Cricket has a long history of writing about the game and its characters – reflected in the wide range of books in the Wynne-Thomas Library at Trent Bridge.
Whether early works on technique, or modern biographical essays, the game is almost as accessible in the close season through books as it is in summer when it is played out on the field.
And the opinions in those books are as varied as those expressed on the benches of cricket grounds around the country.
It would come as no surprise, therefore, that a famously curmudgeonly ex-England skipper and opener (from one of the Northern counties) has expressed his displeasure at contemporary standards of batting…
“…watching our own county cricketers performing that...quite a number of our First-Class players in a style which would certainly not have been approved by old-time cricketers…
“My quarrel with too many of the present-day players is that, in their eagerness to experiment, they are getting away from those immutable first principles…”
More surprising, though, is that these words were written one hundred years ago!
In his book, Cricket Old and New, a Straight Talk to Young Players, Archie (AC) MacLaren was writing in 1924 but his opinion that there was, ‘The necessity for a plain restatement of the fundamentals of cricket’, a view that would find much agreement a century on.
MacLaren would have found common cause with an earlier Titan of cricket – Nottinghamshire’s own Alfred Shaw, though in Shaw’s case his opprobrium was for the bowlers of the Edwardian era.
“Bowlers today pitch a bad length,” he says in his Reminiscences, told in 1902 to A W Pullin, who wrote as ‘Old Ebor’. “Too many simply bang the ball down about midway,” he adds. A short length ball is seldom of any use…
“The first and chief care of a bowler…is to make the batsman play to the pitch of the ball. I used to say ‘I shall either hit the bat or the wicket…’
“…bowlers are most at fault in that they do not compel batsmen to play the ball whether they like to do so or not…”
He clearly did not approve of bowling for catches – what would he have made of Broad’s 8-15, every one of them caught out?
If Shaw was scornful of ‘off theory’ – heaven knows what he would have said about ‘leg theory.’
He also complained that the new-fangled idea of white sightscreens made life ‘too easy’ for the batters!
A contemporary of Shaw and MacLaren was the splendidly-named William Justice Ford, who played for Middlesex and Cambridge University, whose book, A Cricketer on Cricket, was published in 1900. In it he endeavours to predict what cricket might look like 100 years on.
Ford predicts, “a gigantic series of stands…accommodating some 30,000 people”, and “a wireless telegraph which connects direct with all the chief cricket grounds”.
He also foresees, “big scoring boards…the names of the players, the hits and scores of the batsmen, together with the bowling analysis up to the latest moment.”
Some of his ideas have not been fulfilled – such as non-turf pitches unaffected by sun or rain and bats made not from willow but of aluminium (Dennis Lillee was evidently not the first!) and a ‘retirement’ system that requires batters to retire on scoring thirty.
He suggests a darker strip designed to help umpires in determining lbw – shades of DRS – and, as consequence of lower scores, the disappearance of the ‘follow-on.’
Perhaps his most contentious suggestion is that ‘throwing’ is now allowed in 2000 cricket but then there is a ‘handicap all bowlers making them bowl or throw not less than six yards from the wicket. If they bowl short of that, it’s a no-ball.’ 
All of these books are available from the Wynne-Thomas Library which will be open on match days throughout the summer.
March 2024