The Chapters are: The Native Heath; A Fairly Passive Resister; Then and Now; Among the Moderns; Instead of Dingley Dell; The Stranger Was Admitted; Card of the Match; The Heroes; Men and Moments; Our Authors: An Opening Pair; Back to Malory; Incorrigibles; Paint Me Cricket; Rival Sports; Something of the Tail; Gargantua Played Cricket; Spirit of the Game; The Subject Continued; Beyond the Ground; The Road Runs On; Wednesday's Match; On a Trait of English Poetry; and All That Summer Glory. In the most enchanting and evocative of cricket books, the poet Edmund Blunden charmingly conveys the essential character and appeal of cricket and its unique role in the life of rural England. The central theme is the village cricket field in all its gentle eccentricity. 'The setting was constantly simple, with perhaps a stripling stream flowing between the area of the wickets and the hills and holes of the outfield, or a couple of willows and a cowpond just behind square leg.' We see the young man setting off on a horse brake to a village over the hill, to take the field with the farmer and the clergyman, the blacksmith and the squire, and we share his delight in hazy memories of Ranji and Spooner. The poet's imagination wanders freely through a succession of dreamlike, colourful scenes, prompted by events and conversations, and the association of ideas. With its recollections of cricket in far-off Edwardian summers. Green cloth, 224pp, firm binding with only the slightest sign of wear. f.e.p. shaken.
