PG Wodehouse and Cricket             

The creator of ‘Jeeves’ was an ardent cricket fan. This might not be a surprise considering that Wodehouse was an Englishman and was up at Dulwich College, an English public school, at the turn of the 19^th century.

But the link between England’s arguably greatest comic writer and England’s national passion runs much closer than that. PGW actually appeared in flannels no less than six times at the Lord’s cricket ground. In fact, his first captain at the cricketing Mecca was none other than Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, the creator of Sherlock Holmes.

Pelham Grenville Wodehouse was knighted in 1975, long overdue at the age of 93. He died just 45 days later. Perhaps the comical irony of the situation overpowered him. He adored the game just as he adorned literature. He needed no title. The burden of the award literally took away the simple pleasures of life that he loved and treasured.

PGW gave birth to Jeeves, the patron saint of all butlers in English literature. The name ‘Jeeves’ he pilfered from that of a Warwickshire county cricketer, who had lost his life at war in 1916 in France. However Wodehouse, typical of his whimsicality, always maintained that he saw Jeeves playing for Gloucestershire!

He played regularly for Dulwich College as a medium pacer. He once observed that while he began with the new ball, from the other end bowled Knox, the future Test cricketer. And then in his self-deprecating style added, “Yes, Knox was 10 at the time.” Actually, Wodehouse was 18 and Knox 15.

Later even when he had settled in USA, his attention was never diverted from his juvenile passion. He kept in touch with cricket, particularly English university and county cricket, through journals and newspapers and the books that John Arlott, the doyen of cricket commentators, would send him.

References to cricket were regularly seen in his writings. But a touch ironical was his utterance in an interview to BBC in 1975 where he mentioned that he preferred baseball to cricket! Was this a typical wodehousian sense of dry humour? Or, was it for real?  This could not have been his actual feelings. For PGW was totally engrossed with cricket. So much so that even in USA he was a regular at the cricket meets at the Hollywood Cricket Club in Hollywood where famous actors such as Charles Aubrey Smith (former England Test cricketer) and Boris Karloff dominated and entertained.

However, when asked why did he prefer baseball to cricket, PGW answered that at cricket you may go to the ground and find your favourite team fielding the whole day, whereas at baseball you are certain to see them perform and get an immediate result as well.

Nevertheless for a man with such deep-roots in traditional cricket, it is difficult to digest that he actually thought the shorter version was more to his liking. If this be really his actual view of cricket, then most surely he would have welcomed Twenty 20 cricket with open arms.

In Hollywood in the mid-thirties he enjoyed his conversations with Gubby Allen, the then England captain, particularly about the exploits of Larwood and Jardine in the ‘bodyline’ series of 1932-33. Wodehouse did not come in touch with Bradman who had spent his honeymoon playing 4 one-day matches in Hollywood with Arthur Mailey’s team in August 1932. Most unfortunately, Wodehouse was not present in any of the fixtures and so two of the greatest entertainers never did come face to face.

Cricket and literature have always been bedfellows: subtlety and grace, form and content influenced one another. The leisurely pattern of the game attracted the poet and the novelist. The apparel and the manner of the players gave cricket an elevated position in the eyes of the sensitive writers. In cricket, they found courage and character; fortitude and intelligence; modesty and charm. The twists and the turns of the long drawn affair developed a special affinity towards cricket.

Wodehouse’s prolific work contained numerous references to cricket, its technicalities, its tactics. Decades before his death when one-day cricket and run-restrictive bowling were not in fashion, the highly knowledgeable Wodehouse mentioned, “... six yorkers per over and can’t be scored off.” Even today, with T20 matches proliferating, not many coaches realize the importance of this tactical acumen.

Wodehouse has written on cricket with deep interest, wide knowledge and ardent feelings. Revealing a distinctive style of his own: the laid back approach of a sensitive, enquiring, observant mind. No sensationalism clouded his vision; no excitement rattled his composure. He was always his own man. An elegant writer of fluid style. His wit is typically dry British humour, but with a dash of originality that elevates him beyond the realms of the humourous story-tellers.

In 1941 he was in an internment camp in Upper Silesia. At the time he was 59, but the love for cricket still raged. Wodehouse surprised his guards and other inmates as he turned his arm to bowl slow leg spin. His batting never really flowered. He said that he was very consistent with zero as his favourite score! He further added, “I would have made a century if the boundaries had been closer.”