Ten Poems about Cricket

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In the English-language tradition, a seed-poem for the strategy of spiritual conversation is George Herbert’s“Love (III)”: In the middle of the 19th Century the fashion was all for blustering tributes to famous names, scrawled at top volume as if they were mighty oaks or towering crags. EW Hornung, author of the Raffles crime stories, was moved by the same bitter contrast, not least because his own son was killed on the Western Front:

Less Cautionary Tales from the Pavilion: A Slightly Longer Collection of Verse, by Gas Card Drew (2020)He feigned sleep howeverand the princesses sprang out of their bedsand fussed around like a Miss America Contest. The editor has one of his own poems in the selection, 'Still Going Strong' and it is about Joe Hardstaff [junior] who was one of the most elegant batsmen for Nottinghamshire in the 1930s. The poem includes an amusing quote from the batsman about facing "Lol" [Harold Larwood], 'The fastest bowler' in the nets but even so 'Joe modelled Stillness/before lips curved up in a sweet/just-so smile as the ball/dropped safely at his feet.' I must say that even though he was before my time I always regarded Joe Hardstaff as the suave epitome of elegance. If the wild bowler thinks he bowls, Or if the batsman thinks he's bowled, They know not, poor misguided souls, They too shall perish unconsoled. I am the batsman and the bat, I am the bowler and the ball, The umpire, the pavilion cat, The roller, pitch, and stumps, and all. [12] Pythagorean bees are shut inside the hive,which hymns and hums like Sunday chapel--drowsy thoughts in a wrinkled brain. Recent times have seen a flood of new work as established poets (Gavin Ewart, Ted Hughes, Brian Jones, Norman Nicholson, Simon Rae, Kit Wright and many others) have described rollers abandoned in woods, grim-faced rebels in South Africa, radio commentators, grimy urban pitches, classic matches and so forth. There are pen portraits of Grace, Ranji, Gunn, Trumper, Hammond, Verity, Compton, Bradman, Cowdrey and Lara. There are new accents from the Caribbean and India. And SJ Litherland has written a whole book on Nasser Hussain (“Hooded eyes of ancestry/ Wait like a bird of prey”).

When Alfred Mynn died in 1861, William Jeffrey Prowse penned a poem in his memory. The first six stanzas compare Mynn with his contemporaries and the poem closes with these lines: Next they came to a lake where laytwelve boats with twelve enchanted princeswaiting to row them to the underground castle. The paralytic's wifewho takes her love to town,sitting on the bar stool,downing stingers and peanuts,singing "That ole Ace down in the hole,"would understand.In winter time, the zoo reverts to metaphor,God's poetry of boredom:the cobra knits her Fair-Isle skin,rattlers titter over the same joke. As was his habit, he sent this gem to his circle of friends and some time later (so the story goes) rang one of them, his fellow-dramatist David Hare, to see if he had received it. Hare confirmed that he had. They danced until morning and the sun came upnaked and angry and so they returnedby the same strange route.