Letters | 13 March 2010

Not cricket

Sir: Many a cricket follower (‘Cricket’s foreign legion’, 6 March) would join Peter Oborne in denouncing the growth of South African mercenaries entering our domestic game. As a county cricket spectator, I have always enjoyed scouting for new talent for our national team. It gave me great pleasure to watch an emerging Michael Vaughan score a double century at Scarborough in the early days of his career, and see Graeme Swann spin-bowling for Northamptonshire: both of them with obvious England potential. Somehow it is not quite the same these days, as we survey the array of journeyman players.

John Walker
Abingdon



By the book

Sir: Professor Ekirch (Letters, 6 March) clearly believes in the old orator’s trick, ‘Argument weak, speak louder’. Initially he claimed that the disinheritance of James Annesley, the subject of his own book, ‘inspired’ R.L. Stevenson’s Kidnapped, but now in response to scepticism he loudly declares that Annesley’s fate provided the ‘template’ for the novel.