Mayukh Ghosh
Many reviewers chose to criticize Irving Rosenwater's book on Don Bradman, citing his rather ordinary writing.
Rosenwater had one answer for them all: " "Yes, but it's a book that Cardus, Swanton and Arlott could not have written!"
And when John Arlott was told that Swanton had written over one millions words on cricket, he simply replied, "And not one of them memorable."
E.W. Swanton was not the greatest cricket writer. His books are not among the best cricket books.
But, barring John Arlott, among the non-players, no one had given more to English cricket since the end of World War II.
As David Frith recalled recently, Swanton's 'rich, precise baritone with pseudo-aristocratic expressions' often influenced the entire country. "The match reports and comments were digitised over breakfast and supper across the land, the opinions adopted by a cricket fraternity that trusted him."
It was Swanton who was somewhat responsible for kick-starting the careers of John Woodcock, David Frith and Scyld Berry.
He detested chucking and wrote about it openly at a time when everyone preferred not to. And, perhaps, even influenced his then flatmate Ian Peebles to write extensively on the topic.
He was vocal about the horrendous fast bowling tactics of the West Indian team of the 1980s.
And even made Wisden pretty famous during the bleak war years.
A lifetime dedicated to the game of cricket.
Quite rightly, Stephen Fay has pointed out that he, along with Arlott, was the soul of post-war English cricket.
But there was suffering.
It was even apparent in the letters he wrote. Especially, in the ones that were written to Bradman.
When asked, near the end of his life, if he had any regrets, he thought for a few moments before saying, "I think I probably watched rather too much cricket...."
E.W. Swanton was born on Feb 11, 1907.