Cricket and the World Cup

This is a blog about crime fiction, but occasionally I like to feature other books that interest me, especially if I can introduce a crime-related element. With the ICC Cricket World Cup now in full swing, I've had a chance to catch up with the official book about the tournament, put together by Chris Hawkes, and published by Carlton. It's a glossy production, lavishly illustrated, with plenty of interesting background information.

For instance, I had no idea that cricket was being played in Afghanistan way back in 1839, long before Dr Watson picked up a Jezail bullet prior to meeting Sherlock Holmes. Arthur Conan Doyle was a keen cricketer, and the names of Sherlock and his brother Mycroft both derived from cricketers - Frank Shacklock and William Mycroft, who played for Derbyshire, a county that Doyle knew well.

International cricket has occasionally featured in crime fiction - for instance in Testkill, co-authored by cricketer Ted Dexter and journalist Clifford Makins - but more often it crops up incidentally, in the context of county or (more often) village matches. Authors as diverse as Julian Symons and Henry Wade have set scenes in their crime novels at cricket games, though perhaps the best known example is the cricket match in Dorothy L. Sayers' Murder Must Advertise. And in my current novel-in-progress, for the first time, I am featuring a cricket match in a key scene. The game plays a significant part in one of the sub-plots.

When I get the chance I am keen to watch some of the games in the World Cup, but there is always the consolation that if rain stops play, there are plenty of books to keep me fully occupied; not just the souvenir book about the tournament, but novels which it's time I re-read, such as Alibi Innings by Barbara Worsley-Gough, Pro by Bruce Hamilton (a crime novelist, though it isn't a crime novel) and my favourite cricket book, Settling the Score by Peter Gibbs.

Cricket and Crime

Cricket is my favourite sport, even ahead of football, and I'm quite sure that no other sport has a comparably impressive literature. There are plentiful connections between cricket and crime fiction - Lord Peter Wimsey's cricketing feats in Murder Must Advertise and the Ted Dexter/Clifford Makins thriller Testkill are just the tip of the iceberg.

J.Jefferson Farjeon, for instance, was a keen cricket fan (he wrote an intro to a cricket book by his brother Herbert) and cricket features recurrently in his crime fiction. This feature of his work is highlighted in an insightful piece about Thirteen Guests in Cricket County

The author of that article, Arunabha Sengupta, is also the author of the recently published, Sherlock Holmes and the Birth of the Ashes, published by Maxbooks, which begins, rather wittily I think, "To Sherlock Holmes, it was always the match".. It's a snappy, well-researched,story, and the humour is a bonus. I should also mention briefly a book I've just received but not had time to read, The Rules of Backyard Cricket by Australia's Jock Serong (Text Publishng), which is described as being in the tradition of Peter Temple.

Finally, and with no connection to crime - except that if you are a cricket fan it would be a crime to miss it! - I'd like to mention In Their Own Words, by Steve Dolman, aka blogger Peakfan (Pitch Publishing). The book gathers together interviews with Derbyshire cricketers over the years, including several of my boyhood heroes, such as Harold Rhodes the most successful wicket-keeper in history, Bob Taylor. and Peter Gibbs, author of that wonderfully entertaining novel Settling the Score. I found it absolutely riveting, and I'll treasure my copy, signed by several of those heroes. And even if you're not a cricket fan, the insight into the everyday lives of county cricketers, especially in the twenty five years or so after the  Second World War, is full of interest.

Forgotten Book - Testkill

Successful crime novels with a sporting background are rare – Dick Francis’ racing thrillers being a notable exception. Cricket, a complex game that provokes passionate devotion in its fans and baffled boredom in its detractors, features as a background element in quite a number of crime novels, perhaps most famously in Murder Must Advertise by Dorothy L. Sayers, while the gentleman burglar Raffles was a skilled bowler. Sir Arthur Conan Doyle was a cricketer and huge fan of the game, but sadly he never involved Sherlock Holmes in a cricketing mystery.

My latest entry in Patti Abbott's series of Forgotten Books is Testkill, in which cricket is very much in the foreground. Testkill was co-written by Ted Dexter, a former England cricket captain, and one of the game’s most charismatic figures (‘Lord Ted’ was his nickname, and he played to entertain, unlike many of his contemporaries n the dour 1960s), and Clifford Makins, a journalist. It was first published n 1976 and I devoured it the following year, as soon as Penguin published it in paperback – it was the first book I read when recovering from over-indulgence after my final exams at university, and the light, agreeable mystery definitely assisted the recovery process!

The setting is a Lord’s Test Match, with England playing Australia. When one of the bowlers collapses and drops dead in mid-pitch, it soon becomes apparent that murder has been done. The background is authentically done, and this is the real appeal of the book. The whodunit plot isn’t really in the Christie class, but it’s a breezy thriller, and it achieved enough success to tempt Dexter and Makins to write a follow-up, this time set in the golfing world, called Deadly Putter, which I haven't read. If you fancy a bit of escapism with lashings of cricket lore, Testkill is still worth a read.