Cricket, it has often been said, is more than a game. To many it evokes a golden age of gentlemanly conduct and sunlit afternoons on the village green. This book celebrates cricket as a sport, the king of games, and as a social phenomenon that has grown over the centuries to encompass the professionalism of the Test Match as well as the enduring tradition of amateur tournaments. Very few sports have produced the abundance of literature associated with cricket at every level of the game. In both verse and prose, writers have recorded their love of cricket with passion and enthusiasm, and this collection draws on a range of material - historical documents, anecdotes, reportage, fictional set-pieces and celebratory verse. Over 200 years of cricketing heroes and villains, classic matches, notorious controversies, famous players and equally famous writers - names such as W.G. Grace, Garfield Sobers, Neville Cardus, Frank Keating, John Arlott - are all included here, together with lesser-known writings from out-of-the-way county records and local newspapers.