If you have grandchildren, take them

The Oval, Southampton, Canterbury, Edgbaston, Arundel, Chester-le-Street, Old Trafford, Worcester, Headingley.  These are the grounds where (subject to fitness etc), Shane Warne is due to bowl for Hampshire in  first class-cricket in 2007. If you have grandchildren, take them, if you don't, go anyway - so you can tell them.

M. Engel, 'Notes by the editor', id. (ed.), Wisden Cricketers' Almanack (2007), 26

I took my parents.

For over twenty-five centuries we’ve been bearing the weight of superb and heterogeneous civilisations

We Sicilians have become accustomed, by long, a very long hegemony of rulers who were not of our religion and did not speak our language, to split hairs. If we had not done so we’d never have coped with the Byzantine tax gatherers, with Berber Emirs, with Spanish Viceroys. Now the bent is endemic, we’re made like that. I said ‘support’, I did not say ‘participate’. 

... 

In Sicily it doesn‘t matter about doing things well or badly; the sin which we Sicilians never forgive is simply that of ‘doing’ at all. We are old, Chevalley, very old. For over twenty-five centuries we’ve been bearing the weight of superb and heterogeneous civilisations, all from outside, none made by ourselves, none that we could call own own. We’re as white as you are, Chevalley, and as the queen of England; and yet for two thousand five hundred years we’ve been a colony. I don’t say that in complaint; it’s our fault. But even so we’re worn our and exhausted.’

G. Tomasi di Lampedusa, The Leopard (1958), tr. A. Colquhon (1961),122

One had to read the books of second-rate novelists to have an authentic picture of an epoch

Elsewhere he (Lampedusa) argued that history could not be understood properly without a knowledge of literature, especially minor literature. To find out what shopkeepers and railway workers were thinking in the 1920s, he remarked, there was not point reading the works of Giovanni Gentile. One had to read the books of second-rate novelists to have an authentic picture of an epoch, and although this might require patience, a strong stomach and a dose of bad taste, it was worth it. 'Ungrammatical, illogical, hysterical, ignorant, fatuous, "snobbish", in short pitiful as they are, they give us the true portrait of Demos, our lord and master. One has to read them.

D. Gilmour, The last leopard (1988, revised edition 2007), 46

If the latter [religion] is truly opium for the masses, cricket remains purely its marijuana

Cricket is like religion, it is said of the subcontinent, and of India in particular. For India's neighbour, though, the analogy assumes a deeper, more convoluted significance. In Pakistan, cricket is not really like a religion. If the latter is truly opium for the masses, cricket remains purely its marijuana: teasingly recreational, and definite not as all-consuming.

O. Samiuddin, 'With Allah on their side', M. Engel (ed.), Wisden Cricketers' Almanack (2006), 44

[The BBC] was being semi-seriously bracketed with 'Parliament, Monarchy, Church and the Holy Ghost

The BBC was not merely a national institution but a powerful and definitive expression of national will and character. ... With guaranteed funding from a mandatory licence fee, and privileged access to a captive market, it enjoyed resources and opportunities unmatched anywhere else in the world, and within a few years it was being semi-seriously bracketed with 'Parliament, Monarchy, Church and the Holy Ghost.' By the end of the Second World War, it had become 'an additional established church, a source of authority over the language, an arbiter of national taste, a national musical impresario and a re-invigorator of national drama and song.

D. Sandbrook, Never had it so good (2005), 379

I said, 'Are these people ready for self-government?' And he said , 'No, of course not.'

Many officials thought the pace of change was too fast, but acknowledged that they simply had no choice, as Macmillan discovered when he talked to the Governor-General of Nigeria [James Robertson]:

I said, 'Are these people ready for self-government?' And he said , 'No, of course not.'

I said, 'When will they be ready?' He said, 'Twenty years, twenty-five years.'

Then I said, 'What do you recommend me to do?' He said, 'I recommend you give it to them at once.'

D. Sandbrook, Never had it so good (2005), 289

The fuller quote, which is here, is thoughtful on why, though of course is of its time.

Year after year, the wonderful folks at the ICC assemble the world's best players and get them to play bad cricket

Year after year, the wonderful folks at the ICC assemble the world's best players and get them to play bad cricket. If they staged W.G.'s XI v The Don's XI at the Elysian Oval with S.F. Barnes bowling to victor Trumper, they would find some way of making the occasion dismal. It's a gift real: a kind of anti-showmanship.

M. Engel, 'Notes by the editor', id. (ed.), Wisden Cricketers' Almanack (2006), 17