The most famous lines of poetry in cricket literature were written by Francis Thompson.

"As the run-stealers flicker to and fro, / To and fro / O my Hornby and my Barlow long ago!"

Thompson gave up the study of medicine to write poetry of a spiritual nature, occasionally indulging in light verse about cricket, and a parody of Edward Fitzgerald's Omar Khayyam. He was 47 when he died in 1907. Poets of the game owe him, much as the prose writers owe Neville Cardus.


The game of cricket lends itself to evocative poetry, as do the moral values imposed on it by writers. But the finest and most touching poems are about the players. John Arlott's tribute to Jack Hobbs on his seventieth birthday, reads in part:

"There was a wisdom so informed your bat

To understanding of the bowler's trade

That each resource of strength or skill he used

Seemed but the context of the stroke you played.

The Master: records prove the title good;

Yet figures fail you, for they cannot say

How many men whose names you never knew

Are proud to tell their sons they saw you play ... "


It is difficult to top that, although the following picture painted by Alan Ross in "Test Match at Lord's" is hard to beat since it describes so many elements in so concise a manner:


"Bailey bowling, MacLean cuts him late for one.

I walk from the Long Room into slanting sun.

Two ancients halt as Statham starts his run.

Then, elbows linked, but straight as sailors

On a tilting deck, they move. One, square-shouldered as a tailor's

Model, leans over, whispering in the other's ear:

'Go easy. Steps here. This end bowling.'

Turning, I watch Barnes guide Rhodes into fresher air,

As if to continue an innings, though Rhodes may only

Play by ear."

Thompson's poem, however, is the most referred to, parodied and quoted of all cricket poems. It is a tribute to nostalgia, and one that can be made contemporary by substituting the names of Barlow and Hornby with those of Sobers and Kanhai, or Gavaskar and Viswanath, or Richards and Pollock - the permutations are endless. And that is its magic.


(Source of this Knowledge: Espncricinfo )