Cricket's Historians

The Booming Market for Cricket Books Andre Deutsch. The first was A History of West Indies Cricket by Michael Manley, who had been Prime Minister of Jamaica from 1972 to 1980 and was best known for his books on political themes. The book is hopelessly out of balance. Of its 576 pages, 510 are devoted to post-1945 cricket, and even then mainly Test Matches and One Day Internationals. The sparse notes on pre-1900 cricket started with the first inter-colonial game being played in 1846 (rather than the accepted 1865), so alarm bells rang very early on. In 1990 came Mihir Bose’s A History of Indian Cricket , again a substantial volume, 571 pages. Again the early history is reduced to a few pages – 47 pages cover the years 1792 to 1931 – but Bose has done a little more research than Manley. The book contains the full scores of all Indian Test Matches. Mihir Bose, at present the chief B.B.C. Sports analyst, was born in Calcutta, but came to England in 1969 and qualified as an accountant. He soon switched to journalism and has worked for both the Sunday Times and Financial Weekly , among other newspapers. His first cricket publication was a biography of Keith Miller, published in 1980. Bose’s work was supplemented by A Corner of a Foreign Field by Ramachandra Guha, published by Picador in 2003. Guha was born in Dehradun in 1958 and educated in Delhi and Calcutta. Since 1995 he has been a full-time writer living in Bangalore. He combines social history with the history of cricket in Bombay. The tensions between the sides competing in the Bombay Tournament are related to the political push towards independence led by Gandhi and Jinnah – it is a thoroughly worthwhile book, reminding one of the work of C.L.R.James though again, the earliest days of Indian cricket are given but scant coverage. Guha had earlier published two other cricket books which are worthy of note, Wickets in The East and Spin and Other Turns. It is appropriate here to note the vast volume on New Zealand cricket – nearly 500,000 words and a comprehensive selection of pictures – Men in White by Don Neely and Richard King. This prints the score of all matches, not just Tests, played by New Zealand Representative teams. The de luxe edition was retailed at £420. The principal author was Don 257