More Than a Game: The Story of Cricket's Early Years
AuthorJohn Major
CountryUnited Kingdom
LanguageEnglish
PublisherHarperCollins
Publication date
2007
Media typePrint
Pages400
ISBN9780007280117

More Than a Game: The Story of Cricket's Early Years is a 2007 book about the history of cricket written by former British prime minister John Major. It was published by HarperCollins.

Background

John Major had been known to have a life long love of cricket.[1] After losing the 1997 United Kingdom general election, he went to the Oval for an afternoon of cricket.[2] Major would become the President of Surrey County Cricket Club from 2000 to 2001 (and Honorary Life Vice-president since 2002). The launch of the book was done at the Oval in a room named after himself.[3]

Content

Major traces the history of the game from its nebulae origins from the medieval games "creag" and "club-ball", through its denunciation by the clergy and violence in the 17th and 18th century, to the exuberance of Victorian players, concluding at the end of the first world war.[2][4]

Reception

Roger Mosey, writing in The Guardian found that Major's enjoyment of the game shone through his history of it, and particularly enjoyed Major's personalisation the narrative.[1] Historian Dominic Sandbrook, in The Daily Telegraph, was also positive of the book, finding it "very charming and quintessentially English".[2] Jack Williams, of The Independent, was more critical, finding that the biographical approach taken by Major resulted in "a potted history of a particular time in a chapter's first pages without any explanation of the effects of social and economic changes on cricket" and opining that that academic historians would find the background history to be simplistic.[4]

References

  1. 1 2 Mosey, Roger (19 May 2007). "Playing a straight bat". The Guardian. Retrieved 26 August 2023.
  2. 1 2 3 Sandbrook, Dominic (19 May 2007). "A Politician addicted to spin". The Daily Telegraph. p. 183. Retrieved 26 August 2023 – via Newspapers.com.
  3. ↑ Briggs, Simon (17 May 2007). "Lara turns into team player". The Daily Telegraph. p. 60. Retrieved 26 August 2023 – via Newspapers.com.
  4. 1 2 Williams, Jack (25 May 2007). "No Spin, but little bounce". The Independent. p. 107. Retrieved 26 August 2023 – via Newspapers.com.
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