Harry Mead is bowled over by an amusing collection of cricket letters to The Daily Telegraph.

BACK in August 1946, EL Normanton, an RAF Flying Officer, wrote to The Daily Telegraph suggesting “wise and enterprising changes” to first-class cricket that he believed “might enliven the sport and invite a wider public”.

His ideas included Sunday play and promotion and relegation to and from the minor counties. “If Leicestershire and Somerset and Glamorgan can compete, why not Cheshire or Devon or Durham?” he asked.

Ahead of his time, he proved that not all correspondents to the Telegraph, even those with military titles, are Blimpish reactionaries. But perhaps more typical was a Mr Herbert Twamley who, also in 1946, complained of Denis Compton, one of the most lauded cricketers of all time, using his foot to “field the ball”.

He protested: “This is a comparatively modern invention and is developing very rapidly, I am sorry to see, in every kind of cricket. It is well to remember that there is such a game as football...”

An original concept for a cricket book, this collection of letters, published between 1928 and last year, ranges gloriously, if randomly, over every aspect of the game – history, laws, players, matches. But the dominating theme is the game’s decline – its causes and what to do about it.

For one correspondent the rot set in with – the tea interval. “How did it infiltrate into county cricket? Possibly at the instigation of the catering industry? I do not know, but I think it is not in the interests of firstclass cricket.” Time was lost and the rhythm of batsmen and bowlers disrupted.

“Surely men in full strength and vigour could do without sustenance from 2 to 6.30pm?”

Another correspondent pinpoints “the chief bugbear to brighter cricket” as – stumping. “The brake the fear of this inglorious exit imposes on a batsman’s enterprise is beyond computation.” So too, perhaps, is a disincentive to cricket among the young noted by a correspondent in 1999: “corridor and dormitory cricket have just been banned at my school”.

But the undoubted main villain is dress and deportment. Upbraiding a 29-year-old who had had the temerity to write that he was “sick and tired” of cricket-supporting Telegraph readers “whinging on about shaving, baseball caps, sunglasses, tucking your shirt in, not smiling enough, being aggressive and gesturing”, a 70-year-old retorted: “He would do well to note that it was way back when sportsmen dressed properly that England could boast winning teams, not only in cricket, but in football and various other sports.”

The writer was in tune with another correspondent who asked: “Why does none of our Test cricketers use a handkerchief when mopping his brow? They use collars and wrist-bands. Can I ask their wives, girlfriends and mothers to keep them supplied with handkerchiefs?”

Like Flying Officer Normanton a few correspondents anticipate change that has been generally welcomed.

In 1950, one called for credit to be given to players who achieve run outs. It took the one-day revolution to bring in that innovation, but still only for some games.

Meanwhile, Telegraph correspondents have run riot with crazy ideas.

Batsmen who failed to score 30 an hour should be given out “time retired”.

The ball should be dimpled or – a very recent suggestion – “reinvented” with “inbuilt swing”. To prevent bowlers’ follow-through damaging the pitch, the wickets should be offset. And, “to guarantee a quality spectacle”, only nominated batsmen should bat, facing nominated bowlers. “Still,” admits the author of that 2005 proposal, “I suppose something like that is too revolutionary for the dinosaur administrators.”

Very probably.

But among the wilder shores of invention are fascinating memories. A 1948 correspondent recalls his father running sheep on Lord’s, where he witnessed “members of the MCC playing in top hats”. Rachael Heyhoe Flint, our most celebrated woman cricketer, casts light on a claim that she described the female equivalent of a batsman’s protector as a “manhole cover”.

Post-war Test bowler Sir Alec Bedser strenuously refutes a charge that he was “a dobber”. But the palm is taken Yorkshire’s Richard Hutton with an anecdote about Fred Trueman.

After Fred had described in detail the swing and deviations of the balls with which he had just taken six Leicestershire wickets, Richard asked: “Fred, have you ever bowled a straight ball?” Nonplussed for just a second, Trueman then replied: “Aye, it were a full toss to Peter Marner, and it went straight through him like a streak of p***.” But Fred was left speechless when Hutton followed up with: “Would you describe yourself as a modest man, Fred?”

A delightful dust-jacket illustration – a village cricket match seen through a window, against which is a writing bureau with cricket memorabilia – adds to the pleasure of this engrossing collection.

Surely a shoo-in for cricket book of the year.

• Not In My Day, Sir. Cricket letters to The Daily Telegraph edited by Martin Smith (Aurum, £14.99)