Jack Hobbs: Profile of the Master

by John Arlott

Libro usado en buenas condiciones, por su antiguedad podria contener señales normales de uso

144 pages, Hardcover

Published January 1, 1981

About the author

Leslie Thomas John Arlott was an English journalist, author and cricket commentator for the BBC's Test Match Special. He was also a poet and wine connoisseur. With his poetic phraseology, he became a cricket commentator noted for his "wonderful gift for evoking cricketing moments" by the BBC.

Reviews

[Zuberino · Rating 4 out of 5]

My first love in life was cricket, and within that all-encompassing love, the deepest affection was reserved for cricket history. There was a time when, as a kid, I knew more about Grace and Hobbs and Bradman than would be considered decent for any right-thinking 12-year-old. By the time I was 15, the inside of my head was an encyclopaedia of the game, just as my notebooks and diaries were crammed, page after page, with cricket commentary, data, anecdotes. By then, I knew by heart - and could recall with no effort of memory - the detailed test statistics of almost every major figure in the history of the game, from the 1890s right down to the 1980s.

ODI soured that love, then T20 came and poured acid on it. It is my fixed opinion that cricket and the 21st century are a bad fit. I’m also certain that the rose tints that cricket romantics apply to the past, to the Golden Age, are in their own way a real distortion of reality. No matter. This book on the Master, by another Master, brought back my childhood and teens back with such passion and nostalgia as to make that romanticism entirely forgivable.

[Darren Goossens · Rating 4 out of 5]

I knew little of Hobbs besides his amazing career statistics when I picked up this book. His total of 199 (or 197, depending on the authority) first class hundreds is as remarkable a statistic as Bradman's test average of 99.94. His career that stretched from 1905 to 1935 and linked W.G.Grace with Bradman. He scored a test century at the age of forty-six and first class hundreds at fifty-one. It all seems impossible.

The book is labelled a profile, yet it borders on the panegyric. Clearly Hobbs was one of the handful of greatest cricketers ever -- one of Wisden's Five Cricketers of the Century -- and Arlott uses clear and elegant prose to paint him as generous, humble, professional, essentially without human flaw. It is a case where a few minor detractions here and there would have leant the book just enough sense of balance that the appreciations would have held more weight. Perhaps, though, that is a shadow cast by a 'modern' cynicism.

I read the book virtually at a sitting. Hobbs's self-made journey from poverty to affluence, from obscurity to the pinnacle of sporting fame -- the first English professional to be knighted -- and the remarkably level-headed manner with which he dealt with his fame, is a genuine 'feel-good' story. It puts flesh on the statistical bones of a remarkable -- no, astounding -- career, and left me thinking that here was the epitome of batsmen.

This book opens up the world of the golden age of cricket, before the war of 1914. It is a glimpse of another era, and of one of its central figures. As I said, Hobbs comes across as almost too perfect; yet at the same time the book made me feel such a respect for the man and what he did that I don't want to find out anything negative.

Perhaps the subtitle should have been 'A celebration of 'The Master''. Regardless, it comes recommended. Particularly if you are a cricket tragic.

[Andrew · Rating 4 out of 5]

The perfectly penned portrait with Arlott's inimitable style of the legendary Jack Hobbs, himself inimitable, both as a batsman and as a man.I grew up in Croydon,Surrey hearing from my cricketing father & grandfather,just what a unique batsman Jack was...& like I was to become,with little of Jack's genius,an opening batsman. Arlott describes a modest man,from humble origins,who rises to the very peak of sporting eminence with no scandal or no unsportsmanlike behaviour; that is, a world beyond our modern understanding. A labour of love for John Arlott to immortalise his cricketing hero. Every time I visit the Oval I pay my respects to the first great English batsman of the 20th century,memorialised in the famous gates. Lord's has the egomaniac, W.G.Grace,but we,at Surrey,have the pre-eminent professional cricketer,Sir John Berry Hobbs...Jack Hobbs. A biography as deft as one of Jack's famous leg glances to the fine leg boundary.You can almost hear the ball rattling the boundary boards, as Jack records another century!