Beer, verse and Arlott

The Beer Lover's Guide to Cricket ; 160pp £11.04

The premise was encouraging - beer and cricket rolled into one hardback sandwich - but it's hard to know who exactly this beautifully presented book is targeted at. It begins with the history of Hambledon, the birthplace of modern cricket and its neighbouring pub, the aptly named Bat and Ball. The author, Roger Protz, goes at great length to detail not only the game's history but its origins too.

Fascinating (and revealing, in some instances) though this is, eleven pages of origin is rather too generous for what is a "beer lover's" guide to cricket. The crux of the 157-page book revolves around England and Wales' county grounds, the history of each and the beer they offer.

But much like the historical preamble, there is too great an emphasis of the venues' past glories and statistical feats, and sadly less about the beer. One gem is Protz's "Beer at the ground" section but, inexplicably, not all grounds in the book are afforded one. Club members of Trent Bridge and Grace Road aren't that abstemious, are they?

However, Protz makes up for this exclusion with reviews of nearby pubs to the ground - an invaluable asset for any fan of the sport, let alone an ale junkie - with opening/closing times, addresses and clear colour photos of the premises.

It's a very enjoyable book to casually flick through, and undoubtedly useful if you're visiting a ground for the first time but it's heavy on history, light on beer.

It's a book without an identity, and you can't help feeling that a copy of Playfair, accompanied with a more robust guide to the pubs of Britain, would be a more valuable asset to your shelf, not to mention rucksack. Will Luke

A Breathless Hush - The MCC Anthology of Cricket Verse 435pp £14.99

Speaking of books to take to the cricket... A Breathless Hush, like a perfect soft-boiled egg, is great for dipping into and if you can drag it to the cricket (it is nearly 500 pages thick) - along with your mac, cool box, sunblock, paper, brolly - then it's perfect for a lazy day at Lord's, New Road or any similarly pretty ground. It would sit nicely on your coffee table or in your library. You get the picturesque.

When the book thudded onto my desk I wondered just where all this cricket verse had come from. My second thought, I must confess, was that it must include lots of filler for a tome that thick.

I was to be pleasantly disabused. The blurb promises the serious, the satirical, the earnest and the exuberant and, happily, it delivers. Like the cricketing picnic that it should accompany it, it's crammed full of interesting treats, variety, stuffing and has enough of the sour pickle to rescue it from being overly saccharine.

If anyone is to produce an anthology of cricket verse, then MCC is well placed to do so; blending weightiness (literally) and history - a perfect brand fit, as it were.

The editor, David Rayvern Allen, thankfully gives us some context with a page of explanation for each grouping of poems. And they've thoughtfully added two handy indices - one of first lines, one of poets - in a collection of verse that's nearly as old as cricket itself, blending high art and low doggerel to celebrate cricket at its most (and least) poetic. Some of the work is unashamedly the stuff of a thousand tea towels.

Some of it is quite charming - from the bizarre explanatory note on "The Duck's Egg"- "written on the shell of a duck's egg and found on the cricket field of Amersham Hall, 17 July 1886, after a match" to a poem on Ladies Cricket which dates back hundreds of years.

Parody can be grating, of course - and there's a whole section devoted to it - but Frank Keating's offerings raised a smile: "We three tweaks of Orient are, Bedi, Venkat, Chandrasekhar..." as did Simon Barnes' restyling of Botham as Hamlet. "On cricket, sex and housework", meanwhile, is one poem I will leave you to read for yourselves.

The £14.99 price tag is a bargain for a book which, as the verse can be read again and again, should last a lifetime. And, as with any good book, it's well laid out...
Jenny Thompson

The Vision Sings - John Arlott, The Voice Of Cricket 88pp £5

...but not quite as well laid out as The Vision Sings, a collection of John Arlott's greatest quotes set in a bold edgy design.

Arlott started at the BBC after the war presenting poetry and he wrote his own - it's included in the Breathless Hush book. If you just want unadulterated Arlott, though, this could be the book for you.

But before we consider the contents, let's consider the title. "The Vision sings" - what's that about? We know him as "The voice of cricket", but this sobriquet only gets a small subtitle on a rather sombre front cover which belies the fun contained within. Fun such as, on Dickie Bird, "not so much examining the pitch as pecking at it."

Some other of his best commentary gems are revisited: "Like an old lady poking her umbrella at a wasp's nest" - on Australian tailender Ernie Toshack's batting. But there's a serious side - some political insights. A bit early to be thinking of stocking fillers, but at a fiver this would be perfect fare. JT