Not always cricket

At the beginning of August this year, the England test team played what is supposed to have been the 1,000th test match since the 1877 Ashes test against Australia in Melbourne, a match which was won by Australia by 45 runs. But was it really a test match? The players in that 1877 game had no idea they were test cricketers. England’s finest player, W.G. Grace, wasn’t there. Nor was Australia’s great bowler, Fred Spofforth. England played as James Lillywhite’s XI and only later was the match awarded test status.

Nevertheless, the show was on the road. Simon Wilde, cricket correspondent of the Sunday Times, has had the engaging idea of telling the story of the England national team. It started out as a profit-making enterprise, arranged by impresarios such as Lillywhite, but was quickly appropriated by the MCC, which regarded itself as a gentleman’s club. Only in the 1970s was the MCC forced to relinquish control to what has today become the English Cricket Board, an organisation in thrall to marketing experts.

It is difficult to judge whether the ECB or the MCC has done more lasting damage to the game. Both are responsible for turning cricket into a minority sport, the
MCC because of its preoccupation with class and the ECB on account of its obsession with commercialism.

This book is essentially a history of the rise of conformity. Nothing can beat the early days of test cricket, populated by cheerful and life-enhancing characters such as Aubrey Smith, who captained England on the first tour of South Africa in 1888–89 and later became a Hollywood character actor. During the Aubrey Smith era England sides had the exuberant but chaotic air of social cricket teams on tour.