THAT WILL BE ENGLAND GONE
THE LAST SUMMER OF CRICKET
MICHAEL HENDERSON
Constable, 296pp, £20, ebook £12.99
This is ‘a book ostensibly about cricket, but really a threnody for a vanished and possibly mythical England’, said Sebastian Faulks in the Sunday Times. ‘[Its] aim is to celebrate the counties of England, their geography and people, as well as their cricket teams.’
Daniel Rey in the Spectator agreed: ‘Englishness itself, as much as cricket, is the main theme... The title alludes to Larkin’s poem Going,
Going, and the last summer was 2019, when Henderson took a journey around the cricket grounds of his past.’
‘Last’ because 2020 saw the prospect of ‘a jazzed-up, short form of the game called The Hundred... aimed at the non-cricketing public’, Rey explained, recording the author’s horror at cricket’s current status: ‘Cricket,’ writes Henderson, ‘is now ranked the eighth most popular sport in English secondary schools, behind football, rugby, swimming, athletics and – this takes some believing – basketball, netball and rounders.’
Rey said Henderson is ‘quick to criticise today’s cricketing bureaucrats, and doesn’t spare the failings of two prime ministers – Thatcher and Major – who oversaw the loss of more than 10,000 school playing fields. The Fall of Albion’s green and pleasant land – and its most evocative pastime – is not a recent phenomenon. But there’s a chance [The Hundred] will kill traditional cricket – and with it, Henderson implies, Englishness itself.’
Originally scheduled for this year, the new format was postponed to 2021 due to the pandemic. As Faulks said, ‘The silver lining is that Henderson could yet be spared The Hundred.’ And he concluded, ‘An over-romantic and conservative view of England can easily slip into self-parody and its own idiolect. Henderson flirts with danger (“training shoes” for trainers), but does not succumb until the acknowledgements, where an “ale” is “toothsome” – but a man is entitled to loosen his tie at this late stage, after stumps, among friends warmly thanked.’