The umpire... is like the geyser in the bathroom we cannot do without it, yet we notice it only when it is out of order.

Such reproductions may not interest the reader but after all, this is my autobiography, not his he is under no obligation to read further in it he was under none to begin. A modest or inhibited autobiography is written without entertainment to the writer and read with distrust by the reader.

The laws of cricket tell of the English love of compromise between a particular freedom and a general orderliness, or legality.

It is far more than a game, this cricket.

A true batsman should in most of his strokes tell the truth about himself.

A snick by Jack Hobbs is a sort of disturbance of a cosmic orderliness.

Even an ordinary broken chord is made to disclose rare beauties we are reminded of the fairies' hazelnuts in which diamonds were concealed but you could break the shell only if your hands were blessed.

In cricket, as in no other game, a great master may well go back to the pavilion scoreless.... In no other game does the law of averages get to work so potently, so mysteriously.

Sibelius justified the austerity of his old age by saying that while other composers were engaged in manufacturing cocktails, he offered the public pure cold water.

Dear, lovely game of cricket that can stir us so profoundly, that can lift up our hearts and break them.

There ought to be some other means of reckoning quality in this the best and loveliest of games the scoreboard is an ass.

The Australian temper is at bottom grim. It is as though the sun has dried up his nature.

We remember not the scores and the results in after years it is the men who remain in our minds, in our imagination.

If a German or an Austrian, a Greek or a Bashibazouk, had composed Gerontius, the whole world would have by now admitted its qualities.