"With Mike it was different. There was no pitying smile on Adair's face as he started his run preparatory to sending down the first ball. Mike, on the cricket field, could not have looked anything but a cricketer if he had turned out in a tweed suit and hobnail boots. Cricketer was written all over him - in his walk, in the way he took guard, in his stance at the wickets."
P.G Wodehouse, Mike: A Public School Story
Isabel Lucas in Vogue Australia December 2013
Not only because I just spent the last year reading all about it, but I find cricket very, very interesting. The love of the game - one quote I particularly like is, "it was only a game... but it was life!" - and the historical legacy, spread out across the colonial diaspora, that sound of leather on willow reverberating everywhere from Sydney to Simla (and yes, even Hong Kong, as my thesis went into great lengths about), the sheer illogicality of it, its convoluted, elaborate, maybe, yes, archaic set of rules, and, most of all, the ritual. I remember that ritual well; watching my brother in pristine, freshly laundered whites, grubbied only by a bit of sweat and grass patches on the knees ('I had to dive mum, to get the catch!'), swapping his sneakers for shiny school shoes, donning his bright cerulean blazer, and walking into the hall for tea break with his team-mates. Gathered around a table, shaking hands with the opposition over cucumber sandwiches and early grey. Where did this sport come from? That year when the cup was in question and it took a whole day before the points could be accurately tallied up I remember my brother's tense, tightly wound psyche bringing us to the brink of exhaustion. 'It's only a game', I wanted to say, loudly, often. Oh, I didn't know then, not quite. It is only a game. But it is life.
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