his best and biggest volume, recalls in his memoirs, Grace was "a singularly inarticulate man.... The task of getting the material from him was almost heart-breaking." EW Swanton believed he was "as averse from writing about the game as he was from talking formally about it ... loath as he was to undertake the labour of composition."[i] To make matters worse, he is served ill by his oscitant editor, the Kentish amateur and histrion William Yardley, with whom the idea for the book originated. The pytos are legion. "Superb," for example, is permitted to appear as "suberb," and "overs" to become "others," while no small violence is done to the names of William Oscroft and Percy McDonnell.
But one doesn't like to nitpick. I waste my introduction on minor details only because the major ones are few and far between. The History of a Hundred Centuries is one of the dullest books I have ever read. Its modus operandi is to repeat in prose what a five-year-old could deduce, without any labour of intelligence, from its voluminous scorecards. The following, in full, is the entry on Surrey v. Gloucestershire at the Kennington Oval in 1870:
The scorecard appears directly above this vignette, rendering it nugatory.[ii] Nor we have here an isolated case. Only a few pages later, WG replicates both content and (no less depressingly) verbiage in detailing Gloucestershire's innings victory over Somerset in August 1879:
When I was younger and more easily pleased, I could spend hours staring at and copying out old scorecards. Today the eyes glaze over. All the numbers in this volume are readily available, in more detail and with far greater accuracy, on CricketArchive. If statistical books are happily anachronistic now, The History of a Hundred Centuries is doubly so, for several of its entries (the match just discussed, for example) are no longer considered first-class. The title, strictly speaking, is also inaccurate, as the number of centuries featured is 103. The author added the bonus deuce-ace, in his annus mirabilis of 1895, between the date of the landmark and the date of publication.
What the reader pines for, as he nears that landmark, is something rousing and exultant and climactic. What he gets is the following:
That's it. We learn nothing more. The ALL CAPS only sharpen the blow.
I was reminded at this point of another lament of the long-suffering Porritt: "Had [WG] been left to write his own cricketing biography, it would never have seen the light.... All he would say, in recording some dazzling batting feat, was, 'Then I went in and made 284.'" The exaggeration is but slight:
For all that, there can be no doubting the pull of a book like this. It was, in theory, a very good idea, because the achievement it celebrates was unprecedented. Before WG, it was unthinkable: When he began his career, in 1865, the leading compiler of first-class centuries was Tom Hayward (1835-1876), with five; upon his retirement, with 124, the runner-up was Tom Hayward (1871-1939), with 44 fewer.[iii] No factoid better instances the truth of Ranjitsinhji's oft-cited remark about the old one-stringed instrument and the many-corded lyre.
This book, as I say, adds nothing to our understanding or appreciation of the achievement, but it does serve as a reminder of its author's uncanny sense of occasion. No fewer than 38 of his first hundred hundreds were compiled in representative matches. He was notoriously hard on the Players, recording more centuries against them—and, for that matter, more half-centuries, too—than any other team. His most empurpled patch in the fixture, from 1871 to 1873, brought him 844 runs from just six innings. Only the footballing anthropophagite Luis Suárez, in his sadomasochistic relations with Norwich City, has ever taken quite so hungrily to a particular sporting opponent.[iv] A great many of these knocks were chanceless, and Grace does not scruple to describe them as such, but he is also honest enough to acknowledge just how lucky he could be:
This, I feel certain, is some kind of record. I should be interested to know how often it happened, centuries aside, over the whole of his career. I can think offhand of at least one other instance, reported by "Shortslip" in The Sydney Mail of 7 June 1902:
The occasion was the first-ever Test Match on English soil. Grace went on to score 152. As he writes, in one of the book's few quotable lines, "No man—I do not care how good—can persistently score largely without a bit of luck now and again." But it is only the really good men who enjoy luck on this scale.
There is as much in The History of a Hundred Centuries—often, indeed, there is more—about his bowling, and about the efforts and achievements of his colleagues, as about his greatest cumulative batting feat. Those throat-clearing concerns about egotism were unjustified, the personal pronoun being a rarity. Given the widespread belief that WG was a chesty prototype for Kevin Pietersen, this may come as something of a surprise. And it is hard to square his leviathan presence and his far-famed gamesmanship with such qualities as diffidence and humility. But, according to the last of his biographers who knew him personally, he was
Useful virtues, and used to some effect in the discursive memoirs ghosted by Porritt, but quite useless for a book like this. In an entry ostensibly devoted to his even century for the Gentlemen against the Players in 1881, he gives more space and praise to Charles Leslie's 59. And even when he does discuss himself, the pickings are passing slim. Seldom are we afforded any insight into his thoughts and feelings, his gambits and his stratagems. The anecdotes are few, and the few are uninteresting. Did he ever get nervous? How did he recalibrate his technique for sticky wickets? Which was the most arduous century he ever made? These questions go unanswered; it seems unlikely that he ever thought to ask them. Should you decide, despite what you have read here, to pick up a copy and judge for yourself, do yourself a favour: First consult Mike Atherton's Opening Up —in particular the passages on his famous duel with Allan Donald. You'll see there what is lacking in The History, and how badly.
Still, I cannot give it the one-star rating it merits. According to CricketWeb's guidelines, that would make it "possibly useful in the event of running short of kindling, but not otherwise." I cannot endorse the ignition of a book,[v] especially not such a rare one as this.
Postscript: CricketWeb takes pride in its exhaustive coverage of publications both new and old, but it does feel strange—futile even—to be critiquing a volume more than a century out of print, and which would cost a gazillion pounds to purchase in its first and only edition. For one thing, reader, you have no way of determining whether what I have said about it is true. Therefore, in addition to the demand (customary in these circumstances) that some enterprising publisher reissue the thing for the centenary of Grace's death, I promise to look into how I might do so myself. Watch this space.
[i] This makes perfect sense when we read in Bernard Darwin's biography that he was equally loath to undertake the labour of reading, arguing that "it spoils one's eye for the ball." Grace grew up in "a country home, with very little reading of books, but much talk of horses and guns and all rustic things." Darwin summarises his attitude thusly: "If people wanted to read books, no doubt they got pleasure from it, but it was a pleasure that he could not really understand. Wisden, yes—perhaps, to confirm a memory or refute an argument, or in winter as an earnest of the summer to come—but in a general way books were bad for cricket. 'How can you expect to make runs,' he said to one of the Gloucestershire side, 'when you are always reading?' and added, almost gratuitously, 'You don't catch me that way.' I have searched in vain for anyone who ever saw him take the risk, except in the case of a newspaper or a medical book in which he wanted to look up a point."
[ii] Well, maybe not altogether: There is some fun to be had in reconciling the umpteen discrepancies between the descriptions and the scorecards. For example, in discussing Gloucestershire's brush with the Australians at Clifton in 1884, Grace credits the home side's second innings with a total of 230 for two, but the scorecard exhibits only 225 for two. I shall not say how long it took me to determine that the latter had it wrong.
[iii] The later Tom Hayward was a nephew of the earlier Tom Hayward. I am indebted to Max Bonnell for bringing this happy coincidence to my attention. If we look beyond Grace's contemporaries, however, we find that Lord Frederick Beauclerk (1773-1850) equalled Hayward Senior's tally, and that Thomas Walker (1762-1831) exceeded it by one. I am indebted for this information to "AndrewB" of the Cricket Web forum.
[iv] Messrs Bakkal, Ivanović and Chiellini may choose to quibble.
[v] Regular visitors to this website will be quick to observe that I made an exception for H. Lewis-Foster's Burning Ashes . I would reply that the title was asking for it, and that the content would have moved even Heinrich Heine to compromise.
This is a short book—short in length and short on substance. I had no right to be surprised. Its author admits in his preface that it was rushed into print, and it bares all the telltale signs: The spelling is erratic, the syntax temperamental; facts and arithmetic go missing in action. The opening words, with their tortured tautology, are sadly representative:
If an apology be needed from me for putting this little book before the public, then I apologise. If not, then it is unnecessary for me to apologise for the egotistical nature of the work.
We are not in the hands of a seasoned wordsmith. WG appears to have dispensed with his wonted ghost, leaving The History of a Hundred Centuries perhaps alone among his books in that he actually wrote it. By no means is this a Good Thing. As Arthur Porritt, the shade of his best and biggest volume, recalls in his memoirs, Grace was "a singularly inarticulate man.... The task of getting the material from him was almost heart-breaking." EW Swanton believed he was "as averse from writing about the game as he was from talking formally about it ... loath as he was to undertake the labour of composition."[i] To make matters worse, he is served ill by his oscitant editor, the Kentish amateur and histrion William Yardley, with whom the idea for the book originated. The pytos are legion. "Superb," for example, is permitted to appear as "suberb," and "overs" to become "others," while no small violence is done to the names of William Oscroft and Percy McDonnell.
But one doesn't like to nitpick. I waste my introduction on minor details only because the major ones are few and far between. The History of a Hundred Centuries is one of the dullest books I have ever read. Its modus operandi is to repeat in prose what a five-year-old could deduce, without any labour of intelligence, from its voluminous scorecards. The following, in full, is the entry on Surrey v. Gloucestershire at the Kennington Oval in 1870:
There is very little to say about this match, as we had a complete walkover for Gloucestershire. F. Townsend and I took the score from six for one wicket to 240 for two wickets. Surrey utterly collapsed in the second innings, only making 46, of which eighteen were put on by the last wicket—Southerton, the last man in, making fifteen not out, that being the only double figure on his side in that innings.
The scorecard appears directly above this vignette, rendering it nugatory.[ii] Nor we have here an isolated case. Only a few pages later, WG replicates both content and (no less depressingly) verbiage in detailing Gloucestershire's innings victory over Somerset in August 1879:
There is very little to say about this encounter beyond the fact that it was an easy walkover for us against Somersetshire. We went in first and scored 411, of which I made 113 and Mr F. Townsend 103. Somersetshire only made 126 in their first innings and 133 in the second, we thus winning the match by an innings and 152 runs.
When I was younger and more easily pleased, I could spend hours staring at and copying out old scorecards. Today the eyes glaze over. All the numbers in this volume are readily available, in more detail and with far greater accuracy, on CricketArchive. If statistical books are happily anachronistic now, The History of a Hundred Centuries is doubly so, for several of its entries (the match just discussed, for example) are no longer considered first-class. The title, strictly speaking, is also inaccurate, as the number of centuries featured is 103. The author added the bonus deuce-ace, in his annus mirabilis of 1895, between the date of the landmark and the date of publication.
What the reader pines for, as he nears that landmark, is something rousing and exultant and climactic. What he gets is the following:
This is my red-letter match, for in it I scored my HUNDREDTH CENTURY. The Fates apparently decreed that there should be no mistake about it, as my score was 288.
That's it. We learn nothing more. The ALL CAPS only sharpen the blow.
I was reminded at this point of another lament of the long-suffering Porritt: "Had [WG] been left to write his own cricketing biography, it would never have seen the light.... All he would say, in recording some dazzling batting feat, was, 'Then I went in and made 284.'" The exaggeration is but slight:
Page 12: "I went in when three wickets were down for ninety, and carried my bat out. My 224 was the largest individual score that had ever been made in a first-class match at the Oval up to that date."
Page 20: "I went in first with BB Cooper, and we were not parted until 283 runs were telegraphed."
Page 92: "I went in with the score at 82, and left when it was 440—another record, as this is the highest individual score ever made on the Trent Bridge Ground, Nottingham."
Page 107: "I went in first, and was ninth out, having made 113 out of 174 scored from the bat. It did not look at one time as if I should be able to reach my 100, but Mr A. Newnham stayed with me, whilst he and I put on 84 runs—he eventually carrying his bat out for 25."
For all that, there can be no doubting the pull of a book like this. It was, in theory, a very good idea, because the achievement it celebrates was unprecedented. Before WG, it was unthinkable: When he began his career, in 1865, the leading compiler of first-class centuries was Tom Hayward (1835-1876), with five; upon his retirement, with 124, the runner-up was Tom Hayward (1871-1939), with 44 fewer.[iii] No factoid better instances the truth of Ranjitsinhji's oft-cited remark about the old one-stringed instrument and the many-corded lyre.
This book, as I say, adds nothing to our understanding or appreciation of the achievement, but it does serve as a reminder of its author's uncanny sense of occasion. No fewer than 38 of his first hundred hundreds were compiled in representative matches. He was notoriously hard on the Players, recording more centuries against them—and, for that matter, more half-centuries, too—than any other team. His most empurpled patch in the fixture, from 1871 to 1873, brought him 844 runs from just six innings. Only the footballing anthropophagite Luis Suárez, in his sadomasochistic relations with Norwich City, has ever taken quite so hungrily to a particular sporting opponent.[iv] A great many of these knocks were chanceless, and Grace does not scruple to describe them as such, but he is also honest enough to acknowledge just how lucky he could be:
On his 117 not out for the MCC against Nottinghamshire at Lord's in 1870: "During the course of my first innings, when I had made about sixty, I played a ball of JC Shaw's hard on to my wicket, but the bails were not knocked off."
On his 158 for the Gentlemen against the Players at the Oval in 1873: "A curious circumstance occurred in this match, for when Emmett was put on to bowl in the place of McIntyre, when Longman and I had scored 44 runs, the second ball he bowled I played hard onto my wicket, but the bails stuck to the stumps."
On his 131 for the Gentlemen against the Players at Hastings in 1894: "I had a peculiar slice of luck in this innings, by the way—a ball bowled by Mold cannoning off my pad against the wicket without knocking a bail off."
This, I feel certain, is some kind of record. I should be interested to know how often it happened, centuries aside, over the whole of his career. I can think offhand of at least one other instance, reported by "Shortslip" in The Sydney Mail of 7 June 1902:
When the Australians were going into the field, Murdoch said to Palmer, 'If you can only get a yorker into WG first ball, George, you'll get him.'
'I'll try,' said Palmer.
The first ball was a yorker. It got past WG. It hit the wicket, but did not shift the bails.
The occasion was the first-ever Test Match on English soil. Grace went on to score 152. As he writes, in one of the book's few quotable lines, "No man—I do not care how good—can persistently score largely without a bit of luck now and again." But it is only the really good men who enjoy luck on this scale.
There is as much in The History of a Hundred Centuries—often, indeed, there is more—about his bowling, and about the efforts and achievements of his colleagues, as about his greatest cumulative batting feat. Those throat-clearing concerns about egotism were unjustified, the personal pronoun being a rarity. Given the widespread belief that WG was a chesty prototype for Kevin Pietersen, this may come as something of a surprise. And it is hard to square his leviathan presence and his far-famed gamesmanship with such qualities as diffidence and humility. But, according to the last of his biographers who knew him personally, he was
essentially a modest man. No great cricketer talked less about his own achievements or more about the outstanding feats of others. If occasionally he delved into 'old times,' he mentioned the exploits of others, and not his own.
Useful virtues, and used to some effect in the discursive memoirs ghosted by Porritt, but quite useless for a book like this. In an entry ostensibly devoted to his even century for the Gentlemen against the Players in 1881, he gives more space and praise to Charles Leslie's 59. And even when he does discuss himself, the pickings are passing slim. Seldom are we afforded any insight into his thoughts and feelings, his gambits and his stratagems. The anecdotes are few, and the few are uninteresting. Did he ever get nervous? How did he recalibrate his technique for sticky wickets? Which was the most arduous century he ever made? These questions go unanswered; it seems unlikely that he ever thought to ask them. Should you decide, despite what you have read here, to pick up a copy and judge for yourself, do yourself a favour: First consult Mike Atherton's Opening Up —in particular the passages on his famous duel with Allan Donald. You'll see there what is lacking in The History, and how badly.
Still, I cannot give it the one-star rating it merits. According to CricketWeb's guidelines, that would make it "possibly useful in the event of running short of kindling, but not otherwise." I cannot endorse the ignition of a book,[v] especially not such a rare one as this.
Postscript: CricketWeb takes pride in its exhaustive coverage of publications both new and old, but it does feel strange—futile even—to be critiquing a volume more than a century out of print, and which would cost a gazillion pounds to purchase in its first and only edition. For one thing, reader, you have no way of determining whether what I have said about it is true. Therefore, in addition to the demand (customary in these circumstances) that some enterprising publisher reissue the thing for the centenary of Grace's death, I promise to look into how I might do so myself. Watch this space.
***
[i] This makes perfect sense when we read in Bernard Darwin's biography that he was equally loath to undertake the labour of reading, arguing that "it spoils one's eye for the ball." Grace grew up in "a country home, with very little reading of books, but much talk of horses and guns and all rustic things." Darwin summarises his attitude thusly: "If people wanted to read books, no doubt they got pleasure from it, but it was a pleasure that he could not really understand. Wisden, yes—perhaps, to confirm a memory or refute an argument, or in winter as an earnest of the summer to come—but in a general way books were bad for cricket. 'How can you expect to make runs,' he said to one of the Gloucestershire side, 'when you are always reading?' and added, almost gratuitously, 'You don't catch me that way.' I have searched in vain for anyone who ever saw him take the risk, except in the case of a newspaper or a medical book in which he wanted to look up a point."
[ii] Well, maybe not altogether: There is some fun to be had in reconciling the umpteen discrepancies between the descriptions and the scorecards. For example, in discussing Gloucestershire's brush with the Australians at Clifton in 1884, Grace credits the home side's second innings with a total of 230 for two, but the scorecard exhibits only 225 for two. I shall not say how long it took me to determine that the latter had it wrong.
[iii] The later Tom Hayward was a nephew of the earlier Tom Hayward. I am indebted to Max Bonnell for bringing this happy coincidence to my attention. If we look beyond Grace's contemporaries, however, we find that Lord Frederick Beauclerk (1773-1850) equalled Hayward Senior's tally, and that Thomas Walker (1762-1831) exceeded it by one. I am indebted for this information to "AndrewB" of the Cricket Web forum.
[iv] Messrs Bakkal, Ivanović and Chiellini may choose to quibble.
[v] Regular visitors to this website will be quick to observe that I made an exception for H. Lewis-Foster's Burning Ashes . I would reply that the title was asking for it, and that the content would have moved even Heinrich Heine to compromise.
A Bradman music video
I'm not sure I much care for Paul Kelly's stuff, but whoever edited this video did a sterling job.
People change
"Dave Seal, vice-chairman of Sheffield Collegiate, has a story to tell.... 'I remember when Joe [Root] was playing in the 2nd XI,' he says. 'He was batting with an older lad, another promising player. Joe was in the nineties and this lad ran him out horribly. It would have been his first men's hundred. He walked off, came up the stairs. He didn't complain, he didn't chuck his kit. He just dealt with it. He was calm. Disappointed, but calm. The other lad came off later, but Joe didn't curse him at all. Some youngsters would've been cursing, but not Joe. It said a lot about his character.'"
"England batsman Joe Root was left fuming after being denied a shot at a Test double century by some lax running from No. 11 James Anderson ... caught short of his ground after making a less-than-wholehearted effort when Root called a second run. Anderson, who was up against a poor throw to the bowler's end yet did not even slide his bat, departed for just two and left Root stranded on 182 not out after a superb innings. England's rising batting superstar was unimpressed with Anderson's seeming lack of support for his 200 bid, gesturing to the veteran paceman and exchanging some terse words after he jogged the second run. Root also tossed his helmet, bat and gloves in frustration as he left the ground for the pavilion."
"England batsman Joe Root was left fuming after being denied a shot at a Test double century by some lax running from No. 11 James Anderson ... caught short of his ground after making a less-than-wholehearted effort when Root called a second run. Anderson, who was up against a poor throw to the bowler's end yet did not even slide his bat, departed for just two and left Root stranded on 182 not out after a superb innings. England's rising batting superstar was unimpressed with Anderson's seeming lack of support for his 200 bid, gesturing to the veteran paceman and exchanging some terse words after he jogged the second run. Root also tossed his helmet, bat and gloves in frustration as he left the ground for the pavilion."
The box
Let's pause, shall we, and celebrate the evolution of this crucial piece of equipment? I've just read and watched, in quick succession, two excruciating reminiscences.
Viv Richards on Brian Close: "He was a tough, uncompromising man. I remember him getting badly hit in the box once. Unfortunately for him, he was wearing one of those old plastic affairs. When they broke they tended to splinter and snag in a very painful way. Even the brave Close was in agony as the doctors had to use a pair of pliers to prise the remains of the box away from the torn and bleeding flesh. For some inexplicable reason, anyone hit in that particularly painful place tends to become the butt of black humour -- even though only a man can know just how it feels. But on this occasion the laughter was all the fault of the injured party. Close, in typical fashion, sat puffing a cigarette as the medical men completed their delicate surgery. Brian looked less concerned than any of those around him" - Sir Vivian (2000), pp. 41-42.
And here's David Lloyd on being hit "there" by Jeff Thomson.
How can it be that the manufacturers were never sued?
Viv Richards on Brian Close: "He was a tough, uncompromising man. I remember him getting badly hit in the box once. Unfortunately for him, he was wearing one of those old plastic affairs. When they broke they tended to splinter and snag in a very painful way. Even the brave Close was in agony as the doctors had to use a pair of pliers to prise the remains of the box away from the torn and bleeding flesh. For some inexplicable reason, anyone hit in that particularly painful place tends to become the butt of black humour -- even though only a man can know just how it feels. But on this occasion the laughter was all the fault of the injured party. Close, in typical fashion, sat puffing a cigarette as the medical men completed their delicate surgery. Brian looked less concerned than any of those around him" - Sir Vivian (2000), pp. 41-42.
And here's David Lloyd on being hit "there" by Jeff Thomson.
How can it be that the manufacturers were never sued?
Wicket off a no-ball? Not bad luck, mate (Cricinfo blog)
http://www.espncricinfo.com/blogs/con...
Steven Finn draws an edge from Steven Smith, but turns out to have overstepped the mark. Cue several minutes' angst in the Sky commentary box about ill-disciplined bowlers and umpires who don't bother checking for no-balls anymore. If Finn's heel had been behind the line, rather than eight yards over it, he would finally have had a wicket to his name, and England would be right back in the contest. So, at any rate, goes the unspoken assumption.
But let's try something that isn't often tried in the Sky commentary box: Let's try thinking about this for a minute. If Finn's delivery had been legal, it wouldn't have pitched where it did -- it would probably have been several inches shorter -- for the simple reason that Finn would have delivered it from several inches further back. It would likely also have been straighter, given the angle of the delivery. And slower, because it takes rather less time to travel 21-and-a-bit yards than the licit 22.
Smith, in other words, would have been facing a very different delivery. Is there any justification for assuming, as apparently everyone does, that he would have nicked that one, too? I don't think there is. Belike he would have whopped it to the fence.
The difference between a foot-fault and a legitimate delivery is roughly equivalent to the difference between an outside edge and a play-and-miss, or an outside edge and one of those bat-shimmying miscues so beloved of the slow-motion montages. Which is to say that it makes all the difference in the world.
So could we please stop being stupid about this now?
Steven Finn draws an edge from Steven Smith, but turns out to have overstepped the mark. Cue several minutes' angst in the Sky commentary box about ill-disciplined bowlers and umpires who don't bother checking for no-balls anymore. If Finn's heel had been behind the line, rather than eight yards over it, he would finally have had a wicket to his name, and England would be right back in the contest. So, at any rate, goes the unspoken assumption.
But let's try something that isn't often tried in the Sky commentary box: Let's try thinking about this for a minute. If Finn's delivery had been legal, it wouldn't have pitched where it did -- it would probably have been several inches shorter -- for the simple reason that Finn would have delivered it from several inches further back. It would likely also have been straighter, given the angle of the delivery. And slower, because it takes rather less time to travel 21-and-a-bit yards than the licit 22.
Smith, in other words, would have been facing a very different delivery. Is there any justification for assuming, as apparently everyone does, that he would have nicked that one, too? I don't think there is. Belike he would have whopped it to the fence.
The difference between a foot-fault and a legitimate delivery is roughly equivalent to the difference between an outside edge and a play-and-miss, or an outside edge and one of those bat-shimmying miscues so beloved of the slow-motion montages. Which is to say that it makes all the difference in the world.
So could we please stop being stupid about this now?
Baseball
"Cricket," according to Robin Williams, "is basically baseball on valium." I'd always assumed this was true, and had been fond of invoking the American game to deride the twenty-over one, but after last night I don't think I'll be doing so again.
It was the first match of the Red Sox's home series against the Yankees, and I'm afraid I was dormant within the first hour. A more sluggish contest I have never witnessed (and I saw Australia's ninth-wicket stand in the second innings at Pallekele, where at least bat met ball from time to time). When finally there was a "hit," the commentator spoke as if it were the rarest thing in the world. Apparently it's even rarer: I find on checking the score this morning that there were only sixteen in the whole three hours and seventeen innings.
Those clichés about the American attention span turn out to be so much slander. Who knew?
It was the first match of the Red Sox's home series against the Yankees, and I'm afraid I was dormant within the first hour. A more sluggish contest I have never witnessed (and I saw Australia's ninth-wicket stand in the second innings at Pallekele, where at least bat met ball from time to time). When finally there was a "hit," the commentator spoke as if it were the rarest thing in the world. Apparently it's even rarer: I find on checking the score this morning that there were only sixteen in the whole three hours and seventeen innings.
Those clichés about the American attention span turn out to be so much slander. Who knew?
