Cricket Witness No 6 - His Captain's Hand on His Shoulder Smote

28 The Origin; Tom Brown’s Schooldays Its absorption into a central position in school-life led to its spread across the nation, not least, in time, as the chief summer game for state secondary schools. Had Thomas Arnold and Frederic Farrar held full sway, Athleticism, and thus cricket, might have been less prominent, even to the point of negligibility. Dozens of editions of the book are still on offer. The Oxford University Press 2008 version has Tom on the front of the book, stepping across to the off side, bat swung back behind his head, ready to whack the ball flowingly through the covers. Yes, it all began with Tom Brown. Sources Armytage WHG & Mack EC Thomas Hughes 1952 Bamford TW Thomas Arnold 1960 Barnett, Correlli The Collapse of British Power 1972 Harrison JFC A History of the Working Men’s College, 1894 to 1954 1954 Honan P Matthew Arnold – a Life 1981 Howat, Gerald ‘Cricket and the Victorian Church’ in Cricket Medley 1993 ‘Thomas Hughes’ Two Rugbies’ in Cricket All My Life 2006 Lawson H & Silver J A Social History of Education in England 1973 Richards, Jeffrey Happiest Days; the Public Schools in English Fiction 1988