If some good fairy were to ask me to pick out one match of all I have seen, to relive it as I lived it as the time when it happened, my choice would be easy: England v. Australia at Lord's in June 1930. I was at the prime of forty years then, fulfilled in work and happy in home, love and health, the mind still unstaled, yet critical enough. This game could be laid up in heaven, a Platonic idea of cricket in perfection. It was limited to four days and finished at five o'clock on the closing afternoon; 1,601 runs were scored and 29 wickets fell. Bradman batted in a Test match at Lord's for the first time, scoring 254 in his first innings. England batted first and made 425, but lost by 7 wickets. Glorious sunshine blessed every moment's play. London was at its most handsome; 1914 forgotten and 1939 not yet casting a shadow for all to see. I can still catch the warmth and the animation of the scene, feel the mind's and the senses' satisfaction. I can see Grimmett bowling, his arm as low as my grandfather's, his artfulness as acute, and I can still see Chapman as he played one of the most gallant and dazzling and precarious innings which has ever cocked a snook at an Australian team ready and impatient to put to rout and ruin an England team apparently in the last ditch, the ghost about to be given up.
N. Cardus, 'The ideal cricket match' (1956), R. Guha (ed.), The Picador book of cricket (2001), 317-8
