Grammath
22nd January 2009, 05:07 PM
The late Harry Thompson was captain of the Captain Scott's Invtiation XI cricket team, which he founded at Oxford in the late 1970s with fellow student Marcus Berkmann.
A team for those whose enthusiasm outstripped their talent, the Scotties, boasting players such as Hugh Grant and Ian Hislop among their ranks, spent their summer weekends being soundly beaten by various village sides in their early years. As time goes on and the team improves, it starts to tour abroad on occasion. The second half of the book is largely devoted to a round the world trip Thompson organises where the team plays in every continent.
This is very much a humourous sports book rather than a travel book, in the mould of those eccentric challenge books from which Tony Hawks makes a living. In fact, Thompson's account of his experiences with British Airways would make one reconsider ever leaving these shores by air.
The cricket matches are described in detail, where they take place often less so, although Thompson portrays himself as the only one in the party who takes more interest in his surroundings than the hi jinks often associated with amateur sporting tours. The focus on the sport might make the book a little off putting to those who aren't aficianados of the game, but those that are will find much to savour.
Thompson makes an engaging narrator, although one wonders if all his team mates would still be talking to him were he still alive, as there are a few quite unflattering portraits of them within these pages. Equally, he rather glosses over the schism that results in the so-called "layabouts", led by Berkmann, leaving the team to form the Rain Men, about whom the latter has written a fine book that features, among many others, a certain Bill Matthews. It sounds like there was no love lost here.
Inevitably, Thompson's failing health (he died of lung cancer in his mid-40s, having never smoked in his life) and the death of another team mate cast a shadow over the last few pages of what is otherwise a book which, whilst it might play fast and loose with some of the events, is an easy and enjoyable read for flannelled fools and their followers.
A team for those whose enthusiasm outstripped their talent, the Scotties, boasting players such as Hugh Grant and Ian Hislop among their ranks, spent their summer weekends being soundly beaten by various village sides in their early years. As time goes on and the team improves, it starts to tour abroad on occasion. The second half of the book is largely devoted to a round the world trip Thompson organises where the team plays in every continent.
This is very much a humourous sports book rather than a travel book, in the mould of those eccentric challenge books from which Tony Hawks makes a living. In fact, Thompson's account of his experiences with British Airways would make one reconsider ever leaving these shores by air.
The cricket matches are described in detail, where they take place often less so, although Thompson portrays himself as the only one in the party who takes more interest in his surroundings than the hi jinks often associated with amateur sporting tours. The focus on the sport might make the book a little off putting to those who aren't aficianados of the game, but those that are will find much to savour.
Thompson makes an engaging narrator, although one wonders if all his team mates would still be talking to him were he still alive, as there are a few quite unflattering portraits of them within these pages. Equally, he rather glosses over the schism that results in the so-called "layabouts", led by Berkmann, leaving the team to form the Rain Men, about whom the latter has written a fine book that features, among many others, a certain Bill Matthews. It sounds like there was no love lost here.
Inevitably, Thompson's failing health (he died of lung cancer in his mid-40s, having never smoked in his life) and the death of another team mate cast a shadow over the last few pages of what is otherwise a book which, whilst it might play fast and loose with some of the events, is an easy and enjoyable read for flannelled fools and their followers.