THE two figures at the heart of this book, E. W. Swanton and John Arlott, were cricket writers and broadcasters from the 1930s to the 1980s. In this period, the element of cricket which they both loved the most, the County Championship, moved from popularity to obscurity, being superseded by other forms of the game.

What David Kynaston and Stephen Fay do in this book is use cricket as a prism through which to view change in the English nation: after all, where better to assess the class system than a sport in which, right up until 1962, there was an annual fixture between Gentlemen (amateurs) and Players (professionals)?

In broad strokes, Swanton represented the public school mentality; Arlott represented the mind of the working man. Swanton spent his cricket writing life defending essentially Establishment positions, and networking among the elite. Arlott, meanwhile, meandered into cricket journalism after a decade as a police constable, and had come from working-class roots, though ended up in the same world.

Fay and Kynaston describe how each man reacted to the various crises that faced cricket in these times, including the protests against the South Africa tour of 1970, and the invasion of television under Kerry Packer. More broadly, they trace the ups and downs of English cricket, by quoting extensively from both Arlott and Swanton’s journalism and commentary. As such, it is a strange hybrid of a book; it is partly biography, but more truly it is writing about writing, and the cricket itself is merely the subject held in common.

E. W. (“Jim”) Swanton (left) with the Archbishop of Canterbury, Robert Runcie, and the Bishop of Liverpool, David Sheppard, in the background, at the Lambeth Conference cricket match in 1988. From the book reviewed below

Ultimately, the writers essentially prefer Arlott’s approach to that of Swanton. For the reader with a church background, one cannot help but note the parallels between Arlott’s love of a county championship game played out with joy and spirit, but with only a bare smattering of spectators, and the love for the Church of those who attend traditional services, and don’t much care whether there are only five people at matins on Sunday, so long as it is done with reverence. For Arlott, this is where the soul of the game lies.

The Revd Robert Stanier is Vicar of St Andrew and St Mark, Surbiton, and plays for the Southwark clergy cricket team.

Arlott, Swanton and the Soul of English Cricket
Stephen Fay and David Kynaston
Bloomsbury £20
(978-1-4088-9540-5)
Church Times Bookshop £18