When Cricket was Cricket

By a long way the most disappointing book I’ve read recently is a pictorial review of the game of cricket, entitled When Cricket was Cricket, with the appealing sub-title A Nostalgic Look at a Century of the Greatest Game.

True, there are some stunning and fascinating photographs in the book – the very upper-class crowds perambulating the outfield at Lord’s during an interval of the University match in 1914, Don Bradman strolling with the King at Balmoral, cricket on Blackpool beach in 1946 and plenty more covering most aspects of the game in the last 100 years or so.

The problem lies not with the photographs but with the commentary and captions that accompany them.  These are the work of Adam Powley.  The clue is to be found in the biographical end-paper.   Powley is a journalist and author who has previously written mainly about football.  Presumably, his publishers, Haynes Publishing, thought that a book on cricket would be a good follow-up to Powley’s When Football was Football.

Unfortunately, Powley doesn’t seem to know a massive amount about the game, so cricketing solecisms abound.  Frederick Toone not only becomes C. Toone but is made manager of the 1947 England team, which would have been tricky since he died in 1930.  Warwickshire groundsman Bernard Flack is bizarrely translated into a scientist from the University of Wales; and it is arguable whether Don Bradman was “by common consent the greatest cricketer of all time” – the greatest batsman, maybe but a better overall cricketer than, say, W.G. Grace or Garfield Sobers?

 My favourite inept comment concerns Jack Hobbs who, according to the hapless Powley, “would have scored many more centuries had he not surrendered his wicket so often once he passed three figures.”  Oh, really?!

It is not just the lack of cricketing knowledge that spoils the book.  It’s also the shoddy way in which the background to many of the photographs has not been properly researched.  Why was a match being played at Richmond in 1908 in top hats?  There must be story there, but it remains untold, as does the tale behind the touching picture of children on crutches playing cricket, watched by other children in what appear to be hospital beds.  Possibly it relates to the outbreaks of polio in the 1950s but Mr. Powley for sure isn’t sufficiently curious to find out, so we are left to wonder.

All in all, then, an opportunity missed.  It is, I suppose, an OK book to buy if you are content just to look at the photographs and make up your own stories behind them.  Otherwise, best to save your money for one of the many well-researched books about the summer game.

Dinner for One

Different countries have their own traditions of seeing in the New Year. Most combine the same elements - a mix of alcohol, fireworks and revelry.  In other ways, traditions can diverge wildly.  In Holland, they burn Christmas trees, in Spain they eat 12 grapes while the midnight clock strikes twelve whilst in Denmark, people throw dishes at each others’ doors as a symbol of friendship.

One of the more remarkable New Year traditions is that, every year on New Year’s Eve, around half the German population watches a comedy sketch recorded in 1963 by a couple of long-dead English performers. 

Even stranger is the fact that it is also shown and enjoyed in Denmark, Sweden, Norway, Finland and many other countries in Europe.  And strangest of all, it has never been shown in full on TV in the United Kingdom.

The sketch is called Dinner for One – or The 90th Birthday (in German, Der 90).  It was written by British author Lauri Wylie in the 1920s and was often performed by music hall comic Freddie Frinton who eventually acquired the rights to it.  The German television station NDR recorded Frinton and May Warden performing the sketch in 1963 and it took off from there. Whilst Frinton found fleeting UK fame in the sitcom Meet the Wife, it is through the 10 minutes or so of Dinner for One that he has achieved TV immortality across continental Europe.

Of course, with the advent of YouTube, we can now view it in the UK any time we like, so here it is. 

OK, it’s more likely to give you pause for thought about the German psyche than leave you helpless with laughter.  At best, it’s mildly amusing; and there’s no doubting Freddie Frinton’s excellent comic timing.  But, but, but.....why????

I'm struggling to explain the appeal.  My best guess is that the sketch enables Germans to confirm their stereotyped views of us British – aristocratic, dotty and drunk.  At the same time, we can chuckle back in an equally superior way at the bizarre sense of humour (or lack of it) of our friends across the Channel.

If you can think of a better explanation, I’d like to hear it.  Or maybe, like most Germans, you find the catch phrase “Same procedure as every year” utterly hilarious.  Do let me know.