Saturday, July 21, 2012

Barrie at the Bat

You've seen me write here about P.G. Wodehouse's Mike--a book that I love, but also a book brimful of a sport that I don't understand. I don't understand sports at the best of times, and I'm an American, so naturally there's nothing more baffling to me than this thing called "cricket".

Nonetheless, I've found my favorite cricket team: the Allahakbarries, a team made up of, apparently, all my favorite authors when they had a spare moment and wanted to show a few artists how we authors do things. Name comes from an Arabic phrase which they thought meant "God help us", combined with the name of J.M. Barrie, author of Peter Pan and founder of the team.

Other members include G.K. Chesterton, A.A. Milne, Arthur Conan Doyle (their star player, needless to say), Jerome K. Jerome, H.G. Wells, and yes, P.G. Wodehouse. This was before he wrote the Psmith series; who knows what scenes his cricket-playing fellow-authors might have inspired?

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