Review: Archie Henderson

Test Cricket: A History, by Tim Wigmore (Quercus)

To write the history of Test cricket in one volume is a bit like trying to score a century before lunch, take a hat-trick by tea and win by an innings before close of play. Can’t be done. Now Tim Wigmore might have done it.

It had been done only once before, but at a time when there was a lot less to write about. A History of Cricket by Jim Swanton and Harry Altham was first published in 1926 when Test cricket had not yet reached its 50s. By the time of its 1962 edition it had grown into two substantial volumes.

The scale of Wigmore’s undertaking is enormous. To give an idea how difficult it must have been to contain Test cricket to a single volume, consider this: eminent historian and former first-class cricketer Andre Odendaal wrote three volumes on just South African cricket. And Wisden needs between 1 500 and 1 700 pages to cover one season. When the compact, distinctively yellow-covered almanack, which can also serve as a doorstopper, first appeared in the 19^th century, it was under 200 pages.

All this gives you an idea of how selective Wigmore needed to be for a book that has arrived a year before Test cricket celebrates its 150^th anniversary.

Over five years Wigmore read more than 300 books and articles, and listened to a variety of broadcasts. He says he was standing on the shoulders of those who had come before him.

He pays particular attention to players who helped shape the game.

“This means that players with unremarkable statistics who emerged at a critical juncture in their country’s development, like Tiger Pataudi, get extensive coverage; titans in less successful or declining sides, like Graham Gooch or Shivnarine Chanderpaul, regrettably get much less,” he says of the challenges he faced.

Rather than attempting encyclopaedic coverage, the book is labelled a “narrative history” and primarily tells the story episodically – by chronologically describing certain characters and events in depth. This is why there is no mention of Jack Cheetham or Trevor Goddard, captains of South African teams who held powerful Australia to drawn series Down Under.

There’s also no mention of Dudley Nourse, South Africa’s pre-eminent batsman before World War 2 and just after. There is a single mention of his father, Arthur “Dave” Nourse, known as the Grand Old Man of South African cricket, but as bit-part player in a different South African story.

After playing their first Test in 1889, South Africa lost 10 of their next matches and drew with their 11^th. They had to find a way to compete against England and Australia, the two giants of the game at that point. They found a quartet of spin bowlers who “would become Test cricket revolutionaries”, Wigmore writes.

The story is legendary in the annals of South African cricket and every aficionado has heard it, but Wigmore’s re-telling is like meeting old friends again.

Reggie Schwarz, Aubrey Faulkner, Ernest Vogler and Gordon White were all wrist spinners, all proficient in what was then a new invention in bowling: the googly. This was a ball that appeared to be leg-break, a wrist-spinner’s conventional delivery that spun away from the right-handed batsman. The googly cunningly did the opposite – spinning into the right-hander – and it could be undetected from the bowler’s hand.

Between them the quartet took 43 wickets and South Africa won the 1906 home series against England. Many years later, Shane Warne would use the googly effectively – especially against South Africa.

That story in Wigmore’s book is about how the only two Test-playing nations in the world became three with South Africa entering the ring – not always with the consistent form and strength it began to exhibit from the 1990s.

He keeps the statistics to a minimum, which is difficult when writing about a sport where the match figures are an integral part of the game, aspired to by the participants, pored over and studied by the followers – and recited at length by bores at the club bar.

Cricket is also about personalities and anecdotes. And there are many.

Tiger Pataudi, mentioned earlier, overcame blindness in his right eye to become a leading batsman and led India to compete with the best (not South Africa, alas). He was a hereditary prince, the Nawab of Pataudi, who was once asked by Australia’s captain Ian Chappell what he did for a living.

“Ian,” he replied, “I’m a bloody prince.” At Heathrow, Pataudi was once asked if anyone could vouch for him in the UK. “Yes,” he said. “The Queen.”