The elements are cricket's presiding geniuses.

Like the British constitution, cricket was not made: it has 'grown'.

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.

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.

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

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

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