Book Review: Writers in Whites: how a group of literary cricketers changed English culture by Ollie Randall

This is far from being a conventional cricket read. A sentence I write as a compliment, because as a book it is thoroughly enjoyable. 

It is the untold story of cricket’s role in a slice of London’s literary world, from the 1880s to the 1960s. PG Wodehouse used his cricket-playing to launch his writing career, while JM Barrie modelled the pirates in Peter Pan after his cricket teammates. Indeed, Arthur Conan Doyle named Sherlock Holmes after a cricketer he’d played against and by one count 240 of 300 characters in his Sherlock Holmes stories are named after cricketers. This is echoed in modern writing, where Martin Edwards, one of the finest of modern crime writers and regular contributor to this blog, has frequently used the names of Derbyshire players in his own books.

The literary cricketers weathered scandals and ferocious culture wars, but they also wrote numerous memoirs describing their antics on and around the cricket field, even if their talents in whites varied from 'keen but distinctly average' (JM Barrie) to 'very good' (Doyle).

Along the way, various writers of renown formed and joined teams, including Edmund Blunden, EW Swanton, Neville Cardus and Michael Morpurgo. The book also covers the rise of the cricketer-turned writer, with the likes of Learie Constantine, Douglas Jardine and Richie Benaud.

It is thoroughly engaging from cover to cover and one can only marvel at the depth of research from Ollie Randall, gathering together so many disparate strands for the first time.

One of the joys of my own life in cricket has been the friends I have made along the way. In the case of these writers, the friendships influenced their writings and helped to shape the country's culture.

This is likely to be one of the books of the year, by the time 2026 comes to an end.

Writers in Whites: How a group of literary cricketers changed English culture is written by Ollie Randall and published by Fairfield Books