MORE THAN A GAME: The Story of Cricket's Early Years by John Major (Harper Press £25)
"Its fairy godparents were gambling and drink. Its early enemies were Church and state.''
WHAT? What? Without the well-known prior knowledge of John Major's particular sporting passion, you'd struggle to guess. But yes, it is cricket that was fostered, if not founded, by the dark demons of gambling and drink, which set church and state implacably against it.
Branding it "profane", the 17th-century church hauled many village cricketers before its own courts, which punished them with fines and humiliating public penance. Cromwell's puritan government heightened the purge, and in Ireland, then a British colony, "sticks and balls" were ordered to be burned by the local hangman. "The players were not," observes John Major dryly.
Generally a little stiff in style, as might be expected from the former "grey" Prime Minister, Major, the cricket historian, possesses two outstanding virtues, which easily mask a little gaucheness at the crease. The first is a copy-book straight-bat devotion to the facts, which he spares no effort to unearth and correctly observe.
So he sets the record straight time and time again. Sweeping from sight various "far-fetched" or "erroneous" early hints of cricket, stretching almost back to pre-history, and including an often-mentioned link with France, he argues convincingly that the first credible reference to the game is in the record of a 1598 trespass case at Guildford, where a witness testified that "hee and diverse of his fellows did runne and play there at creckett...''
Aided by an extensive index, it is easy to consult Major's equally well-founded word on any topic from cricket's pioneering years - say the advent of overarm bowling, the introduction of a third stump or the replacement of the curved bat. And yet, he provides far more than yet another functional history, of which there are scores.
For his account is infused with his deep love of the game. Like one of his heroes, the incomparable cricket writer Neville Cardus, he is not afraid to wear his heart of his sleeve - his second virtue. "In good times and bad," he tells us, "cricket has been my constant companion, providing the perfect blend of charm, fascination, inspiration and solace."
Recounting an incident of 1624, in which a fielder attempting to take a skied catch hard by the stumps was killed by the batsman's flailing bat, he goes well beyond the bald details. "The coroner's jury acquitted the batsman of malice and brought in a verdict of misadventure - proper in law, no doubt, but death by enthusiasm would have been more apt. The moment of taking a catch at cricket is one of total absorption and pure joy, and in that exultant mood poor Jasper (the fielder) was robbed of life."
Though technical matters are amply covered, and key early figures - players and promoters - are neatly profiled, Major illuminatingly sets the evolution of the game in the social context of the time. Treating the First World War as the end of his story - in which, incidentally, Thirsk's "canny" and "astute" Thomas Lord, founder of the eponymous ground, enjoys a bright innings - he ponders the fate of the village and club cricketers caught up in the conflict.
"No-one will ever know whether, as they lay in the trenches or advanced through the mud and blood of the Western Front, they talked or thought of the game they loved."
In fact, we know they did, for the First World War poet Siegfried Sassoon wrote of the men under this command: "I see them in foul dug-outs, gnawed by rats,/ Dreaming of things they did with balls and bats."
It is a tribute to John Major's book that his apparent ignorance of these lines comes as a surprise. As Prime Minister he gave us the National Lottery, more-frequent motorway service stations, not forgetting the Cones Hotline to go with them, and the already-forgotten TESSA savings account.
But despite also binding us into Europe with the Maastricht Treaty, he might be destined to be best remembered, or certainly most warmly remembered, for having written this cricket classic. And one suspects he will happily settle for that.
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