Book Review: Cricket in Poetry- Run Stealers, Gatlings and Graces by Bob Doran

I have to admit that I really enjoyed this book.

I admire the author for taking the time to research it and link so beautifully the lives of two well-known 19th century poets and the development of the first-class game of cricket in England.

Two poems stand out from the period: Vitai Lampada by Henry Newbolt (There's a breathless hush in the Close tonight..) and At Lord's by Francis Thompson (O my Hornby and my Barlow long ago). Both men were sons of prosperous families but the former was what one might call a 'toff', while the latter was primarily a religious  writer and at one point a suspect in the Jack the Ripper case, which is discussed in detail here.

They led very different lives and the author has beautifully researched them. Yet, the strength of the book is in the way that their writing is interlinked with the development of county cricket in the 19th century and up to the First World War.

Well-known figures flit in and out of the pages including the Graces and Ranjitsinjhi, but equally fascinating or the more peripheral figures in the history of the game who made a greater contribution in the arts and literary world. Thus we read of Siegfried Sassoon, Kipling, Owen, Graves, Hardy, Conrad and Conan Doyle, all in the circles in which Newbolt moved.

While Newbolt established himself in such circles - but blotted his copy book for this writer with his assertion that his shell-shocked son 'wasn't doing more for his country' - Thompson's life spiralled into one of physical and mental deterioration, solitude and laudanum addiction. 

The book could have finished there, but the author brings the book and cricket's links with poetry and verse of a different kind more up to date with Cricket, Lovely Cricket and the development of Caribbean cricket before and after the Second World War, culminating in the calypso of that name  inspired by the West Indies win in England in 1950.

It is a very enjoyable read, the author rightly points out that cricket poetry can be varied in its quality, some of it moving, others funny, a fair amount clunky, at best.

A celebration of the early days of the game as we know it in the countryside of the south, then the move to the midlands and north, this might not appeal to everyone. 

But as a lover of social history, literature and cricket, it absolutely hit the right notes for me and I applaud Pitch Publishing for getting it into print and also producing it in a type face that was not a strain to read.

With some charming photographs, many of which I hadn't seen before, this is one that is well worth your time. I guarantee that by the end of it you will have learned something.

Cricket in Poetry: Run Stealers, Gatlings and Graces is written by Bob Doran and published by Pitch Publishing.