Author(s): Simon Hughes

Cricket

Simon Hughes has written an entertaining and irreverent analysis of the history of cricket, taking us beyond the sporting myths of the game to some of its lesser known, more colourful stories and to the heart of what it really means to be English.

Cricket defines Englishness like no other national pastime. From its earliest origins in the sixteenth century (or an early version played by shepherds called creag in the 1300s), through the formation of the MCC and the opening of Lord's cricket ground in 1787, to the spread of county cricket in the next century, when the Wisden Cricketers' Almanack was first published and the Ashes series was born, this simple sport of bat and ball has captured the imagination of the masses. It has also produced its fair share of eccentrics, heroes and downright villains. The last hundred years have seen cricket's popularity spread throughout the world, limited overs and most recently Twenty20 contests start to rival Test matches, and assiduously-kept records be made and broken, but England has always remained at the heart of the game, whatever the Indian Premier League may think. And throughout its 500-year history, cricket has also been a mirror for society as a whole, reflecting the changes that have brought us from the quintessential village green to Freddie Flintoff's pedalo, from W.G.Grace to Monty Panesar. William Hill Award-winning writer Simon Hughes, no mean player himself, has lived and breathed cricket his whole life and now takes his analytical skills and typically irreverent eye to charting the history of English cricket. But this is no dry, dusty tome. It is the story of the mad characters who inhabit the game, the extraordinary lengths people will go to to watch and play it, the tale of a national obsession. It debunks the myth of cricket sportsmanship, showing the origins of sledging and match-fixing in centuries of subterfuge, corruption and violence. And it takes us beyond sport, to the heart of what it really means to be English.