by Arunabha Sengupta
The great mathematician and unabashed cricket enthusiast GH Hardy once wrote in a postcard to the novelist CP Snow: "Bradman is a whole class above any batsman who has ever lived: if Archimedes, Newton and Gauss remain in the Hobbs class, I have to admit the possibility of a class above them, which I find difficult to imagine. They had better be moved from now on into the Bradman class."
There have been very few cricket writers in a similar Bradman class. Who just cannot be bettered.
In my assessment there have been three: Stephen Chalke is one of them. David Frith another.
The third passed away today, at the age of 92.
David Foot was more than a cricket writer. He was at his best when he explored the psyche of the best of them - especially where genius went hand in hand with agonising torment.
No, he did not have to depend on superficial, speculative illusory Higher Truth .. He actually plumbed the lower depths of their minds.
Wally Hammond: The Reasons Why, Harold Gimblett: The Tormented Genius ... these are some of the best ever books written about the game and their greats. As are Fragments of Idolatory, Beyond Bat and Ball, Cricket's Unholy Trinity and others.
And every phrase that he turned out was beautifully crafted.
And all along he carried the self-effacing amiability laced with a strange, undeserved lack of confidence that graces so many genuine great men of the west country.
When Stephen Chalke, another great west-country writer, published one of Foot’s works through Fairfield Books, the two had a vehement argument. Chalke offered him £2 per book. Foot said, "No no no no, you are not going to pay me that much, that's far too much"
When he was 81, Chalke coaxed an autobiography out of him. Perhaps Foot was too advanced in years and too modest to do justice to his fascinating story adventures in the world of mind, pen and flannels ... but even then Footsteps from East Coker is better than most autobiographies you will come across.
Read some of his works... Recognise real genius in cricket writing.
Or at least pause a minute to pay respect to someone who did justice to both the words that constitute 'cricket writing' ...
And then one is free to go back to quoting 'What do they of cricket know' and 'The scoreboard is an ass'
David Foot passed away early morning on 25 May 2021.