The Willow Wand

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.