CMJ: Compelling portraits of those great craftsmen (20 Jul 1998)

20 July 1998

Compelling portraits of those great craftsmen

By Christopher Martin-Jenkins

BIOGRAPHY is the favourite form of contemporary sports book writing. Cricket being cricket, that means much more than pot-boilers on the careers of those still playing. Indeed, it is a measure of the special devotion which the game inspires that many of the lives covered by the crop of early summer titles are those of players who departed the greensward long ago.

Chief among them is the latest and quite possibly best biography of W G Grace, by Simon Rae (Faber and Faber, UKP 20). It is a rounded portrait of both the cricketer and the character, a balanced and well-written story. For all his occasional peccadillos, what emerges most strongly is the doctor's extraordinary stamina and energy.

Meanwhile, those who remember English cricket of the 1950s and 60s will be delighted by two new assessments of players held in special affection for different reasons. Alan Hill, established as a shrewd and thorough cricket biographer, has followed his work on Peter May with another on Jim Laker (Andre Deutsch, UKP 17.99) and the temporary conflict between the two outstanding players in a period when England were unbeaten for seven series forms one of the most interesting passages of the new book. It very nearly led to Laker, less than 18 months after his immortal triumph in 1956, missing his only tour to Australia.

At the heart of the conflict was Laker's spinning finger. His exceptional spin was the result of stretching the gap between his index and middle fingers and vigorous purchase on the ball from the top joint of the former. The result, season after season, was a callous and, eventually, raw skin. May knew as much, of course, but felt Laker was too often inclined to bowl with less than 100 per cent effort. The evidence from this thorough portrait of a great craftsman and intelligent, dry-humoured, caring man is that Laker knew best what was good for himself, Surrey and England.

One thing clearly leads to another for biographers. Like Hill, Mark Peel has followed a successful work on Ken Barrington with one on another England batsman who died young. Cricketing Falstaff (Andre Deutsch, UKP 17.99) tells of Colin Milburn's merry rise to fame in the North-East, then poignantly chronicles the car accident which ruined his career and the despair which drove him to drink.

The assessments in Simon Wilde's Number One (Victor Gollancz, UKP 16.99) are harder-hearted, perhaps, if only because, at least from 1877 to the present, they are based on the Coopers and Lybrand opinion of who would have been considered the best batsman and bowler in the world had computer analysis been possible. Wilde himself provides the verdict from 1768 to 1886. If it all sounds drier than a Laker commentary, the impression is false: there is a great deal of interesting detail here, readably and succinctly presented, starting with John Small and finishing with Steve Waugh.

Waugh a better batsman than Sachin Tendulkar? Some mistake, surely, but for the computer it is the runs you score, not the way you score them.

Wasim Akram is another notable absentee from Wilde's book: Malcolm Marshall, Curtly Ambrose and Shane Warne have in turn been rated above him but it does not stop Wasim producing, with Pat Murphy's assistance, an autobiography (Piatkus, UKP 16.99) which unwisely claims on the cover to be a unique insight into the controversies of modern cricket. Substitute 'another' for 'unique' and you are nearer the truth, but all will wish the wonderfully talented Wasim luck with this worthy contribution to his benefit fund.

Fraser's Tour Diaries (Headline, UKP 16.99) are a more genuinely personal account of Angus Fraser's five tours for England and they are the more readable for that. One comment, in reference to the time when Chris Lewis had his head shaved in the West Indies and suffered from sunstroke, will give the flavour: "I actually like Chris but on this occasion I thought, 'you soppy sod. We're here to play cricket, not get involved in PR.' Fraser is no less blunt about himself and protests forcibly that he has been every bit as good a bowler since his hip operation. He is proving it, too.

He is fortunate to have played for Middlesex because it helps to perform for a successful county side. If, for example, Glamorgan had won the championship earlier in Hugh Morris's career, he would surely have won more than three Test caps. But a prolific county career was crowned by last year's title and his account, co-written by Andy Smith, To Lord's with a Title (Mainstream, UKP 14.99) vividly reveals how much it meant to Morris and all Welsh cricketers.

In 1903, the year covered by the latest reprint from the Willows Publishing Company, Glamorgan were just a minor county (1904 Wisden reprint, UKP 48 including postage - cloth facsimile UKP 50 - from 17, The Willows, Stone, Staffs, ST15 ODE). They finished only third equal in the second XI championship. First and second were the other two counties who would eventually be promoted to the front rank, Northants and Durham. Among the advertisements is one for J D Bartlett's patent Repercussive bat, "so perfected by him as to seem to make further improvement impossible".

Historians are well served, too, by a new and different version of the first great cricket book, John Nyren's The Cricketers Of My Time (Robson, UKP 14.95). The manuscript discovered during his recent book on Hambledon is expertly introduced and edited by Ashley Mote, who accuses Nyren of being a "plagiarist on a grand and blatent scale."

Many of those wonderfully vivid descriptions of the Hambledon men were apparently pinched from the memoirs of the 18th century cricketer William Lambert, who was himself guided by a ghost, the publisher, John Baxter. Nothing in cricket history is sacred, it seems, but Mote is to be congratulated on further assiduous detective work.

Source :: Electronic Telegraph (https://www.telegraph.co.uk)