SINCE the first Ashes Test turned out to be a cliffhanger*, with Durham’s Paul Collingwood the chief cling-on hero, let’s linger awhile with cricket. I venture a second innings – hopefully not a follow-on – to my recent review of a book celebrating the great cricket writer Neville Cardus.

It’s sometimes said that Cardus, fine-tuned though he was to the beauty of cricket and the subtle expression of character it provides, lacked understanding of more basic aspects of the game.

Well, on Test Match Special last week, former Aussie captain Ian Chappell observed that a slow bowler “has to beat the good batsman twice – through the air and off the pitch”.

That fact has never been better made than in one my favourite Cardus passages, saluting a legendary Yorkshire and England spin bowler, Wilfred Rhodes.

“Spin with him is an accessory after the fact of flight. Subtlety in the air – the curving line, now higher, now lower, every ball like every other ball, yet somehow unlike; each over in collusion with the rest, part of a plot; every ball a decoy, a spy sent out to get the lie of the land; some balls simple, some complex, some easy, some difficult; and one of them – ah which? – the master ball.’’ Wonderful, is it not? But a reader, LD Wilson, of Guisborough (HAS, July 13), chides me for overlooking John Arlott.

Well, Mr Wilson, I have good news for you.

Despite my admiration for Cardus, I credit Arlott with what I consider the best piece of cricket writing ever.

Worthy of a place in any anthology of English prose, it is Arlott’s valedictory words on Fred Trueman, virtually rounding off his biography of the unforgettable fast bowler.

“When he ceased to be a fast bowler, a life ended. No doubt there was, is and will be a life of a person by the name of Frederick Sewards Trueman who is not a fast bowler; but that is a separate man, almost a stranger to Fred the fast bowler.

“This other man will not roll truculently up from short leg, cap crumpled on head, to snatch a thrown cricket ball out of the air.

“He will not, having now caught his audience, set off, shoulder and arms heavy with threat, thick legs unhurriedly purposeful, to distant mark.

“He will not, ringed by a tensely silent crowd, come rocking aggressively in to bowl faster – in his faith – than anyone else in the world.’’ There’s more, including: “He will not lard the earth with his sweat, nor curse flukers and edgers with lurid oaths, nor damn authority.’’ But read it all for yourself, as I’m sure Mr Wilson has. And if anyone can point to a more inspired piece of writing on any sport, let’s hear of it.

CALL me cynical if you like. With great regret, I admit it. So it wouldn’t surprise me to learn that a bypass for Wootton Bassett is to be built immediately.

Coffins of our Afghanistan soldiers can then pass more or less in obscurity to the military morgue.

* Cliffhanger: Did you know that the term originates from a Thomas Hardy novel, A Pair of Blue Eyes, in which a character is left clinging to a cliff over 11 or 12 pages?