Mark Pirie’s new poem on Imran Khan

The latest issue of the Journal of the Cricket Society, Spring 2026, arrived over a month or so ago. It carries articles on the imprisoned Imran Khan as well as a piece on Garry Sobers, who has since passed away in July. There is a large section of cricket book reviews.

The articles on Imran are by his biographer Christopher Sandford and Johnny Barclay. Sandford’s letter discusses his plight in Adiala Jail. Imran is currently serving a 14-year sentence for what the state describes as ‘land corruption’. Sandford says he is not in good health.

Barclay’s article offers some thoughts and reminisces of Khan as a player and cricketer in England. He compares Imran to Holding, John Snow the cricket rebel and poet, and Jofra Archer. Barclay is the President of the Cricket Society and a former Sussex player. Khan was lured to Sussex by Tony Greig. Barclay writes: “I once compared him to Nijinsky, so fluent was his bowling action from beginning to end.” (Nijinsky was a Russian-born ballet dancer and choreographer.) After cricket Khan entered politics working for a better world: ”Let us salute him for that.” Barclay ends with a message of hope for Imran continuing to pray.

Imran played 88 Tests and 175 ODIs for Pakistan, and is well remembered as a legend on and off the field and was adored by women.

I wrote a new poem (a triolet) thinking of Imran.

MARK PIRIE

Imran Khan

Imran’s run up & delivery was of beauty.
I grew up watching him steal the light.
A World Cup win, 1992, over Sir Ian.

Imran’s run up & delivery was of beauty
compared to Nijinsky. His bat plundered.
Now a political prisoner, lost from sight.

Imran’s run up & delivery was of beauty.
I grew up watching him steal the light.

Poem © Mark Pirie

Anonymous 1925 English cricket poem

A poem I found while researching the Christchurch Star newspaper was an anonymous poem on raising the seam of the ball in England. It was published during the 1925 season. A county team was skittled.

I sent it to The Cricket Society News Bulletin in 2018. It was particularly topical that year with three Australians serving out their sentences for ball tampering. Cameron Bancroft had been caught by TV cameras trying to rough up a side of the ball with sandpaper. Captain Steve Smith and David Warner were also involved. The match was the Third Test, Australia v South Africa, in Cape Town, March 2018.

I’ve found no details on the match in England the 1925 poem refers to.

ANON

Cricket Magic

English bowlers are alleged to have “skittled” out a county team by raising the seam of the ball.

Now, did the bowlers raise the seam,
  Or make it seem to rise,
And foozle with a magic gleam
  The luckless batsman’s eyes,
As, sharply spinning from the pitches
  The leather shot or skied,
How have the batsman wished those stitches
  Were in the bowler’s side.

But since the art of tit for tat
  Is every batsman’s cue,
Perchance to herringbone the bat
  Might pull the striker through;
If cricket hangs upon a thread,
  Perhaps ’twere not in vain
To knit and purl the splice instead
  Of promptly raising Cain.

(From the Christchurch Star, c1925)

André Surridge’s NZ cricket haiku

Andre Surridge (1951-2019) appeared recently with a prose poem written in 2014. I also found a haiku sequence on cricket he wrote in 2015 in the same magazine, Valley Micropress. Surridge is mostly known as a haiku poet internationally winning the Kyoto Museum for World Peace Award (Japan), the Jane Reichhold International Prize (USA) and the Janice Bostok International Haiku Award (Australia). Enjoy.

ANDRÉ SURRIDGE

First XI

vital toss

the coin lands

in the umpire’s hat

slip cordon

the shape of a sickle

wheatfield beyond

fast bowler

his run-up starts

at the sight screen

a snick

spilt at second slip

the bowler’s teapot

a nervy prod gully gobbles the catch

sharp bouncer

the star batsman

seeing stars

later…

change of pace

the leggie spins one

out of his beard

escorting the ball to the boundary a portly fielder

over the fence

& out of the ground

a towering six

record partnership

batsmen meet mid-pitch

for a fist bump

close of play

happy to sign anything

the smiling centurion

Poems © André Surridge

(from Valley Micropress, November/December 2015)

Previous posts on Andre Surridge: 

André Surridge’s new cricket tanka

André Surridge’s 2014 NZ cricket poem

Other haiku posts:

Cyril Childs's NZ cricket haiku

Tony Beyer’s NZ cricket haiku

Vishak Sivakumar’s 2019 NZ cricket song

Vishak Sivakumar is a writer I came across doing key word searches in the National Library catalogue recently. I don’t know anything about him.

He composed words for a song called ‘Cricket Ball’ that was published in Toitoi: A Journal for Young Writers and Artists. I will include it here in the Tinging Catch archive.

VISHAK SIVAKUMAR

Cricket Ball

You are round and sturdy.
You are tightly gripped in my hand.
You fly through the air like an energetic eagle.
You hit a bat as hard as metal.
You hit a stiff stump which glows bright red.
You land in hands as soft as cotton.
You hear cheering as loud as a stampeding elephant.
Sometimes you soar too high and are never seen again.

Song © Vishak Sivakumar

(from Toitoi: A Journal for Young Writers and Artists, No. 16, Winter 2019)

André Surridge’s 2014 NZ cricket poem

André Surridge (1951-2019) contributed poems to A Tinging Catch and my football anthology Boots. He has a sporting interest. I came across his work when we were both regularly published in Tony Chad’s magazine Valley Micropress.

He is known as a haiku and tanka writer. Tanka is a Japanese form of five lines, two more lines than a haiku. He published Wings for You: Selected Poems 1968-1990 in 1993, and wrote 15 one act plays. His final book One Hundred Petals was haiku and senryu published the year he died.

I came across another cricket poem of his, a prose poem. It’s about a boy’s imaginary world with cricket while doing his homework: an essay on the French Revolution.

I liked it and will include it here.

ANDRÉ SURRIDGE

It isn’t cricket

It isn’t cricket. Well, how could it be? Where’s the first eleven, where’s the opposition? where’s the cricket bat, the ball, the bails, the stumps, the umpires, the pavilion, the crowd, the scoreboard and the commentators waving from an upstairs window?

It’s just a bedroom and a boy procrastinating over an essay on the French Revolution.

He’s kneeling on a mat between two single beds, one his, the other his younger brother’s. He thinks his bat is this wooden foot ruler and the ball a screwed up first page first attempt on the storming of the Bastille, one leg of the chair behind him is his all important wicket. He throws the ball at the bedroom wall and whacks it onto the candlewick bedspread. It’s a six, naturally.

The umpires call lunch and he rises from the pitch on one hundred and two not out.

What’s not to like?

Except the essay isn’t done and his stepfather will threaten him with a thick ear.

(from Valley Micropress, July 2014)

Poem © André Surridge

Previous posts on André Surridge:

André Surridge’s new cricket tanka

Bill Nelson’s 2014 NZ cricket poem

Bill Nelson (b. 1979) is an emerging poet. He has studied at the IIML. He’s published a poetry book, Memorandum of Understanding (2016) and a verse novel, Root Leaf Flower Fruit (2023), with Te Herenga Waka University Press.

I’ve written a verse novel myself, so am always on the lookout for fellow verse novelists.

His publisher’s blurb says of Memorandum of Understanding: "In his debut poetry collection Bill Nelson steps into John Coltrane's body and wears it around. He is a turtle disappearing into the sea. He plumbs the depths of business jargon. He takes singing lessons in Berhampore. He takes his grandfather roller skating. Funny, strange and arresting, these poems test our understanding of understanding".

I recently came across a cricket poem he wrote about watching cricket which his grandfather wasn’t into. I liked it and will add it to the Tingling Catch archive.

BILL NELSON

One day cricket

Like origami, oyster soup
and obscene phone calls

this is something your grandfather
was never into.

Ultimately it was up to you
upside down on the sofa

your head lolling on the floor
the net curtains lifting

and resetting, ready to catch
whatever comes hurtling in.

(From Sport 42, 2014)

Poem © Bill Nelson

Memorandum of Understanding by Bill Nelson,
Te Herenga Waka University Press, 2016

Harry Ricketts’ NZ cricket triolets

Harry Ricketts is an academic, biographer, poet and editor who turned his hand to cricket writing when he published How to Catch a Cricket Match, a guide to getting the most out of day’s Test cricket. It’s in my list of favourite cricket books. He also edited an anthology of New Zealand sports writing, which I reviewed on this site.

In 2024, he followed up this one-off cricket publication with a very impressive book Richie Benaud’s Blue Suede Shoes, co-written with historian David Kynaston and published by Bloomsbury. It received the Cricket Writers’ Club Derek Hodgson Book of the Year. It gives Ricketts some international notice for his cricket writing.

Ricketts is a former Wellington club cricketer and a former schoolboy cricketer in England. At Wellington College, he broke the school record for wickets in a season. He has a life-long association with cricket through playing and now writing on the game.

He contributed several poems to A Tingling Catch and has continued to write on cricket since then. His Bob Woolmer poem was included on this blog, and he has also written triolets on cricket.

Triolets are still a relatively rare form of poetry dating back to the 13th century. Thomas Hardy and Wendy Cope are well known writers of the English triolet. Both Ricketts and I have tried the triolet in New Zealand cricket writing. My book Slips (2021) includes a number of triolets. Cricket poet George Francis Wilson once wrote ‘An Over of Triolets’; one for each ball bowled.

The triolet usually has a repetitive element to it, the opening two lines being repeated at the end. The novelty can wear thin after a while but it’s still a form that’s interesting to me. I was brave to put out a book of triolets Old Hat in 2012. Rather than just putting several triolets in a collection as Ricketts did with Half Dark and Bonfires on Ice.

Here are Ricketts’ two cricket triolets:

HARRY RICKETTS

Wellington, late summer 2014

On the bank at the Basin the crowd applauds;
cicadas click-click their castanets.
Listen to the money’s slow, withdrawing roar.
On the bank at the Basin the crowd applauds.
‘Wellington is a city that’s dying,’
says the man with cold snapper eyes.
On the bank at the Basin the crowd applauds;
cicadas click-click their castanets.

(From Half Dark, VUP, 2015)

Cricket

Man, I never hit it, straight off the pad;
That was absolutely plumb, would’ve knocked out middle.
Just for a moment we’re Hadlee or Brad-
man then, never hit it, straight off the pad.
Quite why a neat late cut should make us glad,
and sad a slow full pitch to leg, is a great riddle.
Man, I never hit it, straight off the pad;
That was absolutely plumb, would’ve knocked out middle.

(From Takahē 80, December 2013)

Poems © Harry Ricketts

Harry Ricketts’ cricket book Richie Benaud’s Blue Suede Shoes is available on Amazon. Here’s a link to the publisher’s website: Richie Benaud’s Blue Suede Shoes: The Story of an Ashes Classic: David Kynaston: Bloomsbury Publishing - Bloomsbury

Previous posts on Harry Ricketts:

Harry Ricketts’s cricket poem for Bob Woolmer

Summer Reads: The Awa Book of NZ Sports Writing

Mark Pirie’s triolets:

Tingling Catch congratulates the All Blacks

Mark Pirie’s Martin Guptill poem

Mark Pirie's new cricket poem Norwood Room