Cricket is not so much a game as an extension of being English: a gall — Cricket

"Before we were old enough to practise at the nets with the Burslem men, we played most of our cricket on waste land that had been trampled flat by the clogs and boots of generations of miners."

"The true charm of cricket and hunting is that they are still more or less sociable and universal—theres a place for every man who will come and take his part."

"Paraphrasing [Carl von] Clausewitz, it seems that in Pakistan cricket is now becoming [Islamic] religious propaganda by other means."

"If this game and its incidents were continually hoisting the spectators breathlessly half out of their seats it would soon be found unnecessary to provide seats at all and the atmosphere would become superficially (and, I think also, essentially) indistinguishable from Highbury on a damp Saturday afternoon in November."

"It is this seminal simplicity of rhythm, expressed in its curious ritual form, that is at the heart of crickets peculiar attraction. The tempo of the rhythm, against which all non-cricketers so persistently rail, provides the element of hypnotism necessary to the charm, like the tick of a grandfather clock in a quiet room."

"I was brought up to believe that cricket is the most important activity in mens lives, the most important thread in the fabric of the cosmos."