Abhishek Mukherjee describes how Cardus, who pompously dismissed the scoreboard as an ass, nevertheless made one up as proof of a point he wanted to make .
Read MoreA random Neville Cardus fabrication
Abhishek Mukherjee writes about Neville Cardus playing God by proxy.
Read MoreWilliam Attewell: The Cardus mistaken identity
In the much vaunted, and largely fictitious, Autobiography of Neville Cardus, as well as in his Summer Game, there are accounts of his experiences as the assistant coach of Shrewsbury School, along with the delightful anecdotes about the Nottinghamshire and England cricketer William Attewell who served as the head coach. Arunabha Sengupta documents how these episodes, like so many Cardus musings, were nothing but creations of his fertile mind.
Read MoreNeville Cardus and his date of birth
Neville Cardus, officially born April 2, 1889, revolutionised cricket reporting, transforming it from a staid description of events on the field to a series of metaphors invoking Greek gods and heroes. However, he was also notorious for his refusal to let the facts get in the way of a good story: he frequently wrote supposed “first-hand” reports of matches at which he was not present, and sometimes of ones which never actually took place. Michael Jones discovers that this cavalier disregard for the small matter of truth was exhibited in accounts of his own life as much as in his cricket reports.
Read MoreRanji, Fry , Sussex and Cardus the scribbler of cricket fiction
In his landmark essay ‘Ranji, Fry and Sussex’ Neville Cardus famously recounts Yorkshire player Ted Wainwright talk of KS Ranjitsinhji and CB Fry putting on huge stands. Arunabha Sengupta looks at the scorecards – Cardus’s asses – and unearths that those great partnerships took place in the fertile mind of the legendary writer.
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