Summary
As the football season ebbs away, thoughts turn to cricket and the Twenty20 World Cup, starting on Friday (Sky Sports 1, 4.30pm), followed by the Ashes, now just over a month away. In the lead up to the First Test, an expansive four-part documentary series details the cultural, social and sporting shifts in the game from the days of WG Grace to Kevin Pietersen.
Empire Of Cricket (tonight, BBC2, 10.30pm) begins in the shires and greens of England, where the sport was first invented before being exported to those upstart colonies who would eventually dare to beat us at our own game. Cricket in England was held back by the class divide between the gentlemen amateurs, who played for the love of the game, and the lower-class professionals. In fact, it was the original cricketing celebrity WG Grace who helped perpetuate the class system in the game by remaining an amateur, or 'shamateur' - unpaid, but racking up enough expenses to make an MP's eyes pop with envy. In the 1890s he could get away with charging up to Pounds 3,000 per appearance, enough to buy a small street of houses.See the full content of this document
Extract
Ashes to Ashes
It wasn't until 1952 that Len Hutton became the first ...
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