A cricketing Eden caught in no man's land
The Guardian's blog says that Harold Pinter's love of the game suggests that the names of his characters are more than mere coincidence.
Martin Williamson
25-Feb-2013
The Guardian's blog says that Harold Pinter's love of the game suggests that the names of his characters are more than mere coincidence.
One day at drama school Pinter skipped classes to go to Lord's, running through the gate at the Nursery End to see Cyril Washbrook late-cutting for four. His abiding memory of that truant day, expressed in six simple words towards the end of that 1969 essay, is of an Eden familiar to all cricket-lovers: "that beautiful evening Compton made 70".
Is there a more evocative sentence in cricket literature? Even those who never saw Compton in his prime may feel, reading those words, that "I have known this before". It is one of those moments frozen in time. So, as the light fails on an autumn afternoon, history is now and England. Here's to a great playwright, to all our summers, and to the players whose deeds coloured them.
Martin Williamson is executive editor of ESPNcricinfo and managing editor of ESPN Digital Media in Europe, the Middle East and Africa