J. Pluvius & Co
CHRISTOPHER HOLLIS
In the Main J. S. Barker (Pelham Books 35s) There is always a difficulty about cricket books that give a ball-byrball account of a Test series which is already over and of which one knows the outcome. Nor is it easy to recap- ture enthusiasm for one series when another is already in process.iBut Mr Barker has made his book on last spring's MCC tour far more than a mere account of a particular series.
He has studiously(refused to pad it out with dressing-room gossip,: attacks on umpires or retailed anecdotes of quarrels between players; instead, he has given usa,,number of interesting pages on the history of the West Indian islands, on the differences between the people of one island and another, on their climate and on what they look like. To many cricket- lovers such descriptions will be unfamiliar; and very valuable, if they are to form any worthwhile impression of West Indian cricket. The book is admirably illustrated and, if there is any criticism to be made, I would say that it is a pity that Mr Barker tells us nothing of cricket below the level of the island teams —of village cricket where forty players turn out to a side and the spectators urge on the contesters with savage cries. For it is out bf this cricket—so very different from anything we know in England—that the island cricketer and the Test cricketer eventually emerge. It would be fascinating to be told the method of their progression.
The actual descriptions of the matches are admirably done, though I do not know that they contain very much that one could not ' have read the next morning in a competent newspaper. Whatever the rights and wrongs of long-drawn-out five- or six-day matches for' players or spectators, they are, of course, ad-' mirable for newspaper readers able to see' day by day how the long story has moved one' stage further towards its conclusion. It is difficult to recreate that tension for a reader who already knows the ending. What is more boring than watching on television a football match of which one already knows the result? What more interesting than watching one that is recorded live and the result uncertain?
Mr Barker enlivens his story with fascinating incidental titbits of information. How many English readers, for instance, knew that at Georgetown in Guiana they employ grounds- women to cover the pitch? What is the reason for this strange eccentricity, unknown,.I fancy, anywhere else in the world? Mr Barker's prose style is admirable except for one strange and deplorable habit. In four places he insists on speaking of rain as 'J. Pluvius.' Surely we might be spared that.
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