Cardus caught out.

Posted by John Winn

A letter in today's Guardian brought a hearty 'here here' to my lips at the breakfast table. From an exiled Lancastrian, it was an expression of disgust at the newspaper's failure to devote even one line to the exciting finish of The Roses match at Liverpool on Saturday. This from a newspaper that once was proud of its Manchester origins and which for twenty years had as its correspondent,the Lancastrian, Neville Cardus, considered by many one of the greatest writers on cricket.
The paper's sports section normally runs to ten pages, five of which are devoted to football in today's edition. A correspondent can be spared to cover one of the seven championship matches currently taking place, Hampshire v Liverpool. I spoke to a friend recently, a Telegraph reader, who expressed the same disappointment over his paper's cricket coverage. What would E.W.S. have said? The papers would I am sure argue that they offer more reports on their websites and, of course, by definition readers of this blog do have access to the internet, but not everybody does and in any case why should cricket be the sport demoted in this way?
We are of course very fortunate to have regional papers and local radio whose budgets still run to excellent coverage of Yorkshire and Durham and is anywhere in the country better served by the Monday editions of The Yorkshire Post and The Northern Echo for their detailed reporting of league cricket? I doubt it.For the cricket lovers in Yorkshire and the north east can a pound be better spent than on these two papers after the weekend's cricket?
The reference to Neville Cardus brings to mind a favourite story of his, which turned out to be just that, a story. In his autobiography he describes how, on his wedding day in June 1921, the date is important, he went 'as usual to Old Trafford....and saw Hallows and Makepeace come forth to bat.'Cardus then took a taxi to the registry office where he 'committed the most responsible and irrevocable act in mortal man's life', i.e. got married. He then returned to Old Trafford (with his new bride) to find that in his absence Lancashire had added just seventeen, Makepeace 5, Hallows 11 and one leg-bye.Wonderful stuff but whether Cardus was mistaken in recalling the date of his wedding, or whether his memory of the cricket was a little careless, and on such a day that would be excusable, but Makepeace and Hallows opened the batting only once at Old Trafford in June 1921. On Wednesday June 1st they took first knock against Sussex and Makepeace was out for four. In the second innings Hallows was bowled by Gilligan for a duck and in the same innings Makepeace retired hurt and did not play at Old Trafford again until July. Cardus quite reasonably did not consider, when his description of that day was published, that there would be those who would take down the relevant issue of Wisden from their shelves, just out of curiosity to know a little more of the detail (or these days consult Cricket Archive), and that amongst these aficionados there would be nitpickers, like this blogger, who would take pleasure in finding it could not have happened. But isn't there a saying about not letting the facts get in the way of a good story?
Few would think Old Trafford an ideal place to spend the first few days of their married life, certainly not from this side of The Pennines. I suppose today the reception could be held in The Point, what would Neville have made of that?