Cricket defines Englishness like no other national
pastime. From its earliest origins in the sixteenth
century (or an early version played by shepherds called
creag in the 1300s), through the formation of the MCC
and the opening of Lord's cricket ground in 1787, to the
spread of county cricket in the next century, when the
Wisden Cricketers' ''Almanack'' was first published and
the Ashes series was born, this simple sport of bat and
ball has captured the imagination of the masses.
Throughout its 500-year history, cricket has been a
mirror for society as a whole, reflecting the changes
that have brought us from the quintessential village
green to Freddie Flintoff's pedalo, from W G Grace to
Monty Panesar, via a fair number of eccentrics, heroes
and downright villains. William Hill Award-winning
writer Simon Hughes, no mean player himself, has lived
and breathed cricket his whole life and now takes his
analytical skills and typically irreverent eye to
charting the history of English cricket. But this is no
dry, dusty tome. It is the story of the mad characters
who inhabit the game, the extraordinary lengths people
will go to watch and play it, the tale of a national
obsession.It debunks the myth of cricket sportsmanship,
showing the origins of sledging and match-fixing in
centuries of subterfuge, corruption and violence. And it
takes us beyond sport, to the heart of what it really
means to be English. |
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