Poet and Cricketer

New Zealand Listener, Volume 21, Issue 523, 1 July 1949, Page 24

Poet and Cricketer

MONGST the team of commentators which the BBC is using to cover the New Zealand cricket tour this year, the one who has perhaps appealed most to local listeners is John Arlott, whose expert descriptions, witty asides, and dry humour have done much to enliven the long nights of Test listening. It will be no news to some listeners. and no_ surprise for others that Arlott has been broadcasting cricket for many years, that he went with the. MCC side to India, helped to cover the Australians’ tour last /year and the visit of the South Africans in 1947. But it may _- surprise many people to learn that he is also a poet, and has-been published in Englarid’s highbrow

literary magazine Horizon, He has also produced (for the BBC) a very successful series of programmes called Modern Poetry Maégazine, which, listeners in this country will soon be able to hear. .In his normal occupation Arlott, who is 35, works as a Talks Producer in the BBC’s Regional Programmes for India, Pakistan, and €eylon, but poetry and cricket (or rather cricket and Poetry) are his main interests. Cricket is for him a mixture of business and pleasure which delights him as a player, a historian, and a writer with an eye to its grace and poetry. He has played for his home county, -Hampshire, having been "permitted *to field as twelfth man," as he once said, and has also played in charity matches in Worcestershire. His numerous books on cricket include Gone to the Cricket, an account of the’ 1947 South African tour, Indian Summer, an account of Britain’s first

post-war season, and From Hambledon to Lord’s, a series of classic cricketing articles which he edited and introduced. He says he did not think of writing poetry until he was 29, and then without thought of publication, A friend who liked his first effort, so the story goes, sent it to Horizon, which accepted it, and seven out of nine of his later contributions. While working for the BBC he has had experience of most phases of radio. He produced The Old Man, a centenary radio tribute to W. G. Grace, and also produced and acted in a 60-minute memorial programme about Gandhi. He has read the lesson in a Christmas Day church service, sung briefly in a programme called Britain’s Our Doorstep, and given countryman’s talks, in which his broad Hampshire accent and his family’s farming background were very helpful.