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Cricket Lovely Cricket

 
birdseye 2022-05-24 03:34:16 

Doesn’t get any better than this

here

 
outside_edge 2022-05-24 04:21:54 

In reply to birdseye

The term 'Cricket, Lovely Cricket' actually derived its roots some ten years before that video, in the year 1950:

It all began in the summer of 1950, when an unheralded West Indies team crossed the Atlantic by boat to play mighty England. On that boat were two completely unknown young spin bowlers, the diminutive Trinidadian Sonny Ramadhin and the lanky, bespectacled Jamaican Alf Valentine. When the boat left for England, each had played only two first-glass games, and their selection for the tour had taken West Indies cricket fans completely by surprise.
What followed was the stuff of sporting legends. The West Indies totally outplayed England, winning the four-Test series by three games to one. It was the West Indies’ first Test series victory in England, and Ram and Val took a staggering 59 wickets between them — 33 for Valentine, 26 for Ramadhin. After a spectacular victory in the second Test at Lord’s, the hallowed home of cricket, the great Trinidadian calypsonians Lord Kitchener and Lord Beginner led triumphant West Indies supporters in a joyful, dancing parade around the ground, and Beginner composed the first of what would be a barrage of calypsos over the decades celebrating the achievements of Caribbean cricketers. Its most famous lines immortalised the achievements of “those little pals of mine.”

It was then followed by the calypso by Lord Beginner (also in 1950):

Cricket lovely Cricket,
At Lord's where I saw it;
Cricket lovely Cricket,
At Lord's where I saw it;
Yardley tried his best
But Goddard won the test.
They gave the crowd plenty fun;
Second Test and West Indies won.

Chorus:With those two little pals of mine
Ramadhin and Valentine

Furthermore, the West Indies tour to England in the summer of 1963 was then gloriously documented in a book called 'Cricket, Lovely Cricket' by the author Ian Woolridge. It is perhaps, one of the best books one can ever read on this sport.

 
birdseye 2022-05-24 17:05:39 

In reply to outside_edge I was kind of familiar with that history but thanks for the refresher…… as a youngster I actually met Valentine at a gas station in Kingston, well didn’t really meet him, we had both stopped for gas and my friend pointed him out ---– seeing such personality in person can be so amazingly momentous to a kid.