Cricket poetry

The game of cricket has inspired much poetry, most of which romanticises the sport and its culture.

Francis Thompson wrote the following poem, At Lord's:

Not long before his death and long after he had watched Hornby and Barlow bat at Old Trafford, Thompson was invited to watch Lancashire play Middlesex at Lord's. As the day of the match grew closer, Thompson became increasingly nostalgic. At the end, he did not go for the match, but sat at home and wrote At Lord's. The original match in 1878 ended in a draw, with Gloucestershire needing 111 to win with five wickets in hand, Grace 58* [1]

The first stanza of the poem has contributed the titles of at least three books on cricket:

The first stanza is also quoted in full by Count Bronowsky in Paul Scott's Raj Quartet novel, The Day of the Scorpion.

The satirical magazine Punch printed the following poem following a particularly slow and boring innings by William Scotton. It mimicked Tennyson's famous "Break, break, break".

When Alfred Mynn died in 1861, William Jeffrey Prowse penned a poem in his memory. The first six stanzas compare Mynn with his contemporaries and the poem closes with these lines:

The Australian poet Les Murray wrote The Aboriginal Cricketer:

One of the most famous pieces of nostalgic rose-tinted poems is Vitai Lampada by Sir Henry Newbolt.

The very short "A Cricket Poem" by Harold Pinter encapsulates the mood and nostalgia common to lovers of cricket:

Andrew Lang's cricketing parody of Ralph Waldo Emerson's "Brahma" is memorable:

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