Cricket Journal - John Arlott

The familiar voice of John Arlott talking about cricket with a rich Hampshire burr, has become as much part of summer as the smell of trodden grass and the taste of strawberries and cream. Since the war he has broadcast BBC commentaries on every day of test cricket played in England as well as on MCC tours of Australia and South Africa. This account of his cricket summer in 1958m written day by day, reports and evaluates matches and players, but, like no other book, it also re-creates the cricket atmosphere. the reader will feel that he has rubbed shoulders with the players.

Arlott’s story covers the building of the English Test team, the New Zealand tour and Test Matches; he visits the counties and deals at length with games like Derbyshire v Leicestershire, and Hampshire’s two great matches of the season – with Surrey and Kent – and the final, exciting run-in to the County Championship with Surrey, Hampshire, Somerset and Northants fighting it out down to the very end of the season. There are informed comments on the year’s major cricketing events – the dismissal of Wardle, the resignation of Wooller, and the choosing of the party for Australia. It attempts, too, to capture the character and something of the ‘shop’, both of technical and human interest, which marks the conversation of cricketers.

This book records a whole connecting phase of cricket history, seen not only through the critical glasses of the experienced observer, but by one with a knowledge and sense of cricket history.