Sweet Summers - The Classic Cricket Writing of JM Kilburn Edited by Duncan Hamilton
Published by Great Northern Books Ltd 2008
Review by STEVE COWTON (The White Rose Forum bibliophile)Once in a while you come across a book that reminds you of everything you first loved about the game of cricket. This is such a book.
First published last year by a relatively small and independent publishing company based in Ilkley, this handsome volume was justifiably awarded the Wisden Book of the Year accolade in 2009.
JM Kilburn was the cricket correspondent of the Yorkshire Post for 42 years finally retiring in 1976 his tenure covering a glorious chapter in the history of Yorkshire Cricket . He has many published books to his name, some of which are still in print. But this is the first comprehensive anthology of his work, and he has been particularly fortunate to be well served by an editor with considerable taste and excellent judgement, who has managed to collect some beautiful writing from a range of sources. As a journalist, Kilburn was expected to write a quantity of words each day and cover events and games as they happened this gives some of the writing immediacy and detail not always apparent in some of his other books.
Jim Kilburn was an immensely proud Yorkshireman, with a deep appreciation of the unique character and essence of Yorkshire Cricket. Unlike others however, he was not afraid or unable to explore and discuss this uniqueness:
Yorkshire cricket was satisfying because it was essentially logical. There was no mystery in its methods. The techniques of the time were exploited to a degree beyond the capacity of most opponents, but the spectacular was the consequence of policy, not a conscious appeal for attention. It was assumed to be played with pleasure to give pleasure..[but].. the understood purpose of first-class cricket was the projection of cricket at it's highest level of skill and endeavour.
He was very much a man of his time. Slightly dour but strangely idealistic, there is nothing frivolous about Kilburn or his writing. This beautiful book is fully illustrated and there are countless photographs of Kilburn but in none of them is he smiling! Im sure a career spent in the company of professional cricketers and the carefree bohemian atmosphere of the press box must have given rise to many anecdotes and tales but Kilburn shares none with his audience. Cricket is a business not a pastime.
And yet this puritanical approach allows for a strange romantic idealisation of his favourite players; He was famously a close friend and confidante of Don Bradman, but he was also close to Leonard Hutton and Bill Bowes with who joined him in a journalistic career. Some of the best passages in this book are his detailed descriptions of his favourite players Hirst, Sutcliffe, Verity and a particularly fine evocation of Walter Hammond he devotes three paragraphs simply to Hammond's walk to the crease;
Hammond's walk was the most handsome in all cricket, smooth in the evenness of stride, precise in balance. It was a flow of movement linking stillness to stillness. It was, as much as any feature of athletics, the poetry of motion. In his walk from pavilion to pitch he stirred the heart and dimmed the eye with pride for cricket in a magic moment. He came like a king and looked like a king in his coming.
There are many themes that run throughout this fine book: the unique nature of Yorkshire cricket and its cricketers; the purity of classical cricket; and a sense of time passing. There are many occasions when Kilburn sets himself as a guardian of cricket he sees standards slipping and the very "soul" of his game being threatened by the World around him. In some ways Kilburn was a strangely
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anachronistic figure by the end of his career railing against all one day cricket as a pathetic distillation of the "real" game he knew and loved. One can only imagine what he would have made of the coloured clothing and Twenty20 cricket we see today; and it's unlikely he would have found much to admire about the reverse sweep or the "Dilshan"!
The language is beautiful throughout. Kilburn wrote his reports by hand, and not a word is wasted or out of place. There is no hyperbolic use of adjectives or adverbs, but the images created are simply beautiful. At every game he describes, Kilburn creates a wonderful sense of place. The cricket does not exist in isolation, but his enjoyment of the game reflects every aspect of his surroundings, the people around him, and the memories of the place he's brought with him. Central to all this are Yorkshire's grounds and Scarborough in particular. For all Kilburn wrote in a very different time, there is something utterly timeless about his description of cricket by the seaside:
"Going to the match at Scarborough develops personal ritual as varied as temperaments. For some there is sandwich-collecting from a favourite bakery. For others there is the earliest possible arrival to secure a wanted vantage point, the waiting hours to be passed with crossword and book. Patsy Hendren liked to drive to the ground in an open horse drawn carriage. My leisurely approach includes a small diversion giving a glimpse of the sea. I have never gone to Scarborough Festival Cricket without the tremor of anticipation that heralds adventure. (I suspect this passage remains as true for many of us now as it did when it was written.)
Kilburn gives us a sense of history, a sense of place, and a strange sense of time and continuity. He saw his position on the Yorkshire Post as an enormous honour and with that honour came grave responsibility. Some of the most interesting passages in the book deal with his increasing disillusionment with the standards of sport's reporting and cricket writing in particular. He felt that cricket writers were essentially servants of the game they sought to describe, and he despaired at the new breed of writers who looked for controversy and sensation creating news out of events away from the field of play which were really none of their concern. He resented the growth of personality, and the development of "ghosted" articles in the name of players which he felt would replace proper cricket reporting. Many of his words were sadly prophetic it's unlikely that Kilburn would have covered stories about drunken escapades at sea but at the same time there was something a little too cosy about his relationship to the Club and his friendships with individual players:
The older form of cricket-writing persisted and clearly retained a readership where it was allowed due scope, but a new form developed under editorial pressure for a supply of the sensational. Invective is more startling than admiration, and inevitably, failures, disagreements and their consequences were sought, exaggerated and emphasised until sports writing became a close approach to a search for scandal and dissension. The journalistic view of cricket veered away from a calm consideration of a 'meadow game with a beautiful name' to a feverish anticipation and sometimes manufacture of misdemeanour.
It is difficult to read this last paragraph and not reflect ruefully on the recent coverage of Michael Vaughans decision to retire.
And yet, amid his gloom and depression, Kilburn could always return to the essential timeless qualities of cricket confident they would restore his equilibrium. The final section of the book features coverage of an acrimonious Roses match at Old Trafford at which Boycott had allegedly been misquoted by a journalist with whom he had believed he was talking "off the record'. Musing on this betrayal of confidence, Kilburn strolls away from the ground and happens upon a friendly game of village cricket.
Time stood still in a distillation of delight. People and place and circumstances gave visual representation of a meaning, a conception, an ideal. Cricket was itself again and all was well with my world
I enjoyed this book more than any other cricket book for several years, and would go so far as to suggest that it is an essential purchase for anyone with an interest in Yorkshire Cricket. Beautifully written, intelligent and informative; its also occasionally strangely moving evocative of a time long gone. This is the book that establishes Kilburn alongside Arlott and Cardus when we discuss the truly great cricket writers of the 20th Century.
And that's high praise indeed.
[Its also worth mentioning that the book contains a very generous and sincere introduction by Geoffrey Boycott, alongside other tributes from the likes of Dickie Bird, Richard Hutton, Raymond Illingworth and many others.]
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