Coffee Table Book of: The Sport of Cricket (Paperback)

Description

Coffee Table Book of: The Sport of Cricket is a large format book of cricket, printed edge to edge in colour, one picture to a page and the widest carried across two: the willow bat and the leather ball, the stumps and bails, the strip being rolled and covered, village grounds standing empty from first light to moonlight, the kit being made, the old ways of the game, and a few cricketers seen far off in plain dark clothing.

The kit is laid out plain: a bat of pale willow seen from above and the fine grain of its face, a new red ball with its raised seam, a white ball beside a pink one, batting pads, batting gloves and wicketkeeping gloves, a helmet with a steel grille, spiked shoes, a cap, a cream cable knit sweater, a long kit bag, the tops of the stumps with their bails, a white sightscreen, a ball resting on the crease, six pebbles for counting an over, and a lone wicket on a beach, on a frozen lake and on a village ground at golden hour.

The making follows willows grown beside a river, clefts split and stacked to dry, blades shaped by hand among pale shavings, a rubber grip rolled onto a cone, cork cores bound in string and a red leather ball stitched by hand. The care of the ground follows the heavy roller on the strip at dawn, white covers in the rain, the outfield mown in stripes, the cracked face of a worn strip and fresh loam for the square in autumn.

The past runs from a bat curved like a hockey stick and a wicket of two stumps and one bail to a hazel stick cut with a notch for every run, an old iron roller with shafts for a horse, sheep grazing a village ground, coconut matting on dry earth, a long white coat on a peg, a mended bat, a row of old bats and a worn old ball on a mossy stone.

Short notes run through the book, on the laws and how the game is played, the bat, ball, wicket and ground and how they are made and cared for, and the long history of the game: the pavilion holds the changing rooms, and the players walk out from it onto the field, early bats were curved like a hockey stick, made for a ball bowled along the ground, early wickets had two stumps and one bail; a third stump was added in the late 1700s, and a batter is out bowled when the ball hits the wicket and knocks off a bail.

Printed in full colour on heavy 150gsm coated paper at 216 x 279 mm (8.5 x 11 inches), as a paperback.