“It is curious,” Neville Cardus wrote in this newspaper in December 1928, “how the sense of style and class will make itself felt even through a cable read thousands of miles from the spot.”
This, in the end, is perhaps the most important job of the cricket writer, and what makes reporting more than the mere reproduction of scores and statistics with the occasional added adjective. The reader’s ability to judge a player has been rendered significantly easier since Cardus’s time by the advent of, well, almost everything we now use to watch and learn about cricket except paper, ink and eyes. Still, the writer’s job continues to be done, and with a bit of luck the sense of style and class continues to make itself felt.
Written by Simon Burnton
This news first appeared on https://www.theguardian.com/sport/2019/feb/26/bradman-hetmyer-writers-judgment-the-spin-cricket under the title “The Spin | From Bradman to Hetmyer, the best writers’ judgment stands out – mostly”. Bolchha Nepal is not responsible or affiliated towards the opinion expressed in this news article.
