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Books

Mortar fire, weddings, camels, the French revolution: all kind of things get in the way of cricket

A review of Elk Stopped Play and Other Tales From Wisden’s Cricket Round the World, edited by Charlie Connelly. A delightful compendium of eccentric reports from cricket-unfriendly territory

5 April 2014

9:00 AM

5 April 2014

9:00 AM

Elk Stopped Play and Other Tales From Wisden’s Cricket Round the World Charlie Connelly (ed)

Wisden, pp.140, £9.99, ISBN: 9781408832370

It isn’t just the elk, either. Also bringing proceedings to a halt in this wonderful anthology are camels (Bahrain), cows and donkeys (Botswana), unexploded landmines (Rwanda, silly mid-on), people learning to drive (East Timor), punch-ups (Bermuda), low cloud (Christmas Island, 300 metres above sea-level), mortars (Iraq, though not during the game held by coalition forces in the ballroom-sized anteroom of Saddam’s abandoned North Palace) and weddings (the ground on Ascension Island has a church inside its boundary).

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