Ashes poetry

Touring sides are increasingly bloated with personnel these days. For all the coaches, trainers – masseurs, even – that litter the dressing rooms, England can now add a resident poet, David Fine, from Bakewell in Derbyshire. Come January, batsmen's concerns might revolve around their stanzas, not their stance...

He will write 25 poems, one for each day’s play of the Ashes, following funding from Arts Council England.

"Wordsworth, Tennyson, Betjeman, Housman, Chesterton and Hughes have all gone out to bat for cricket, in verse.

"A line is a ball, a rhyme perhaps a wicket.

"In the stands, this is reflected by the 41 chants and songs in the Barmy Army's Barmy Harmonies for last year's Ashes Tour," he said.

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