Post by hhsussex on Jan 14, 2015 9:00:01 GMT
"Neville Cardus, self-made snob and cricket sage, once opined: 'Where the English language is unspoken there can be no real cricket, which is to say that the Americans have never excelled at the game.' Compared with Shaw's concise quip about the Americans and the English being two peoples separated by a common language, this is mere abuse. But what a world of prejudice is revealed in Cardus's smug aphorism."
That is the opening of the late Mike Marqusee's wonderful book "Anyone But England", which is and will remain required reading for any cricket lover with an open mind and critical faculties intact. An American in England, a Marxist, a Jew, Marqusee, who has died of multiple myeloma, was a representative of many minorities, a writer who cut through the bull, and a shrewd and witty observer of the game, who never made the mistake of thinking it to be divorced from politics and social life.
Indeed the early chapters of "Anyone But England" are a wonderful, coruscating social analysis of the development of organised cricket that gleefully tramples its way through the assembled sacred cows of the myth of the rural game, the nobility of the amateur approach and the endless preoccupation with inventing traditions, that must then be instantly revered, that have characterised the way that the grandees of the game have always sought to legitimise their own interests. A later book, "War Minus the Shooting", employs the same weapons of wit, insight and keen analysis to the politics of the emerging Asian power bloc through the medium of the 1996 World Cup tournament.
But with all this critical array Marqusee's writing is never shrill, ponderous or lacking in humour. The opening quote about Cardus illustrates how little reputations matter, and his chapter synopses are small masterpieces of wit. Chapter 3 'The Cathedral and the Cult' of A.B.E features:
Lord's 1987: an invented tradition * William Clarke's tragic pioneers * Cricket's first ideologist * The dictatorship of the MCC * The great pretenders * Workers in whites * The stillbirth of county cricket * Empire * 'Play the game, Lord Hawke!' * Legacy : the teflon canvas
He will be much missed and I hope that more of his writings, on cricket, politics, and latterly the NHS - he spent 7 years coping with his illness before it killed him and he was a critical observer of his treatment - will be published and gain the audience it deserves. Thankfully Neil Beck had a copy of A.B.E. at Hove this year and I am in his debt as I am to Mike Marqusee.
Andy Bull appreciation of Mike Marqusee from the Guardian
That is the opening of the late Mike Marqusee's wonderful book "Anyone But England", which is and will remain required reading for any cricket lover with an open mind and critical faculties intact. An American in England, a Marxist, a Jew, Marqusee, who has died of multiple myeloma, was a representative of many minorities, a writer who cut through the bull, and a shrewd and witty observer of the game, who never made the mistake of thinking it to be divorced from politics and social life.
Indeed the early chapters of "Anyone But England" are a wonderful, coruscating social analysis of the development of organised cricket that gleefully tramples its way through the assembled sacred cows of the myth of the rural game, the nobility of the amateur approach and the endless preoccupation with inventing traditions, that must then be instantly revered, that have characterised the way that the grandees of the game have always sought to legitimise their own interests. A later book, "War Minus the Shooting", employs the same weapons of wit, insight and keen analysis to the politics of the emerging Asian power bloc through the medium of the 1996 World Cup tournament.
But with all this critical array Marqusee's writing is never shrill, ponderous or lacking in humour. The opening quote about Cardus illustrates how little reputations matter, and his chapter synopses are small masterpieces of wit. Chapter 3 'The Cathedral and the Cult' of A.B.E features:
Lord's 1987: an invented tradition * William Clarke's tragic pioneers * Cricket's first ideologist * The dictatorship of the MCC * The great pretenders * Workers in whites * The stillbirth of county cricket * Empire * 'Play the game, Lord Hawke!' * Legacy : the teflon canvas
He will be much missed and I hope that more of his writings, on cricket, politics, and latterly the NHS - he spent 7 years coping with his illness before it killed him and he was a critical observer of his treatment - will be published and gain the audience it deserves. Thankfully Neil Beck had a copy of A.B.E. at Hove this year and I am in his debt as I am to Mike Marqusee.
Andy Bull appreciation of Mike Marqusee from the Guardian
