Quotes from Neville Cardus

The umpire... is like the geyser in the bathroom; we cannot do without it, yet we notice it only when it is out of order.

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

A true batsman should in most of his strokes tell the truth about himself.

We remember not the scores and the results in after years; it is the men who remain in our minds, in our imagination.

Often in this our life do we begin by cursing men and end by loving them. A sense of the common fallibility of all flesh makes us kin. No man is lovable who is invincible.

Sibelius justified the austerity of his old age by saying that while other composers were engaged in manufacturing cocktails, he offered the public pure cold water.

The umpire... is like the geyser in the bathroom; we cannot do without it, yet we notice it only when it is out of order.

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.

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