The art of anthology

The former Australian prime minister and cricket lover Sir Robert Menzies made the point many years ago that "cricket is a summer game for the player and observer, but a winter game for the reader and thinker who sits by the fireside and evokes imperishable memories".

There is among cricket enthusiasts an anthological imperative that makes them hungry for the well compiled and edited collection of writings on the game. Such anthologies fall into two categories: the best of - in the manner of rock stars, and the best among. The difference is not merely prepositional.

The first is a collection of a single writer's work, as in Ray Robinson's After Stumps Were Drawn and Cardus on the Ashes. Among Indian writers, there are the collections of the late Sujit Mukherjee's writings on the game. Indian publishers shy away from anthologies, arguing, speciously that there is no market for compilations from works previously published in newspapers and magazines. Yet who wouldn't like to read the best of KN Prabhu, NS Ramaswami, Ramachandra Guha, Rajan Bala, TG Vaidyanathan, Sunil Gavaskar, Bishan Bedi to name a few?

The second category, the best-among variety, has seen some fine books which serve a dual purpose. They bring to light old, often inaccessible, pieces on the one hand, and also give the casual reader a chance to acquaint himself with the works of well known writers.

"Each anthology should differ from all the others," wrote Philip Derriman in his introduction to Bat and Pad, a collection of writings on Australian cricket, "for each is an expression of the anthologist's personal taste."

Having said that - and I am looking at about half a dozen anthologies as I write this - no anthology is likely to exclude Neville Cardus. He was prolific, and his name has almost become a generic one for cricket writing. Just as no "All-time World XI" is likely to exist without Don Bradman, no anthology, not even one on Indian cricket (An Indian Cricket Omnibus, for example) will drop Cardus.

There are, of course, some pieces that will pop up in most anthologies. Cardus on Bradman, Francis Thompson's poem, "At Lord's" with its "O my Hornby and my Barlow long ago!", and at least a dozen others are favourites of anthologists. This is not a bad thing, because just as the paying customer at a cricket match likes to identify favourite players, readers like to feel the comfort of having old favourites in a collection.

That is why there is no such thing as the ideal anthology. A collection must contain some familiar pieces, some that are not available anywhere else, some quirky pieces, some written by well known names in other fields - it should be a combination of scholarship and fun. But that's only one opinion.

The Cricketer's Companion edited by Alan Ross has a wide range. As Ross says, "I aimed at two things - a book that contained the most essential and enjoyable writing on cricket, and one that gave as inclusive a view of the great landmarks."

The most popular and recent of the anthologies was edited by Ramachandra Guha. He writes in The Picador Book of Cricket that "it is both a homage and an epitaph, a tribute to the finest writers on the game and an acknowledgement that the great days of cricket literature are behind us". You may or may not agree with that, but it will not interfere with your enjoyment of the book, especially since Guha has taken care to move away from the Anglo-centric representations in other anthologies.

Recently I picked up two fine anthologies. The Faber Book of Cricket edited by Michael Davie and Simon Davie. The former tells us in the introduction that he was the first to point out that Samuel Beckett is the only Nobel Prize winner to be mentioned in Wisden. Beckett played for Trinity College, Dublin on a tour of England. He was also taught English literature by Edmund Blunden, the poet who wrote the classic Cricket Country during the second World War.

The second, published in 1948 is called The English Game and edited by Gerald Brodribb, cricket historian and biographer of Maurice Tate and Gilbert Jessop, and an archaeologist to boot. When Brodribb died, a student from an American university sent out a message with the words, "Brodribb is dead, but I believe he is better known as a cricket writer in some places."

There is much overlapping among anthologies, but like a cricket team they get their strength from what makes them different.