Book Bites

Divided Country: The History of South African Cricket Retold 1914-1950s ★★★★

Andre Odendaal, Krish Reddy and Christopher Merrett, BestRed, R295

Two years ago the first volume of a virtual lifetime’s work for the authors came into being. Cricket and Conquest began the retelling of South Africa’s cricket history, a saga misrepresented and distorted over more than 200 years since the game’s arrival in 1795. Now the second volume is here and the next two, Batting for Freedom (the 1950s to 2016) and Correcting the Record, cannot be far off. Divided Country is as impressive as its companion volume, continuing to correct a history that previously was written as a white man’s game. It follows the history of South Africa from union, when black people were all but written out of the constitution, to apartheid and the division of cricket into seven “South Africas” along the lines of the segregated state. It is also the story of the women’s game, a neglected aspect too.