C. A. W. Manning

Out To Grass—and a Lingering Look Behind

The ’not so sparing’ way of telling of the past was something to Professor Carr’s eschewing of which Professor Trevor Roper took such articulate exception. The full story of, for instance, a cricket innings is but poorly perpetuated in the mere figures in the book. What about all those attempted strokes that didn’t quite make contact? And those fast ones that a fellow barely managed to stop? And the chances he gave, which people unaccountably missed?

Varieties of Worldly Wisdom

The English and American ways of life have more than a little in common. Except however when “Rhodes Scholars in reverse,” Englishmen do not “major.” Instead, they “specialize”—a very, very few in International Relations. Some of these do it in London. This article is on what that means. In cricket—a staple, incidentally, of the English way of life—there are broadly two techniques for bringing a ball to “turn from the off.” One, the less usual, is the “googly.” Fifty years ago it was a rarity indeed. Yet the writer knew in those days a fellow-schoolboy who, bowling googlies, was unaware that not everybody did. To him, they seemed the natural way to have a ball “turn from the off.”