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.