Cricket's Revolution
ACS Book of the Week
Each week we spotlight a fascinating title from the vast collection catalogued in the Cricket Bibliography project, drawing on insightful (but not necessarily positive!) reviews from the archives of our journal. Today, on the back of his passing, we bring you Eric Midwinter’s Cricket’s Revolution: Its Sudden Leap into Modernity (2025), reviewed by Roger Heavens.
Eric Midwinter is a former President of the ACS and has been writing about cricket, it seems, forever. He is now 93 and shows no sign of slowing down and we look forward to him reaching that coveted century.
Your reviewer, other than the discussion regarding statistics and the recording of the game, feels has he has read this before albeit in a longer treatise. Having read many of Mr. Midwinter’s cricket books over the years this is probably so, but this particular volume puts everything in a shorter form and is therefore more concise and useful for the social and cricketing historian.
Cricket as we might recognise it has probably been played for 400 plus years but for the first 200 of those Mr. Midwinter terms the game as ‘primitive’ and with ‘prevailing chaos.’ The book begins briefly with an account of this ‘chaos’ and is followed by six chapters which examine the build up to what we have today. Its standardisation, laws and controls, formation, clubs and competitions, and finally a look how it is recorded. The conclusions, not all positive depending on personal preferences, are thought provoking. Reference is made to other sports as the text moves along, and this is a useful check on how they were covering the same process.
The most important point to note is the speed that all this happened. For generations there were no formal laws and no standardisation but all the growth in these aspects occurred in a relatively short time frame, not surprisingly coinciding with the Industrial Revolution, of about 30 years from about 1830. No longer did the population spend its time in their immediate neighbourhood but with the advent of relatively fast roads and train travel, cricket was codified by the Victorians and became a national sport. This move from a pastime to a very organised sport, which all sports now are, is expertly described and gives the reader much to consider – whether it is good or bad is debatable. One interesting aspect is that this was achieved nationally with little scrutiny or opposition.
This book is the first to put the history of the game in is proper context and, with its links to other sports and the general thoughts on many aspects of life today, it is a recommended read for everybody and not just cricket aficionados. This is the fifteenth ACS volume in its Cricket Witness series and perhaps the most important as it examines the study of the development, structure, and functions of human society and of cricket and its importance to life in the country, which your reviewer has not encountered before. The causes of human behaviour including values, relationships, beliefs, and organisations, and how people interact within these contexts are considered fully. The sport now covers the world and a brief look at the wonderful Cricket Archive website will find details of such rich matches between Italy, Oman, Sweden, Ukraine, &c. and this emphasises its ongoing development. The revolution appears to be continuing and there may be scope for an appendix to this treatise which explores its international appeal.