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More Than a Game: The Story of Cricket's Early Years | 
 enlarge | Author: John Major
Publisher: HarperPerennial
Category: Book
List Price: £9.99
Buy New: £4.99
You Save: £5.00 (50%)
Avg. Customer Rating:  7 reviews
Sales Rank: 7066
Media: Paperback
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 400
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.8
Dimensions (in): 7.6 x 5 x 1.3
ISBN: 0007183658
Dewey Decimal Number: 796.35809
EAN: 9780007183654
ASIN: 0007183658
Publication Date: April 1, 2008
Shipping: Eligible for Super Saver Shipping
Availability: Usually dispatched within 24 hours
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| Customer Reviews: Read 2 more reviews...
Surprisingly good May 26, 2008
Anyone who read John Major's autobiography and found parts of it a little stodgy and hard going will be pleasantly surprised at the light touch he shows here.
He traces the early history of cricket, concentrating on the personalities, but also placing them into the wider context to show how social change in the country (and world) at large was reflected in cricket.
There are times when he seems to have half an eye on the assiduously pedantic cricket statistician and goes to great lengths to "show his workings" in order to back up what he is saying, but the book is shot through with a great sense of the author's enthusiasm.
 And not a jelly bean in sight...... May 16, 2008
The point of this book is that no-one is really sure where cricket began. It is largely accepted to have started in a recognisable form in the early eighteenth century and from then it has been constantly metamorphisizing into the game we know and love. Before I read this I had never heard of "single wicket" cricket, played until the mid-19th Century but it would be intriguing to see such a match today between, say Andrew Flintoff and Andrew Symonds. Some of the facets of the game taken for granted today took years of controversey to develop: overarm bowling, leg pads (allowed only after one player suffered horrendous leg injuries) and three-stump wickets. Some of the characters are given, sometimes lengthy, pen-portraits: WG Grace, Fry, Trumper obviously, but also some the early pioneers, Mynn, Felix, Beldham and "Lumpy" Stevens. The early administrators of the game probably wouldn't look out of place in the MCC today, Lords Harris and Hawke being both paternalistic and dictatorial at the same time. This really is a page tuner for anyone interested in the game and an absolute must for anyone disenchanted with the current fashion for cheerleaders, rock music and sledging which has destroyed so much of the game's appeal.
Enjoyable December 24, 2007
Very Enjoyable purchase! I enjoyed reading this, even if the plot's somewhat rushed. Although there's a feeling that the text is there simply to fill up the spaces between the illustrations, there are enough laugh out loud moments and classic Pratchett twists to make it work.
 Affectionate, but rambling November 28, 2007
I picked this book off the shelf more out of curiosity about the author (of whom I am an admirer) than for any special love or knowledge of cricket - and then found myself immersed in the history of the game. The book is full of amusing anecdotes and interesting insights, and I felt I got right inside Sir John Major's mind. But the book could have done with a firmer hand on the editing, in my opinion. It is rather rambling and self indulgent in places, and there were definitely places where some trimming would have been beneficial.
Unrivalled before 1800; less convincing thereafter October 1, 2007
5 out of 6 found this review helpful
Sir John is at his best in his descriptions of cricketers before the year 1800. He expertly probes the mists to bring us living, breathing characters - players and administrators (and one or two strident opponents of the game), who are unknown to the vast majority of even cricket's own family. Thereafter, I felt he had less to offer as he is covering territory that has been examined many times before, although he at least does so from the perspective of a man reconciled to the realities of modern sport.
There are some curious omissions - no mention at all of the very first international cricket match (it was between Canada and the USA in 1844, Canada winning in two days), and he seems to dismiss North American cricket altogether as if it did not exist outside the islands of the Caribbean - perhaps in his eagerness to include an old joke about the five day game. But he also gives insightful comments on cricket's likely future being dominated by the subcontinent and explains why England can no longer claim cricket as her own. These insights are thought-provoking, albeit he sometimes disguises opinion as fact.
Sir John's book will remind many of his term of office in that it starts strongly and then trails off. If this seems unkind, Sir John invites the comparison with a swipe at New Labour (over the lottery) that seems entirely out of place and unjustified. There is no doubting Sir John's authority on cricket, but the weakest parts of the book come when he attempts to discuss other sports with the same authority. He also uses the word England instead of Britain on an irritating number of occasions (such as when referring to the winners of the Olympic gold medal for cricket in 1900).
As for describing one cricketer with the words "as English as Henry VIII", I can only wonder if a biography of Gareth Edwards ("as Welsh as Winston Churchill"?) will be Sir John's next venture!
On the whole, though, I am greatly the better informed about the game's early origins for having read Sir John's work. Cricket has given sport the greatest literary heritage of all, and "More Than A Game" will occupy a proud place on the cricketer's bookshelf.
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