Your leader (The Guardian view on sporting fair play: it was never quite cricket, 30 July) recycles the persistent caricature of Siegfried Sassoon’s, Hugh de Sélincourt’s and AG Macdonell’s cricket fiction as existing in a “bucolic dreamworld”.
Sassoon’s The Flower Show Match is set against the background of the Boer war, with recurring references to the relief of Ladysmith. The home umpire is also suspected of using his wooden leg to make dents in the pitch.
