This Sporting Life

image from Project Gutenberg

Over on the Cornflower blog today, Mr Cornflower reviews what sounds a very interesting book about cricket. It’s Peter Pan’s First XI, about an amateur cricket team put together by J M Barrie. I’ll have to see if I can get it from the library.

The post set me wondering about sport as it appears in fiction. I like to read about cricket in books and one of my favourite cricket scenes is the one in Murder Must Advertise by Dorothy L Sayers. There’s the famous match in England, their England by A G Macdonell and a lot of cricket in P G Wodehouse’s Mike and Psmith books.

This is all preaching to the converted. I don’t like football yet Nick Hornby wrote so well about it in Fever Pitch that I finished the book. So I’m asking: has an author made you interested in a sport you don’t otherwise care about? Where is the Fever Pitch of lawn tennis? Recommendations welcomed.