JOY IN OBSCURITY

New Zealand Listener, Volume 30, Issue 778, 18 June 1954, Page 14

JOY IN OBSCURITY

THE WEAVING WILLOW, by John Marshall, with a foreword by John Arlott; Hodder and Stoughton, English price 7/6. [HIS is a cricket book with a difference. One or two eminent players walk into it, and many more are impersonated by youngsters in garden or

street (I did this myself once), or are discussed round the bar, but primarily and almost entirely it is about very minor cricket, from domestic nursery to village green. We need reminding periodically, as John Arlott reminds us here, that only a handful of men play in the mind-racking tests, but thousands, or tens of thousands if we cast widely enough, toil obscurely on the grass and get a lot of fun out of it. John Arlott has known fine players who did not enjoy the game, but he says all bad cricketers do enjoy it. Like much English humour, the book suffers from tepid over-dilution, and arch thrashing of situations. Though the detailed accounts of children’s games awakened memories, I found them boring, and was happier when John Marshall grew up. The English seem to lose their heads easily over children. And it is astonishing that in this year of grace (or rather, Hutton) Mr. Marshall, editor of a London daily, should inflict on us a whole chapter on a Frenchman’s impressions of the game, done in the traditional broken English of the stage. However, there are some bright spots, including good stories, and "Gus’s" drawings are the funniest I have ever seen on the subject, or perhaps for any

game. Don't miss them.

A.

M.