In opening The Cambridge Companion to Cricket, I quickly scan the Contents and find seventeen chapters by different authors on some pretty heady topics: ‘Cricket Pastoral and Englishness’, corruption, broadcasting, ‘Bodyline, Jardine and Masculinity’, Don Bradman, Kerry Packer, C.L.R. James, Brian Lara, ‘The Detachment of West Indies Cricket from the Nationalist Scaffold’, the Indian Premier League, Sachin Tendulkar, India–Pakistan cricket relations, roots of apartheid, cricket writing and the game, and international politics. My guides are a mixture of distinguished sports historians – Richard Cashman, Jack Williams, Hilary Beckles, Boria Majumdar, and Andre Odendaal – with other sporting and literary scholars. Only David Frith, Mihir Bose, and Rob Steen have established a wider popular audience. It promises to be quite a journey.

I begin by perusing a ten-page Chronology of the game at the start of the book, which covers the period from the early eighteenth century to the present. One element stands out: the listing of thirty-five significant books published over 300 years. Unsurprisingly, the tyranny of the present delivers thirteen from the last thirty years, but what is remarkable is that seven of the authors of those books are contributors to this volume. It is a wee bit self-serving. Editors Anthony Bateman and Jeffrey Hill, in their Introduction, are conscious of academic sports history being ‘a small room in a very large mansion of cricket writing’, and of sport being ‘too enjoyable a business to be entrusted to academics’, but they press ahead and signal the development of big themes: cricket’s heritage articulated through literature; shorter forms of the game mediated through television; problems posed by commercialisation; the worldwide development of cricket; international politics of cricket and shifting power balances; and the place of the game in forming regional, national, ethnic, and other social identities.

In essence, the book achieves its aims, although, with twenty contributors (three chapters are co-authored), it is only to be expected that some writers are more cogent and eloquent than others. In his opening chapter on ‘Cricket Pastoral and Englishness’, Bateman spends so much time demolishing the pastoral myth that it is not until his penultimate paragraph that he acknowledges the social importance of cricket clubs in village communities; while David Frith devotes two-thirds of his discussion of corruption to events since the 1990s.

Balance is important. Jack Williams, in examining broadcasting in England, remarks on radio and television projecting different images of cricket, and occasional conflict being evident on Test Match Special (radio) between public and grammar school men. Richie Benaud, who began as a television commentator in England in 1964, Williams says, ‘has often been praised for saying so little’. Is Benaud’s secret that he read Marshall McLuhan’s Understanding Media (published the same year) and has understood better than his peers that television is a cool medium and that it is up to the audience to complete the picture?

Patrick McDevitt offers an impressive new interpretation of Bodyline by focusing squarely on Douglas Jardine’s masculinity. In what is possibly the best line in the book, he states, ‘Jardine’s worldview was that of the high Victorian period, when the British ruled the waves and waived the rules.’ The first two West Indian chapters – on James, by Kenneth Surin, and, intriguingly, ‘Reading Brian Lara and the Traditions of Caribbean Cricket Poetry’, by Claire Westall – lumber in places, though Beckles, in a third on cricket and nationalism, is impressive when he contrasts national leadership styles with Frank Worrell (Founding Father), Gary Sobers (King), Clive Lloyd (Statesman), Vivian Richards (General), Lara (Prince), and Chris Gayle (the Don of the posse). ‘Gayle is the man his team wants, though the West Indian community is deeply divided as to whether he is who it needs.’

Majumdar writes the most scintillating prose, and often it is about business as much as it is about cricket; but then, Indian cricket is big business and the world’s cricket axis, political as well as economic, appears firmly balanced there. Majumdar makes bold claims such as that ‘18 April 2008 will go down in cricket history as the date when cricket changed forever’. Who can argue with him when the Indian Premier League has shown that a competition based around city-based franchises provides such a lucrative proposition?

All the Test-playing nations, apart from Zimbabwe and Bangladesh, are the subjects of special chapters. Australian readers will be specially interested in those on Packer and Bradman. In ‘The Packer Cricket War’, Richard Cashman reprises his excellent research of a generation ago, much of which appeared in his book, ‘Ave a Go Yer Mug!: Australian Cricket Crowds from Larrikin to Ocker (1984). However, the most contentious chapter in this book is that on Bradman.

In the past decade, I have questioned tendencies to deify The Don and attempted to reduce the religiosity associated with his relics. I share Tom Heenan and David Dunstan’s distaste for John Howard’s politicisation of Bradman, as expressed in their chapter, ‘Don Bradman: Just a Boy from Bowral’. I would not normally damn a revisionist approach, but, I will do so here, for the sake of balance, as Heenan and Dunstan strike an unnecessarily nasty tone. It may seem unfair to pluck such words and expressions as ‘not a sociable child’, ‘loner’, ‘reticence to socialise with team-mates’, ‘conservatively minded Australian businessman’, ‘individualist’, ‘aloof and a self-promoter’, ‘Protestant and Masonic’, ‘professional cricketer and part-time stockbroker’s office worker’, ‘shamateur’, ‘need to dominate’, and ‘a limited education and a narrow and inflexible world view’ from their text, but the cumulative effect is carping. True, Bradman had flaws, but that is part of being human. Where is the mention of his dressing room names ‘Braddles’ and ‘George’, which are evidence of an easier-going team-mate, or of the frequent dinners with ‘Chuck’ Fleetwood-Smith (wild boy, drinker, ladies man, Catholic) at the start of the 1938 English tour? And where is the mention of the loving husband to Jessie or of his loyalty to fans, for whom Bradman not merely scribbled a signature but signed with a neat hand until his nineties. He spent a lot of time on his mail (without recompense), and there are many kindly stories told of his giving lengthy advice in letters, especially to young cricketers. It could well be argued that he dealt with fame in a measured, controlled way and much better than most leading sports stars who have succeeded him.

The back cover of The Cambridge Companion to Cricket quotes former Australian batsman and coach Geoff Marsh describing it as a ‘must-read for any cricketing enthusiast’. Cerebral cricket enthusiast would be more like it. The book is a demanding yet rewarding read and a valuable snapshot view of world cricket.