Sir, All the drama about umpiring reminds me of when I was fielding at square leg in a school match in 1937. I appealed for lbw and after the game the square-leg umpire, who happened to be the head master, gave me six of the best on the grounds that appealing for lbw from that position was “not cricket”. Nobody questioned his decision.
NICHOLAS CARTER
Blaina, Gwent
Sir, Roland Watson (report, Aug 30) is in good company when he challenges the American claim to have invented baseball in the 19th century. Jane Austen described the heroine of Northanger Abbey, Catherine Morland, as preferring “cricket and base ball” to books 50 years earlier, and there are records of base ball being played in England from the 18th century.
In 1845 Alexander Cartwright, of the New York Knickerbockers, formalised a list of rules, but he and his countrymen no more invented baseball than Thomas Lord and the MCC invented cricket.
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TONY DELL
Tunbridge Wells