Review by Mark Pirie of Cricket Poetry by Arthur
Salway (self-published, 2013).
Arthur Salway is an English cricket poet I came across on the world wide web when I googled ‘cricket poetry’ back in 2010. His website ‘Cricket Poetry’ came up. I contacted him through his website the year A Tingling Catch came out and he sent me a reply which I left as a comment to my blog article about him.
Salway eventually collected his poetry into a published volume available on book sites internationally like Amazon, AbeBooks, eBay and lulu in 2013. I thought it was worth purchasing and have added it to my list of favourite cricket books.
Salway’s book Cricket Poetry, Volume 1, includes about 47 poems written over a 20-year period, so not a prolific cricket poet but enough poems to make an impact on the cricket poetry scene internationally. The book is accompanied by photographs of schoolboy cricket (West Hill Park School, Titchfield, Hampshire). Salway wasn’t a good promoter of his work so hasn’t sent copies to the Journal of the Cricket Society or Wisden Cricket Monthly and is mostly not known to the cricket book community. He relied on people visiting his website now defunct.
He was in his 70s when the book was published and had recently retired from cricket at age 68. Salway’s biography on the back cover states: ‘He remembers watching Gloucestershire at Bristol as a boy and admiring the stroke play of Walter Hammond, Charlie Barnett, George Emmett, and the emerging Tom Graveney.’ An impressive list of English batsmen to have seen growing up.
Salway worked as a mathematics teacher living in Hampshire, England till his retirement. He was a club cricketer since his 40s, and had earlier been a schoolboy cricketer ‘successful enough’ and nursed into cricket by his father. In club cricket he was a spin bowler who batted where he was permitted in the order. Salway says: ‘Many of the poems were written for team evenings and are presented for your reading due to the insistence of his erstwhile team-mates.’ Salway hopes we will enjoy them and the poems are meant to be read by cricketers about the game we love.
So, what is the poetry like in Cricket Poetry? Salway is a rhyming poet, so the poetry is all in rhyme and rhythm, and it will interest readers of all ages. He’s not a wordsmith in the word-magic category but a competent enough writer and at times his knowledge of cricket history is impressive. ‘A turn of the wrist’ is a favourite of mine. I’ve mentioned it before on this site:
Soccer is won with cultured feet
And rugger with grit and grist;
But when cricket is played the difference is made
By a delicate turn of the wrist.
His subjects are wide ranging and offer poetical comments on English club cricket, T20 cricket, Brookfield School cricket, Hampshire CCC, cricket teas, the IPL ‘Indian Takeaway’, the Pavilion in winter, prep school cricket, the Ashes, the scorebook, the team kit bag, the Amateurs in county cricket, the cricket field, the Nightwatchman, and the English game. Salway is a proud Englishman: ‘Gone are the days, and what a shame, / When an England player had an English name / Like Larwood, Washbrook, Smith or Compton, / Born in Bradford, Bath or Brompton…’
‘A Winter’s Tale’ has a fine quatrain:
Blower’s voice drones on and on.
‘Oops! Another wicket gone!”
Luminaries then explain
Why Pietersen has failed again.
‘Fast Spin’ all cricketers can relate to:
When we were boys and striding to the wicket,
Learning life while we were playing cricket,
“The bowling good?” we’d ask as we went in;
Departing batsmen scowled & said, “Fast spin.”
One poem stood out to me ‘Tragedy at St Helen’s’:
It’s best, perhaps, it’s not for us to know
The time, the place, the manner we shall go.
We have no opportunity to choose
Nor ours an option that we may refuse.
But could we gentle Providence persuade
That darkest hours be somehow brighter made;
No fears, no pain, no suffering or remorse,
That life’s last stumblings happen in the course
Of pleasant pathways walked with many a friend.
So may we come at last to journey’s end.
And so it was. His umpire’s task was done,
His eyes still shielded from the passing sun,
The counting stones divided in his hand.
We miss, we mourn, we try to understand.
We would not strive to keep what we must lose
Nor take from him what we ourselves would choose.
Now other men must do as once he would,
Standing white-coated where he lately stood;
And cricket, Alcwyn’s lifelong, wise tutorial
Shall be, in its continuance, his memorial.
In July 2009, at St Helen’s Swansea, umpire Alcwyn Jenkins was struck by a ball thrown in from the outfield and died at the scene. The South Wales Cricket Association requested a poem to be read at the funeral. It is included in the collection in his memory. I’m reminded of the tragic death of Australian batsman Phil Hughes struck by a freak delivery.
I found much enjoyment in Salway’s poetry written with a sound knowledge of the game and recommend it to readers of cricket literature of all ages.
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