From the Boundary. By Ray Robinson.
(Collins. 125. 6d.)
ALL Cricket books are out of date. It is not Mr. Robinson's fault that his survey of post- war cricket ends with the opening of the 1950 M.C.C. tour in Australia, but it gives his book a queer perspective to us ; he is in the period of Bradman, Compton and Lindwall, while we live in that of Hutton and Bedser. Mr. Robinson is an Australian, and his chapter on Barnes, cricket's artful dodger, on Keith Miller, whom some call Victor Trumper's successor and others an inspired yob, and on Sir Donald Bradman have a virility which our airy-fairy school of cricket writers lacks. Nevertheless, his passion for similes, or for the sentence with the surprising sting in the tail, becomes tiring and even, on occasions, ludicrous ; is our appreciation of Tallon's wicket-keeping on the 1948 tour heightened by the knowledge that he had his tonsils out before he left home ? Mr. Robinson is an admirer of what he calls "the Trumper-Macartney-Woolley tradition," the tradition of flowing forward strokes and risks ; his modern favourites are the spiritual successors of these men, Compton, Miller or Harvey. He has hard words to say of Sir Donald Bradman, at whose complete dominance he marvels, but whose ruthlessness he dislikes. Most of the post-war " incidents " are here ; bumpers are discussed, the habits of wicket-keepers analysed, cricketers before and after 1926 compared. Though he is not in the class of his compatriot, Mr. Jack Fingleton, as a cricket-Writer, Mr. Robinson has many amusing and illuminating stories to tellif you can stomach the over-writing—and a fine
gallery of photographs to show. C. W.
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