The real genius

This season I have gorged on Neville Cardus, that wonderful cricket romanticist, connoisseur of classical music and grammarian. There may be many writers who have understood cricket better, but who has written better on cricket than Cardus?

A Cardus For All Seasons, which dogs my bedside, is the current obsession. The copy I have (if borrowed, original owner is warned to write this off as bad debt), is a 1985 Souvenir edition, and is an anthology of his writings from 1920 to 1969, a sweep of half a century. More than anything else, it is this, Cardus's extensive relationship with cricket, which adds value to his considerable skills as writer and cricket judge. In ordinary parlance, it is called perspective.

What I found of particular interest was the essay on `The Real Genius in Cricket', which deals with India's tour of England in 1936. "No cricketer, not a genius, could have played Mushtaq Ali's innings", writes Cardus after watching the dashing Indian opener make a hundred at Old Trafford. "Now genius at cricket has nothing to do with efficiency, or with the efficiency that can be comprehended and estimated by the scoreboard. There should be, on occasion, some other way of deciding a match, some imaginative valuation which understands that a cricketer can easily make a century and not get anywhere near the heaven of art. To match the Indians competitively against England, and to leave the decision to the scoreboard is to ask Kreisler to play his violin against Queen Mary.'' Beat that.

The collection is both eclectic and specific. It moves from esoteric subjects like `The Most Fascinating Game in the World' and `The Noble Game', to hard issues like `Where the Test Selectors Failed'. In every case, Cardus's felicity with the language, his imagery and his vast reservoir of knowledge and anecdotes make for matchless reading. Beg, borrow or steal.
A Cardus For All Seasons
by Neville Cardus
Souvenir Press, 1985