![]() The sport has to be placed in context: it has always had a precarious place as the country's national game, if not because of the weather, then because of prevailing economic factors. True, it is not exactly a surprise to then encounter variations on this prize sentence, "things were somewhat different in the dream-world of cricket", but that is the nature of the game, and in particular its administrators. ![]() Indeed, every chapter begins with a historical survey that puts the mood and times of the country in context. One does not expect vivid, pithy summaries of William IV ("a randy old sailor and long-time patron of illegal prize fights") or the first Wilson administration ("Wilson's bungling, Walter Mittyish foreign policy brought tears of rage to imperialist eyes") in a book about cricket, but they are here. It doesn't give an idea of the book's range, though. (He died last year, regrettably.) He has, it would appear, more of a hinterland than anyone else in the job.Ī Social History of Cricket may not be a title that leaps from the starting-blocks, but it is accurate. ![]() ![]() He was chancellor of the University of Ulster, an educational administrator, and a Sir - not a title this column generally recognises, but if his writing is anything to go by, he deserved it. Derek Birley - who won the 1999 William Hill Sports Book of the Year with this - is more than just a sports writer, good though many of them are. ![]()
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