Bookshelf

Press, Volume CII, Issue 30061, 20 February 1963, Page 11

Bookshelf

Nicholas Felix’s essays on the cricket techniques ot hie day are well worth the attention of the modern reader. They may be diverting because of the changes cricket has undergone, but for his thoughtfulness and clarity of expression he is fit to rank not far below the earliest and, perhaps, greatest of the cricket writers—William Hazlitt, Andrew Lang and Francis Thompson were among them if they were not as prolific on cricket as John Nyren, the Rev. James Pycroft, and the Rev. John Mitford. Felix, of Flemish extraction, was an extaaardtaairily versatile man. His greatuncle had opened a boys’ school, Alfred House, at Camberwell in 1795. Nicholas Felix became headmaster of the school in 1824, when he was but 19 yean old, but it was a few yean after this that he first began to make a name as a batsman. Alfred House must have kept him very busy, for he also had six brothers and sisten to look after, then a wife. Allred House deserves to be remembered;

among its pupils were the poet Thomas Hood, and the New Zeeland statesman, Alfred Domett. Mr Brodribb’s memoir is an absorbing study of the period in which Felix lived. Felix was deeply interested .in music and painting, but the art of batting enchanted him. It was his interest in batting techniques which led him to develop the catapults, and, no doubt, influenced him to improve the flimsy leg-guards of the day, and to invent the batting glove. He played in many notable matches, and ultimately became president of William Clarke's famous All-England Eleven, a task which took all his time, but gave him several years full of cricket-playing. They are distant days; but Mr Brodribb recaptures them vividly. And Felix’s own book, with the original illustrations reproduced, is a fascinating document ★ The announcement of R. N. Harvey’s retirement from first-class cricket will no doubt help increase the demand for the little lefthander’s book, MY WORLD OF CRICKET (Hodder and Stoughton; 180 pp.), for Harvey has been one of the most popular of cricketers —an enterprising, entertaining and highly successful batsman, and one of the fieldsmen of recent times. He gives an interesting account of his tours and tests, often an outspoken one; his comments on the pitches prepared for the 1956 tests in England might have come from one of the more forthright London dailies. The many illustrations contain a magnificent picture of C. L. Walcott driving, as fine a study of power and poise as the famous photograph of W. R. Hammond.

THE BOUNDARY BOOK (Macdonald and Company; 320 pp.) is quite the most unusual book to appear for years. And it will be one of the best-received. Edited by Leslie Frewin, this massive volume is a sort of cricketwriting fruit salad; nearly anyone who is anyone has contributed something, and the book, beautifully produced, covers everything from articles on great players to verses in praise of the game, from Cardus to cartoons, from history to Paul Gallico. It is certainly A moat promising debut J in senior cricket was made | on Saturday by the for- a mer Otago player and ■ New Zealand colt, P. A. } Sharp, playing for West- . University. After figuring s in a most useful last- * wicket partnership with J IL Allen he showed his j

ability as an off-spinner ■ when he dismissed both • Lancaster Park opening J batsmen in quick succes- ■ sion. He bowled with ad-1 mirable control, flighted J the ball well, and extrac- J ted some quite sharp turn ■ from the pitch. He should ■ be a most useful member J of the West-University at- . tack which has been lack- a ing a good off-spinner for ■ some seasons. * * * After being out of form . with the bat for most of ■ the season, T. R. Marshall J (East-Shirley) came to j light with an invaluable a 45 against Sydenham. a ¥ * * J Riccarton gambled on J Saturday in holding a a place for G. T. Barrett, ■ who was in the Canterbury J under-23 side and in play- j ing R. C. Mota who next a week will be in the New •

Zealand team. The gamble • came off as Barrett J arrived In time to make a ■ useful 19 before the inn- ■ ings was closed to allow ! Mota to bowl. In a hoe- j tile spell Mota took the ■ wickets of Old Collegians’« first three batsmen. ....................

not the sort of book to be read at one sitting—the length atone would make that difficult But it will be • delightful scquiautaou for the cricket-lover who can enjoy its many and varied flavours singly. All the authors’ fees and royalties are being devoted to the National Playing Fields Association in England, through the Lord’s Taverners, a remarkable association of men; Frewin is at present their archivist

The list of contributors is astonishing. The first of them is the Duke of Edinburgh, who is the Taverners' Patron and His Royal Twelfthmanship. After him come the Australian Prime Minister (Mr Menzies), John Arlott Art Buchwald, A. A. Thomson, R. C. Sherriff, Lord Byron, R. C. Robert-son-Glasgow, J. M. Barrie. Sir John Barbirolli, Siegfried Sassoon, Sir Leonard Hutton, Stephen Potter, Sir Donald Bradman, Edmund Blunden, Godfrey Evans ... and many more, in an extraordinarily tong and w<ocdrously varied list. Perhaps a little more might have been said about the Lord’s Taverners themselves. There are 496 of them in a list printed near the end of the book, and they cover an even wider field than the authors. But there is no doubt that "The Boundary Book" wUI give very many pleasant hours to very many people.

One of the most important cricket publications to appear for many a day is A HISTORY OF CRICKET (George Allen and Unwin, Ltd.). This work by H. S. Altham was first published in 1926, but a second edition, with E. W. Swanton as co-author, appeared in 1938. There were two further editions in the next few years, and now, for the first time, the history appears in two volumes. Altham takes cricket from its beginnings to 1914, and Swanton carries the story up to 1962.

In one of the earlier editions, Mr Altham was described in Sir Pelham Warner’s foreword as “the Churchill of cricket”; later Sir Donald Bradman commended the work of Altham and Swanton as the finest history of cricket ever written. That was warm praise, but not misplaced. If Mr Altham shows himself to be a distinctive writer and an assiduous researcher, few are better equipped to cover the development of the modern game than Mr Swanton, who has seen much of all the cricketplaying countries and reported more than 150 test matches.

These two volumes, each running to more than 300 pages, make fascinating reading. Together, they make an authoritative work, but one which is never dull. The books are beautifully produced and the illustrations chosen with care and skill; if ever there was a picture to fire the young imagination, it is a familiar one of H. Verity at the delivery stride, a wonderful study of grace and balance.

Much less ambitious, but perhaps of more interest to the young cricketer, is A TALE OF TWO TESTS, by Richie Benaud (Hodder and toughton; 125 pp.). In this slim but very worth-while volume, Benaud reconstructs the tied match between the West Indies and Australia at Brisbane, and the 1961 test at Manchester when England, needing 180 in the last two hours with nine wickets standing, lost 20 minutes from time.

In his first publication, “Way of Cricket,” Benaud showed he can write wetland he does the writing himself—on a game which owes him much. This second book gives a clear, inside picture of the fluctuations of these two dramatic matches, with a captain’s comments on his thoughts at each shift and change of fortune. Benaud has done an extraordinarily good job in presenting these two vivid accounts of great games. In addition, there is a chapter on captaincy and no-one could be better qualified to write it. SPORTSMEN OF OUR TIME, by Christopher Brasher (Victor Gollancz, Ltd.; 144 pp.), will appeal to a wide public. Brasher, winner of the gold medal for the 3000-metre steeplechase at the 1956 Olympic Games, and now a noted London journalist, has produced some fine pen portraits of outstanding performers in several sports. He starts the book with the story of Roger Bannister’s now famous sub-four-minute mile at Oxford in 1954, a race in which Brasher set the pace for more than half the distance. But other great milers are there—Landy, Elliott, Snell. And there are some excellent studies from other sports, too—Benaud and May, Ingemar Johannson, Francis Chichester, Reg Harris, Anita Lonsborough, Angela Mortimer, Pancho Gonzales, Jimmy Greaves, and others.