ABSTRACT
Between the wars cricket was celebrated as a metaphor for England and for Englishness. Cricket was seen as an expression of English moral worth and had a key role in how the economically and socially privileged imagined themselves and their place in the world. Much was written about how cricket encapsulated the spirit of England. In his book entitled The Heart of England which sought to establish the essential nature of the English character whilst stressing its diversity, Ivor Brown wrote in 1935 that 'cricket remains at the heart of England'.1 In 1928 an editorial in The Times claimed that for Englishmen abroad, nothing pulled so hard at the heart strings as memories of Lord's and went on to state that cricket was 'English as nothing else, perhaps, is English: the greatest of all games played in the best of settings and in the finest spirit' .2 Looking back upon his education at Oxford in the 1920s, Christopher Hollis, an Etonian, former Conservative MP, writer and publisher, recalled in 1976 that 'cricket still had its prestige as the chief and most English of games. At Oxford it was honoured alike by undergraduates – even by those who did not play themselves – and by Dons.'3 Foreign observers of England emphasised that cricket was quintessentially English. For the German Rudolph Kircher writing in 1928 cricket was 'pre-eminently English ... a phase of English mentality, a key to the Englishman's soul, a product of English temperament' and 'the most typical of all English games'.4
