Stories of cricket's finest painting - Jonathan Rice

Kent v Lancashire 1906 tells the story of a remarkable painting, commissioned at the height of cricket's golden age and at the apogee of Britain's colonial power. The man whose idea it was, the fourth Lord Harris, chairman of Kent County Cricket Club, was no aesthete; but in asking Albert Chevallier Tayler, a cricket-loving painter, to paint a scene from Kent's triumphant season, showing Colin Blythe bowling to Johnny Tyldesley, he helped create a masterpiece that changed the way we look at cricket. The painting now hangs at Lord's, having been sold by Kent in 2006 for GBP600,000, then a record amount for a cricket painting. A full-size copy still hangs at Canterbury. The book also follows the lives of the players and umpires portrayed in the painting, two of whom did not survive the Great War. The painting may be timeless, but changes in the way cricket is played, administered and financed in Britain mean that many aspects of the game today would be unrecognisable to those sun-blessed men on the Canterbury turf over a century ago.