The Willow Wand - Derek Birley

Cricket has always been "more than a game" - to some it has seemed like an ethical religion, a training for war, or a high art form; always, though, it has been the quintessentially English sport. The roots of its powerful mythology and romantic literature lie deep in the past, and its values reflect a vanished age - the glorious heyday of late Victorian and Edwardian splendour when golden amateurs consolidated the Empire and withstood the Kaiser.;"The Willow Wand" explores in spirited fashion the gap between myth and reality. It looks at amateurism in which the gentlemen were paid more than the players; a folk-hero, W.G.Grace, who was 'too clever to cheat'; the virility cult; the ruthless D.R.Jardine putting down the colonial upstart Bradman; the autocrats of MCC; Lord Harris rooting out Bolshevism at home and building up cricket in India; Sir Pelham Warner upholding the high moral code; Sir Neville Cardus bestowing intellectual respectability on a feudal dream; and - in more recent times - riots in the West Indies, the D'Oliveira affair, and the advent of Kerry Packer.