ON THE HEARTH
A Cricket Pro's Lot. By Fred Root. (Arnold. 5s.)
CRICKET books are, of course, mostly read by winter firesides and not, as many publishers seem to think, between the overt.
They are sunshine substitutes of a sort, and now that football training has begun again, it is perhaps time to consider the latest aspirants.
Mr. Edmund Blunden, in his excellent article on cricket literature in The Times M.C.C. Supplement (now reprinted in book form), comments on the fact that today cricket books are " expected as a matter of course from every eminent practitioner." It is true : ghosts walk, printers print, and seldom is anyone the better for it. Usually the crack players are quite unable to explain how they achieve their masterstrokes : as Mr. Hone says, in reference to fielding technique and a certain slip catch of Hammond's, " the natural fielder does this sort of thing naturally and never thinks of it. If one asked him about it he would almost certainly be unaware that he had moved or done anything at all." Not often does a Gene Tunney appear in sport, and we have to rely instead on semi-articulate participants and talented onlookers.
Of the present authors, four are eminent players' and two cricketing journalists, while the egregious Mr. Fudge may well belong to either category. A Cricket Pro's Lot is an excellent book of its kind : it bears every evidence of authen- ticity in the writing, and Fred Root's personality is engaging.
He eschews averages and statistics, perhaps unduly, and gives us a delightful rambling commentary on his own cricketing life and opinions. He is probably the greatest in-swinger the game has yet known, and his defence of the famous ".body-line " bowling, of which he was the originator, is spirited and logical.
Particularly stimulating are his descriptions of Lancashire League matches. ' Everyone who is interested in cricket will enjoy this book.
Mr. B. W. Hone (of South Australia and Oxford University) addresses his brief manual primarily to school cricketers, and to them it should prove exceedingly helpful. It is concise, sensible and to the point. So also are the handbooks of Sutcliffe and Nichols .on batting and bowling. They are, moreover, illustrated with ingenious " moving " pictures of the authors in action.
The first half of Mr. Sewell's book consists of random musings on the game in general—tolerable if a trifle congested. The second half contains a full record of the 1936-37 Test matches in Australia. The daily scores, together with some additional figures of Mr. Sewell's, are interesting, and the accompanying commentary is probably .as good as could be expected from a critic rO,000 miles from the field of play.
In Search of Cricket can only be described as Cardus and soda-water. Mr. Kilburn's prose style is not sufficiently distinguished to give pleasure on its own account ; he describes a few key matches adequately, . but the chief merit of his topographical interludes is their brevity.
Mr. Fudge and his illustrator, A. N. Other, might be funny if they did not try so hard to be side-splitting. Owzat ? is written roughly on the plan of io66 And All That, but every sentence is so overladen with puns and double meanings that the reader is likely to die of a surfeit. RUPERT HART-DAVIS.
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