Customer Reviews
Historical background to a great game - By: Willow Park, 29 Dec 2008 
My interestin cricket has recently been revived by watching my son play. I was looking for something to fillin the gapsin my knowledge - the orgins of the game, the history of Lords, W G Grace etc. This book does exactly that taking the reader as far as the start of the Great War & is written with obvious enthusiasm & love for the game of cricket. It occasionally slows whilst trying to give a historical context to events but overall it was an enjoyable & informative read. Ideal to tide you over whilst waiting for the new season to start!
More Than a Game: The Story of Cricket's Early Years
Thoroughly researched and an enjoyable read - By: M. V. Clarke, 28 Aug 2008 
John Major's love of cricket is well known & this weighty volume bears testament to it, along with his careful research & fine prose. Dealing with the development of cricket from its earliest days up to the early years of the C20th, Major tells the stories of key characters, places & events with an impressive depth of research butin a highly readable & entertaining way. Vivid word pictures of late C18th & C19th cricket are created & the colourful characters brought to life. Notable too is Major's ability to place cricket within the cultural, social & political context of the times. Highly recommended.
Not quite as good as expected - By: J. Hadaway, 20 Jul 2008 The quality of the research & the insight & love of cricket are evident, you can almost hear for better or worse John speaking when reading it. I did enjoy the book but feel some sections were a bit of a slog. This is mainly due to the organisation & editing. The book is not a chronological history but instead discrete chapters e.g The Missionry.., Round Arm rebellion. I was struggling after to reconstructin my mind when all events took place across the book. It also can lead to some jumping around. One paragrpah 1870 the next 1900 with no date reference. It just makes the big picture harder to picture & it can also seem like repetition.
Surprisingly good - By: G. L. Haggett, 26 May 2008 Anyone who read John Major's autobiography & found parts of it a little stodgy & hard going will be pleasantly surprised at the light touch he shows here.
He traces the early history of cricket, concentrating on the personalities, but also placing them into the wider context to show how social changein the country (and world) at large was reflectedin cricket.
There are times when he seems to have half an eye on the assiduously pedantic cricket statistician & goes to great lengths to "show his workings"in order to back up what he is saying, but the book is shot through with a great sense of the author's enthusiasm.
And not a jelly bean in sight...... - By: Caterkiller, 16 May 2008 The point of this book is that no-one is really sure where cricket began. It is largely accepted to have startedin a recognisable formin the early eighteenth century & from then it has been constantly metamorphisizing into the game we know & love. Before I read this I had never heard of "single wicket" cricket, played until the mid-19th Century but it would be intriguing to see such a match today between, say Andrew Flintoff & Andrew Symonds. Some of the facets of the game taken for granted today took years of controversey to develop: overarm bowling, leg pads (allowed only after one player suffered horrendous leg injuries) & three-stump wickets. Some of the characters are given, sometimes lengthy, pen-portraits: WG Grace, Fry, Trumper obviously, but also some the early pioneers, Mynn, Felix, Beldham & "Lumpy" Stevens. The early administrators of the game probably wouldn't look out of placein the MCC today, Lords Harris & Hawke being both paternalistic & dictatorial at the same time. This really is a page tuner for anyone interestedin the game & an absolute must for anyone disenchanted with the current fashion for cheerleaders, rock music & sledging which has destroyed so much of the game's appeal.
