Pavilioned in Splendour - A.A. Thomson

This is the third of A.A. Thomson’s books of cricket watching reminiscences, extending from the Golden Age into a present in which he also sees a gold bearing vein.

The title is taken from the hymn which, when the author first heard it in church half a century ago, suggested to a small boy’s mind a picture of Lord Hawke seated in glory in some celestial Long Room surveying the unending game throughout eternal summer.

Cricket, like so many other human institutions, has of late become slightly cluttered with statistics and technicalities of rival theorists; in this book the writer strives to recapture the drama, the occasional grandeur and the frequent fun to be found in the game. It is both a witty and a friendly book by a man described by John Arlott in Wisden as “the happiest of cricket writers.”.