The art of cricket: A book on the life, foibles and all, of Neville Cardus

Hamilton has written a marvellous book about a now-forgotten figure. It will be enjoyed by all those who remember and value cricket

Cricket is the rare sport that has produced a large corpus of outstanding writing, some of it bordering on literature of a very high quality. One name is inextricably associated with cricket writing as literature — Neville Cardus. An autodidact from Manchester who did not even know who his father was, he worked for the then Manchester Guardian and raised writing on cricket to an art form. His ambition was to be an acclaimed music critic. His writing on music was not extraordinary but his writing on cricket — its players, its grounds, its atmosphere, knowledge of the game — was