Thoroughly researched and an enjoyable read
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John Major's love of cricket is well known and this weighty volume bears testament to it, along with his careful research and fine prose. Dealing with the development of cricket from its earliest days up to the early years of the C20th, Major tells the stories of key characters, places and events with an impressive depth of research but in a highly readable and entertaining way. Vivid word pictures of late C18th and C19th cricket are created and the colourful characters brought to life. Notable too is Major's ability to place cricket within the cultural, social and political context of the times. Highly recommended.
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Not quite as good as expected
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The quality of the research and the insight and love of cricket are evident, you can almost hear for better or worse John speaking when reading it. I did enjoy the book but feel some sections were a bit of a slog. This is mainly due to the organisation and editing. The book is not a chronological history but instead discrete chapters e.g The Missionry.., Round Arm rebellion. I was struggling after to reconstruct in my mind when all events took place across the book. It also can lead to some jumping around. One paragrpah 1870 the next 1900 with no date reference. It just makes the big picture harder to picture and it can also seem like repetition.
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Surprisingly good
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Anyone who read John Major's autobiography and found parts of it a little stodgy and hard going will be pleasantly surprised at the light touch he shows here.
He traces the early history of cricket, concentrating on the personalities, but also placing them into the wider context to show how social change in the country (and world) at large was reflected in cricket.
There are times when he seems to have half an eye on the assiduously pedantic cricket statistician and goes to great lengths to "show his workings" in order to back up what he is saying, but the book is shot through with a great sense of the author's enthusiasm.
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And not a jelly bean in sight......
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The point of this book is that no-one is really sure where cricket began. It is largely accepted to have started in a recognisable form in the early eighteenth century and from then it has been constantly metamorphisizing into the game we know and love. Before I read this I had never heard of "single wicket" cricket, played until the mid-19th Century but it would be intriguing to see such a match today between, say Andrew Flintoff and Andrew Symonds. Some of the facets of the game taken for granted today took years of controversey to develop: overarm bowling, leg pads (allowed only after one player suffered horrendous leg injuries) and three-stump wickets. Some of the characters are given, sometimes lengthy, pen-portraits: WG Grace, Fry, Trumper obviously, but also some the early pioneers, Mynn, Felix, Beldham and "Lumpy" Stevens. The early administrators of the game probably wouldn't look out of place in the MCC today, Lords Harris and Hawke being both paternalistic and dictatorial at the same time. This really is a page tuner for anyone interested in the game and an absolute must for anyone disenchanted with the current fashion for cheerleaders, rock music and sledging which has destroyed so much of the game's appeal.
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Enjoyable
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Very Enjoyable purchase! I enjoyed reading this, even if the plot's somewhat rushed. Although there's a feeling that the text is there simply to fill up the spaces between the illustrations, there are enough laugh out loud moments and classic Pratchett twists to make it work.
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