A History of Cricket Films

As this most peculiar of years continues on its merry way, Cinema Paradiso invites those missing the sound of leather on willow to come on a nostalgic sporting stroll, as we recall the best cricket films ever made.

Despite being capable of generating the most compelling sporting drama, cricket isn't particularly cinematic. Even in its shortest form, games take several hours to complete and there is often a lot of standing around in between the moments of dynamic action. Moreover, by being largely confined to British spheres of geopolitical influence, the sport lacks the universal appeal of football, while its adherents revel in statistics and tactical nuances that baffle non-fans.

No wonder Peter Griffin looks confused in the 2001 'One If By Clam, Two If By Sea' episode of Family Guy, when a Terry-Thomas lookalike in The Drunken Clam (voiced by Hugh Laurie) attempts to explain the rules: 'Cricket. Marvellous game, really. You see, the bowler hurls the ball toward the batsman, who tries to play away to fine leg. He endeavours to score by dashing between the creases, provided the wicket-keeper hasn't whipped his bails off, of course.'

Brian has no more luck in 'Road to India' (2016), which riffs on Danny Boyle's Slumdog Millionaire (2008) in having the Griffin dog attempt to raise quick cash by appearing on Who Wants to Be a Millionaire. Unfortunately, on being asked by Anil Kapoor which retired Indian cricketer has scored over 18,000 One Day International runs, Brian plumps for Jiminy Cricket over Anil Kumble, Mahendra Singh Dhoni and Sachin Tendulkar.

Since the inception of the Indian Premier League linked cricket to some of the subcontinent's biggest film stars, Bollywood has come to centre an increasing number of features on the national obsession. Yet, while the British film industry has hardly gone overboard on cricket pictures, plenty of fine films have been made and Cinema Paradiso is the place to see them.

Grace and Favour

By a curious coincidence, the first recorded references to both cricket and baseball involve the county of Surrey. A court case from January 1597 alludes to 'creckett' being played on a disputed piece of land near Guildford, while the earliest mention of 'bass-ball' suggests that the game had royal approval, as Frederick, Prince of Wales reputedly participated in a game in 1749. Both sports were well established by the time motion pictures arrived in the 1890s, therefore, with the cameras of the Warwick Trading Company seeking out the titan of Victorian cricket, Dr WG Grace, for a series of shorts in 1901.

Pioneers James Williamson and Jasper Redfern also filmed the leading players of the day, while those inveterate recorders of daily life, Sagar Mitchell and James Kenyon, recognised the appeal of filming cricket in the weekend leagues. The 1902 derby between Accrington and Church can be found on the BFI's Mitchell & Kenyon: Edwardian Sports (2007), which also includes footage of demon Lancashire bowler, Arthur Mold, who found himself at the centre of a controversy in 1900 when he was accused of 'chucking' by Australian umpire, Jim Phillips. He had himself filmed to prove that his bowling technique was legitimate and, in the process, he invented the action replay.

As both Christopher Rawlence's The Missing Reel (1990) and David Nicholas Wilkinson's The First Film (2015) testify, 1888 saw Frenchman Louis Aimé Augustin Le Prince produce a few frames of moving imagery at Roundhay in Leeds. The same year, C. Aubrey Smith led England to victory against South Africa in his only Test as captain. A Cambridge Blue and a Sussex stalwart, Smith had foxed the great WG with his 'round the corner' bowling style before giving up the game to go on the stage.

With the coming of talkies, Smith's stentorian tones meant that he was in demand on both sides of the Atlantic and several of his 113 films are available to rent from Cinema Paradiso. Simply type his name into the search line or follow the links from films as different as WS Van Dyke's Tarzan the Ape Man (1932), Cecil B. DeMille's Cleopatra (1934), Zoltan Korda's The Four Feathers (1939) and René Clair's And Then There Were None (1945).

In his position as unofficial head of what writer Sheridan Morley called 'the Hollywood Raj', Smith sought to maintain standards by forming the Hollywood Cricket Club in 1932. He helped raise $30,000 for a pavilion in Griffin Park and regularly corralled such stars as Boris Karloff, David Niven, Errol Flynn, Nigel Bruce, Basil Rathbone, Laurence Olivier, HB Warner, Cary Grant, Ronald Colman and Douglas Fairbanks, Jr. into turning out for the 1st XI. Despite detesting cricket, Leslie Howard became a member for social reasons, while the likes of Olivia de Havilland, Joan Fontaine, Merle Oberon, Elsa Lanchester and Elizabeth Taylor often helped with the teas.

Smith also invited cricket and football international CB Fry to Tinseltown, although the sixtysomething's hopes of stardom were dashed and he had to settle for supervising the cricketing scene in Sam Wood's Goodbye Mr Chips (1939), which earned Robert Donat the Academy Award for Best Actor. Almost half a century later, Ian Botham also found himself in the frame for Hollywood fame when Cannon boss Menachem Golan declared 'he's better looking than Tom Selleck' and considered the possibility of turning 'Beefy' into the next Sylvester Stallone or Charles Bronson. Nothing came of the encounter, however, and it was footballer Vinnie Jones who eventually assumed the movie tough guy mantle.

When not writing his books about Jeeves and Wooster and Blandings Castle, PG Wodehouse found a niche as one of Hollywood's highest paid screenwriters. Between working on pictures like George Stevens's Fred Astaire vehicle, A Damsel in Distress (1937), Wodehouse could often the found on the boundary's edge at Griffin Park. Fellow novelist Evelyn Waugh took a more jaundiced view, however, and mockingly turned Smith (who had been knighted in 1944) into Sir Auberon Abercrombie in his scathing insight into Hollywood mores, The Loved One, which was filmed in 1965 by Tony Richardson, although it's one of several pictures by this ground-breaking British director that are (scandalously) not available on disc in his homeland.

Beside an appearance in an elusive MGM short entitled Cricket Flickers (1932), the Hollywood Cricket Club has never been immortalised on the big screen. Perhaps someone could concoct a scenario around Smith showing the MCC touring party around the set of John Cromwell's The Prisoner of Zenda (1937). It could be directed by Sam Mendes, who won an Oscar for American Beauty (1999) and is a more than useful cricketer himself. They would have to rebuild the pavilion, however, as it was demolished to make way for the equestrian centre for the 1984 Los Angeles Olympics.

Equally script-worthy is an earlier visit by Bill Woodfull's Australians, which saw the party accompany Karloff to the set of Charles Brabin's The Mask of Fu Manchu (1932), while stars of the magnitude of Jean Harlow, Marion Davies, Clark Gable, Myrna Loy, Joan Crawford and Jeanette MacDonald came to watch their match with the HCC at the UCLA Westwood ground on 25 August 1932. The most intriguing aspect of the trip, however, occurred on 16 July, when Walt Disney was reportedly so taken by the news that master batsman Donald Bradman had been out for a duck in a game in New York that he created the character Donald Duck shortly afterwards.

Play Up, Chaps!

Britain's obsession with sport has only rarely been reflected in its cinema, with odd scenes rather than entire pictures being devoted to the main team games. There have been exceptions where cricket is concerned, such as the silent duo of Charles Barnett's The Life of Jack Hobbs and Walter West's A Daughter of Love (both 1925) and Badger's Green, Adrian Brunel's lost 1934 adaptation of RC Sheriff's play about a cricketing wager. This has the reputation of being one of the best films ever made about the game and it's frustrating that John Irvin's 1949 remake has, so far, failed to surface on disc.

However, Cinema Paradiso can offer Roy Rich and Alfred Roome's It's Not Cricket, which was released the same year. Following the efforts of Major Bright and Captain Early to catch a Nazi war criminal during a country house cricket weekend, this genial romp teamed Basil Radford and Naunton Wayne, who had made a name for themselves as the cricket-obsessed Hawtrey Charters and Sinclair Caldicott in Alfred Hitchcock's The Lady Vanishes (1938) and Carol Reed's Night Train to Munich (1940), which were both scripted by Frank Launder and Sidney Gilliat. The former sees them fretting about delays that could prevent them from getting back to Blighty in time to attend a Test match at Old Trafford and Arthur Lowe and Ian Carmichael had similar concerns in Anthony Page's 1979 remake. However, the duo were replaced by sisters Evelyn (Stephanie Cole) and Rose Floodporter (Gemma Jones) in Diarmuid Lawrence's 2013 BBC take on Ethel Lina White's source novel.

Naunton and Wayne resurfaced in the roles in John Baxter's Crooks' Tour (1941) and Launder and Gilliat's Millions Like Us (1943). Yet, while they were contractually forbidden from using the names of Charters and Caldicott, the pair continued to play similar twosomes. Having been 'careless talkers' in Thorold Dickinson's Next of Kin (1942), they were cast as Parratt and Potter in 'The Golfer's Story', Charles Crichton's episode in the Ealing anthology, Dead of Night (1945). They were also Prendergast and Fotheringham in Francis Searle's Girl in a Million (1946); Garnett and Leslie in Ralph Smart's 'The Facts of Life' contribution to the W. Somerset Maugham portmanteau, Quartet (1948); Gregg and Straker in Henry Cornelius's Ealing comedy, Passport to Pimlico; and two 'mechanical types' in Michael Barry's Stop Press Girl before they put in a brief appearance as Bright and Early in Ralph Thomas's Helter Skelter (all 1949).

The latter also featured Wilfrid Hyde-White, who benefited from a change of mind when Graham Greene decided to merge the characters he had devised for Radford and Wayne into the British Council rep, Crabbit, in Carol Reed's classic British noir, The Third Man (1949). But there was a last stand for the cricketing chums, as Robin Bailey and Michael Aldridge took guard and got into all manner of scrapes in Julian Aymes's charming BBC series, Charters & Caldicott (1985). Bailey essayed another cricket obsessive, the Brigadier from Witney Scrotum, whose pithily witty anecdotes adorned the cult BBC series, Tales From a Long Room (1980-85).

The most fondly remembered cricket film made in this country is Anthony Asquith's The Final Test (1953). Written by Terence Rattigan (who had also slipped a cricket scene into Asquith's The Browning Version, 1951), it was inspired by Don Bradman's last Testinnings at The Oval in 1948 and shows how playwright Alexander Whitehead (Robert Morley) mends the relationship between retiring batsman Sam Palmer (Jack Warner) and his literature-fixated teenage son, Reggie (Ray Jackson). What makes this so special for cricket aficionados are the cameos made as Palmer's teammates by such England legends as Len Hutton, Denis Compton, Alec Bedser, Godfrey Evans, Jim Laker and Cyril Washbrook. Compton might have achieved a notable double, as he was on the books at Highbury when Thorold Dickinson made The Arsenal Stadium Mystery (1939), but fellow Gunners Cliff Bastin, Ted Drake and Eddie Hapgood stole the limelight instead.

The commentary for the match against Australia is provided by John Arlott, whose Hampshire burr had helped make Graham Tharp's short, Cricket (1950), such a delight. Arlott would pick up the microphone again to provide expert insights in Michael Apted's P'tang, Yang, Kipperbang (1982), a coming of age story scripted by Jack Rosenthal that centres on 1950s adolescent Alan Duckworth (John Albasiny) and his obsessions with cricket, the war record of Tommy the school groundsman (Garry Cooper) and the fact he has to kiss the girl of his dreams, Ann (Abigail Cruttenden), in the school play. In his dreams, Alan could have taken Ann to the local picturehouse to see Charles Crichton's The Titfield Thunderbolt (1953), which sees one luckless batsmen get timbered when he is distracted by the steam train's whistle just as the bowler gets into his delivery stride.

Although it has become a global game, cricket remains symbolic of a certain kind of Englishness and it has often been used in this regard as a backdrop for scenes. Three different adaptation of Thomas Hughes's Tom Brown's Schooldays have included cricketing sequences (1916, 1971 and 2005), while Diggs (Neil North) offers Tom (John Howard-Davies) his bat to defend himself against the bullying Flashman (John Forrest) in Gordon Parry's celebrated 1951 version.

The game proved a prequel to murder in Anthony Asquith's thriller, A Cottage on Dartmoor (1929), but the mood was much lighter as the umpire (Ernest Thesiger) sympathises with opening bats Crabtree (AE Matthews) and Bascombe (Miles Malleson) for having over-refreshed themselves at lunch in Ken Annakin's colourful adaptation of Jerome K. Jerome's Three Men in a Boat (1956). The scene concludes with Montmorency the dog causing chaos after stealing the ball, but the episode was absent from Stephen Frears's 1975 BBC version, which was scripted by Tom Stoppard and saw Tim Curry, Stephen Moore and Michael Palin take over from David Tomlinson, Laurence Harvey and Jimmy Edwards in the roles of Jerome, George and Harris.

At one point during David Lean's multiple-Oscar winner, The Bridge on the River Kwai (1957, a classic available on 4K Blu-ray), Colonel Saito (Sessue Hayakawa) barks back at Colonel Nicholson (Alec Guinness): 'Do not speak to me of rules. This is war! This is not a game of cricket!' However, combat and cricket do overlap in Richard Lester's take on Patrick Ryan's novel, How I Won the War (1967), as Lieutenant Ernest Goodbody (Michael Crawford) is ordered to lay an 'Advanced Area Cricket Pitch' behind enemy lines in North Africa. He's abetted by Musketeer Gripweed (John Lennon), who is always on hand to shine Goodbody's ball.

Admiral Boon (Reginald Owen) and first mate Mr Binnacle (Don Barclay) shoot first and ask questions later when they find intruders on their roof in Robert Stevenson's Oscar-winning take on PL Travers's Mary Poppins (1964). However, they are forced to admire the technique shown by Bert the chimney sweep (Dick Van Dyke) when he uses his broom like a cricket bat to clock back a firework and the old sea dogs only just remember to duck, as it whistles over their heads.

The six-hitting Bertram 'Bo' West (Jim Dale) also winds up in uniform after being accused of conduct unbecoming on a cricket field by Captain Humphrey Bagshawe (Peter Gilmore) in Gerald Thomas's Carry On Follow That Camel (1967). Still wearing their uniforms, some British troops pick teams for a quick game on the eve of the Battle of Balaclava in Tony Richardson's The Charge of the Light Brigade (1968), while a cricket scoreboard is used to keep tally of the hideous losses on the Western Front in Richard Attenborough's Oh! What a Lovely War (1969).

Having sought sanctuary in the UK during the Communist witch-hunt in postwar Hollywood, Joseph Losey became adept at depicting British life. However, it was cricket-mad screenwriter Harold Pinter who inserted the sporting scenes into Accident (1967) and The Go-Between (1970), which were respectively adapted from novels by Nicholas Mosley and LP Hartley. In the former, married Oxford don Stephen (Dirk Bogarde) lounges on the grass at Merton Fields with Anna (Jacqueline Sassard) while fellow student William (Michael York) tries to impress her with his cricketing feats. The latter sees Marian Maudsley (Julie Christie) look on with amusement as young Leo Colston (Dominic Guard) catches tenant farmer Ted Burgess (Alan Bates) out in the deep in the picturesque setting of Thornage village green in Norfolk.

Getting Them in Singles

Rarely has a rustic cricket scene been more evocatively photographed than by Pole Jerzy Skolimowski in The Shout (1978). But appearances can be deceptive, as the game is taking place in the grounds of an asylum and a deeply unsettling story unfolds in flashback, as Crossley (Alan Bates) passes the time while scoring with Robert Graves (Tim Curry) by revealing what happened when he introduced composer Anthony Fielding (John Hurt) and his wife, Rachel (Susannah York), to the 'terror shout' he had learned from an Aboriginal shaman.

Based on a story by Robert Graves and boasting a score by the Genesis duo of Tony Banks and Mike Rutherford, this disconcerting chiller trades on an image of order that is reinforced by the pre-Olympic cricket scene in Hugh Hudson's Chariots of Fire (1981), as Harold Abrahams (Ben Cross), Eric Liddell (Ian Charleson), Lord Andrew Lindsay (Nigel Havers) and Aubrey Montague (Nicholas Farrell) indulge in a little team building before competing in Paris in 1924. By contrast, there's dissension in the ranks in Marek Kanievska's wonderful adaptation of Julian Mitchell's play, Another Country (1984), as rebels Guy Bennett (Rupert Everett) and Tommy Judd (Colin Firth) delight in baiting their upper-bracket public school classmates while changing in the pavilion, doing a bit of catching practice and umpiring a house match.

It's back to the grass roots for Horace Ové's Playing Away (1986). There's racial undercurrent in Caryl Phillips's daringly droll account of the culture clash that occurs when it's decided to mark African Famine Week in the sleepy village of Sneddington by playing a cricket match against the Caribbean Conquistadors from Brixton. Superbly acted by an estimable ensemble, this inversion of stereotypes finds a companion piece in Paul Morrison's Wondrous Oblivion (2003), as tongues start wagging in South London in the early 1960s when Dennis Samuel (Delroy Lindo) arrives from Jamaica and offers to help teenage Jewish neighbour David Wiseman (Sam Smith) improve his cricketing skills.

There's more bonding over a cricket ball in John Boorman's Second World War drama, Hope and Glory (1987), as Clive (David Hayman) teaches eight year-old Bill (Sebastian Rice-Edwards) the secret of the googly before he heads off to join his unit. This will later stand the boy in good stead with his grumpy grandfather (Ian Bannen), but the title character (James Wilby) in Merchant-Ivory's adaptation of EM Forster's Maurice (1987) is a reluctant cricketer and only agrees to captain the servants XI when he discovers that under-gamekeeper Alex Scudder (Rupert Graves) will be on the team. Maurice briefly enjoys batting with the lad, only to be run out when host Clive Durham (Hugh Grant) takes his place in mid-innings.

Despite playing a British soldier who is supposed to be something of a demon bowler, American actor Forest Whitaker unleashes the worst action ever seen on screen in a couple of Stephen Rea's dream reveries in Neil Jordan's The Crying Game (1992). The standard is only marginally better, as Joe (Jonathan Rhys Meyers) and Mohaan (Anupam Kher) have a little game in Gurinder Chadha's Bend It Like Beckham (2002). But there's a poignant significance to this sequence, as the main reason why Mohaan had been against daughter Jess (Parminder Nagra) joining the Hounslow Harriers was because he had been so deeply hurt as a young man when he was thrown off the local cricket team for wearing a turban.

Cricket merely merits a mention in passing in Nicholas Hytner's The Madness of King George (1994), Michael Winterbottom's Welcome to Sarajevo (1997), Nick Park's Chicken Run (2000) and Beeban Kidron's Bridget Jones: The Edge of Reason (2004). But Simon Pegg proves that he knows how to wield a willow, as he uses a bat found in his garden shed to bludgeon one of the zombies in his back garden in Edgar Wright's Shaun of the Dead (2004). In 2006, James Bond almost joined the screen cricket club, as the pre-credit sequence for Martin Campbell's Casino Royale (2006, also available on 4K Blu-ray) included a scene in which 007 (Daniel Craig) spots a suspect in the crowd during a game in Lahore. But the violent washroom confrontation that followed failed to make the final cut.

Remaining on the Indian subcontinent, cricket crops up at regular intervals in Danny Boyle's Best Picture winner, Slumdog Millionaire. The young Jamal Malik drops a catch before being chased off the tarmac by the police in a lively sequence. Later, television coverage of Sachin Tendulkar being dismissed for 99 provides the backdrop to a conversation between Jamal (Dev Patel) and Latika (Freida Pinto). But the key moment comes on Who Wants to Be a Millionaire when Jamal is asked, 'Who made the most centuries in first-class cricket?'

Aficionados will know the answer before Jamal uses up his 50/50, but would he have been aware that Jane Austen (Anne Hathaway) was fleet-footed around the crease, as she proves in Julian Jarrold's Becoming Jane (2007) by creaming away an underarm delivery from Tom Lefroy (James McEvoy) ? The ball was also served on a plate by a trundling extra for Robin Cavendish (Andrew Garfield) to dispatch into the tea tent in the opening sequence of Andy Serkis's inspirational biopic, Breathe (2017). At least the action is vaguely authentic, which is more than can be said of those Hollywood films that make maladroit attempts to depict cricket.

Hollywood Has a Bash

As bat-carrying manager Ian Faith (Tony Hendra) opines in Rob Reiner's This Is Spinal Tap (1984), 'having a good solid piece of wood in your hand is often useful'. Casey Jones (Elias Koteas) would seemingly agree if his choice of weapon is anything to go by in Steve Barron's Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (1990). But, having had his house attacked by nihilists - one of whom was wielding a cricket bat - The Dude (Jeff Bridges) probably wouldn't concur with this verdict in Joel and Ethan Coen's The Big Lebowski (1998, and available on 4K Blu-ray), although a sturdy piece of willow might have come in handy for the cricket-loving Keaty (Patterson Joseph) when the sharks and Thai farmers start attacking in Danny Boyle's The Beach (2000).

Las Vegas lounge singer Ralph Jones (John Goodman) doesn't know one end of a cricket bat from another. But, having inherited the British throne in David S. Ward's King Ralph (1991), he is put through a crash course in batting (in every sense of the word) by long-suffering factotum, Willingham (Peter O'Toole). As an avid cricket fan, O'Toole would doubtless have known what Australian director Peter Weir seemingly did not in staging a cricket match on the Galapagos Islands in Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World (2003), as overarm bowling was forbidden in 1806 and wouldn't become legal for another six decades. Such a shame, as his design team went to the trouble of getting the bat shapes for that period just right.

O'Toole would also know that an umpire would be unlikely to shake his head to deny an appeal of 'how was he?' when a batsman is clean bowled, which is what happens in the cricketing scene in Marc Forster's Finding Neverland (2004). This is all the more frustrating, as JM Barrie (Johnny Depp) had his own cricket team, Allahakbarries, which usually had a famous writer or two in the line-up. Staying in the realms of children's fiction, the Pevensey siblings have a game of cricket to wile away the wartime hours in Andrew Adamson's effects-laden recreation of CS Lewis's The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe (2005).

Much to the frustration of his son, Wasim (Mazhar Munir), Pakistani migrant worker Saleem Ahmed Khan (Shahid Ahmed) seeks solace in cricket when he fails to find work at the Connex oil refinery in Stephen Gaghan's Syriana (2005). Climber siblings Peter (Chris O'Donnell) and Annie Garrett (Robin Tunney) witness a game in an even less likely place while trekking towards K2 in the Himalayas in Martin Campbell's Vertical Limit (2000). However, you'll have to seek out the extras when you rent Wes Anderson's The Darjeeling Limited (2007) from Cinema Paradiso, as the scene in which Peter (Adrian Brody) plays cricket with a tennis ball didn't make the final cut.

While searching for The Aurelia, a Spanish galleon lost with the 1715 Treasure Fleet, Ben Finnegan (Matthew McConaughey) demonstrates admirable sporting versatility in Andy Tennant's Fool's Gold (2008), as he manages to get hit over the head with a cricket bat and a golf club. A televised game of cricket is used as a little white lie by New York lawyer Rachel (Ginnifer Goodwin) in Luke Greenfield's adaptation of Emily Griffin's bestseller, Something Borrowed (2011), when best friend Darcy (Kate Hudson) asks after Dex (Collin Egglesfield), the fiancé with whom Rachel has been having a secret affair.

It proved to be strike three for Adam Sandler and Drew Barrymore when they reunited for Frank Coraci's Blended (2014) after previously having been paired in the same director's The Wedding Singer (1998) and Peter Segal's 50 First Dates (2004). They play divorcees who wind up in South Africa on a 'familymoon' and Sandler tries to teach Barrymore's young son to play baseball. Unfortunately, they can only find a cricket bat and a batting helmet, while the only person free to pitch is Proteas fast bowler, Dale Steyn. He proves to be as good an actor as Forest Whitaker is a bowler. But it was Sandler, Barrymore and former basketball great Shaquille O'Neal who wound up receiving Golden Raspberry nominations for their performance.

Cricket on the Box

As one might expect of a bowler-hatted chap who could make mincemeat out of his adversaries with a rolled-up brolly, John Steed (Patrick MacNee) seems to have been a useful schoolboy cricketer in The Avengers (1961-69), with references to the noble game occurring in four episodes: 'Death At Bargain Prices' (1965), 'Honey For the Prince' (1966), 'Love All', and 'Fog' (both 1969). There's even a bit of on-field action in 'Dead Men Are Dangerous', an episode from The New Avengers (1976-77).

Reaching the screen from the pages of EW Hornung (who was the brother-in-law of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle), cricketing cracksman AJ Raffles was equally debonair. Having been played with insouciant ease by Ronald Colman in George Fitzmaurice's Raffles (1930) and David Niven in Sam Wood's 1939 film of the same name, the Zingari jacket passed to Anthony Valentine for the ITV series, Raffles (1975-77), which was scripted with admirable fidelity by Philip Mackie. Abetted by old school chum Bunny Manders (Christopher Strauli) and doggedly pursued by Scotland Yard's Inspector Mackenzie (Victor Carin), Raffles was as quick across a rooftop as he was between the wickets. However, he had to leave the theft of some wedding presents to Bunny in 'A Bad Night', as he was engaged in the Second Test at Old Trafford.

In a lighter vein, legendary Yorkshire fast bowler Fred Truemen guested as EC Egan in 'The Test', as Hodges (Bill Pertwee) brings in a ringer for a cricket match between the ARP Wardens and the Home Guard in a 1970 episode of Dad's Army (1968-77). Trueman would only get to bowl one ball, as public school alumnus Sergeant Wilson (John Le Mesurier) manages to keep his end up. Fiery Fred went on to become a regular member of the Test Match Special radio commentary team, whose chatty style is lampooned in the 'Test Match' sketch in Monty Python's Flying Circus (1969-74), which returned to the cricketing theme in 'The Batsmen of the Kalahari' and 'The Test Match Against Iceland'.

John Cleese made Major Gowen (Ballard Berkeley) a cricket nut in Fawlty Towers (1975-79). His delight at Basil D'Oliveira scoring a hundred and Hampshire winning passed without comment. But the Major's anecdote about taking a girl he was keen on to see India at The Oval made headlines earlier this year when UKTV pulled 'The Germans' episode in the wake of the George Floyd protests because of its use of outdated epithets.

Rick (Rik Mayall) finds himself playing a set of burning stumps so that Vyvyan (Adrian Edmondson) can be presented with the Ashes after beating Mike (Christopher Ryan) in a game of indoor cricket in the 'Summer Holiday' episode of The Young Ones (1982-84). Vyvyan also uses bat to keep Rick and Neil (Nigel Planer) working in 'Oil'. Among the other BBC comedy shows to feature cricket are In Sickness and in Health (1985-92), Yes, Prime Minister (1986-88), Keeping Up Appearances (1990-95) and The League of Gentlemen (1999-2002).

Playwright Richard Harris made the most of his 1979 stage hit, Outside Edge, which enjoyed two outings on the small screen. Cinema Paradiso offers users the chance to see both, as the 1982 teleplay is available on the boxed set of the 1994-96 sitcom. The first sees Paul Eddington playing Roger Dervish, the captain of Brent Park Cricket Club, whose one-track obsession makes life tricky for wife Miriam (Prunella Scales) and his more laid-back teammate, Kevin Costello (Jonathan Lynn) and his bohemian wife, Maggie (Maureen Lipman). The cast for Harris's ITV sitcom was equally impressive, with Robert Daws and Brenda Blethyn playing the Dervishes, while Timothy Spall and Josie Lawrence became the Costellos.

Elsewhere in 1982, Peter Davison's Time Lord sported striped trousers with his cricket sweater as he turns out for a game at Cranleigh Hall in 1925 in the Doctor Who: Black Orchid. Coming in to bat at 56 for 9, the Doctor strikes so many lusty blows that he confuses the umpire into signalling one four as a wide. He also takes a clutch of wickets and an effortless one-handed slip catch. But things quickly become a tad more complicated after he is jokingly dubbed 'The Master', in a reference to WG Grace rather than the similarly monikered renegade Time Lord.

Students of the game will enjoy the discussion of Denis Compton's relationship with Middlesex skipper FG Mann in 'The Cricket Match' episode of John Esmonde and Bob Larbey's sitcom, Ever Decreasing Circles (1984-87), which sees Martin Bryce (Richard Briers) do his level best to keep dashing neighbour Paul Ryman (Peter Egan) out of the cricket team he has captained in suburban Surrey for the last 14 years, even though the newcomer is a Cambridge Blue.

Armchair detectives should be able to spot the cricket scenes in the following episodes: 'A Perfect Recapture' (1983) in Bergerac (1981-91); 'Dead Man's Eleven' (1999) in Midsomer Murders (1997-2018); and 'Playing for the Ashes (2002) ' in The Inspector Lynley Mysteries (2001-07) among others. There's also a quick glimpse of the game in Episode 2.4 (2008) of Kingdom (2007-09). This shouldn't come as much of a surprise as Stephen Fry (who contents himself with an umpiring stint) is a big cricket fan and dropped the odd reference into the sketches on show in A Bit of Fry & Laurie (1986-94), with one 'creamy' TMS spoof having a twist punchline.

Our transatlantic cousins find cricket perplexing, as Goldie Hawn proved when Peter Sellers sought to explain the rules in a classic skit from Rowan & Martin's Laugh-In (1968-73). Despite possessing a name with a very sporting ring to it, Duckworth mistakes baseball for cricket in the 'Take Me Out of the Ballgame' episode of Duck Tales (1987-90). The writers of the 2006 'The West Coast Derby' episode of Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip (2006-07) were clearly having a laugh when they had news anchor Simon Stiles (DL Hughley) read a score from a Test match between the Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology and Bangalore Union.

But not everyone is a fan. Consider President Josiah Bartlet (Martin Sheen), who tells Charlie Young (Dulé Hill) about his dismay at the prospect of having to watch a match between Scotland and Bermuda. 'Now, I'm an educated man, Charlie,' Bartlet confides in the 2000 'What Kind of Day Has It Been' episode of The West Wing (1999-2006), 'but when someone tries to explain cricket to me, all I wanna do is hit him in the head with a teapot.'

The Global Game

Despite getting off to an early start, when Henry Walter Barnett used a Lumière Cinématographe to record the Ashes Test at Sydney in December 1897, Australia has produced surprisingly few cricket films. Indeed, the scorers went largely untroubled between Victor Upton-Brown's silent account of the showdown between Piper's Flat and Molonglo in How McDougall Topped the Score (1924) and Bodyline (1984), which starred Hugo Weaving as Douglas Jardine and Gary Sweet as Don Bradman in a the fondly remembered recreation of the MCC's controversial 1932-33 tour Down Under.

Sadly, this highly entertaining mini-series isn't currently available on disc. But Cinema Paradiso users can still enjoy Daina Reed's Howzat! Kerry Packer's War (2012), which recalls how the Channel Nine media mogul (Lachy Hulme) caused a rift in the global game by setting up World Series Cricket, with the help of former Aussie captain and revered commentator, Richie Benaud (Peter Houghton). As is often the way with recreations, fact and fiction sometimes get a bit muddled. Hence, the crew of the Parkes Observatory in New South Wales are seen playing cricket on the satellite bowl in Rob Sitch's winning comedy, The Dish (2000), while waiting for Apollo 11 to land on the Moon in July 1969, when, in fact, NASA strictly restricted access.

A wedding takes place next to the cricket ground where Adelaide photojournalist Nick (William McInnes) feels the first inklings of hope after being diagnosed with testicular cancer in Sarah Watt's poignant drama, Look Both Ways (2005). However, there's nothing so heartwarming on view in Stacey Edmond's I Know How Many Runs You Scored Last Summer (2008), a sporting spin on Jim Gillespie's teen slasher, I Know What You Did Last Summer (1997), in which a serial killer with a bristling moustache and some customised cricket kit stalks a safe house in Joadja Creek to avenge himself on the teammates who had humiliated him two decades earlier.

The mood is akin to Ealing whimsy in Jean-François Pouliot's Seducing Dr Lewis (2003), which centres on the impoverished Québecois fishing village of Ste-Marie-La-Mauderne, whose residents pretend to love cricket and fusion jazz in order to persuade medic David Boutin to stay long enough for them to win a tender for a factory that will bring the backwater some much-needed employment. One of the few cricketing films to have been made in the Caribbean, Alison Saunders-Franklyn's Hit For Six (2009) brings such West Indian legends Everton Weekes, Wes Hall, Desmond Haynes and Gordon Greenidge to Barbados for a redemption saga in which a disgraced international player seeks to reconnect with his father.

Popular with Pakistani and diasporic audiences was I Am Shahid Afridi (2013), Syed Ali Raza Usama's account of the career of one of the country's most iconic players. But the tone was markedly more sombre in Regardt van den Bergh's Hansie (2008), which contrasts starkly with Clint Eastwood's Invictus (2009) in charting the fall from grace of South African captain Hansie Cronje (Frank Reitenback), who led the team to the top of the Test rankings after the country was admitted back into the fold after the ending of apartheid, only for the deeply Christian Cronje to become involved with some match-fixing Indian bookmakers.

Which brings us to the country where cricket is much more than a game. Around 30 Indian films are centred around the sport, while many more feature it in some way. Among those available from Cinema Paradiso are Yash Chopra's Darr (1993), Vidnu Vinod Chopra's Mission Kashmir (2000), Karan Johar's Kabhi Khushi Kabhi Gham (2001), David Dhawan's Mujhse Shaadi Karogi (2004) and Neeraj Pandey's Special 26 (2013).

Actor-director Dev Anand offered the role of an embittered captain who is replaced by a heroic newcomer to Pakistani superstar Imran Khan before Aditya Pancholi was cast alongside Aamir Khan in Awwal Number (1990), which includes a terrorist threat to bomb a Test match against Australia. Aamir Khan Productions made a spectacular debut with Ashutosh Gowariker's Lagaan: Once Upon a Time in India (2001), which is set in the 1890s and pitches the poor farmers of Champaner against a team from the British Raj. Inspired by BR Chopra's Naya Daur (1957), cricket's only genuine blockbuster became only the third Indian feature to be nominated for the Academy Award for Best Foreign Film after Mehboob Khan's Mother India (1957) and Mira Nair's Salaam Bombay! (1988).

Kapil Dev guests as a selector in Nagesh Kukunoor's Iqbal (2005), a feel-good drama that reveals how sister Shweta Prasad and washed-up cricketer Naseerrudin Shah help farm boy Shreyas Talpade overcome class prejudice and being deaf and mute in order to get a crack at opening the bowling for India. Even more insurmountable odds are conquered in Ajit Pal Mangat's Victory (2009), which boasts the most remarkable cast of cameoing cricketers ever assembled. Sadly, it's not currently available on disc, so we shall move on to director Kunal Deshmukh exposing the seedier side of the game in Jannat (2008), which follows small-time card sharp Emraan Hashmi to South Africa, where he becomes the book-keeper for match-fixing mobster, Javed Sheikh.

Keen to reach out to overseas audiences, Bollywood came to the streets of Southall for Nikhil Advani's Patiala House (2011), which shows how Akshay Kumar defies strict father Rishi Kapoor by playing for England. His treachery causes Kapoor to have a heart attack, but Kumar is determined to fulfil his destiny in a drama that features Test players Andrew Symond, Kieron Pollard and Herschelle Gibbs.

Such was the impact that the recently retired Mahendra Singh Dhoni had on subcontinental cricket that he has already inspired two movies. Aakash Jagannadh plays the teenager who dreams of emulating his hero in Prakash Raj's Dhoni (2012), while Sushant Singh Rajput plays the World Cup-winning wicketkeeper/batsman in Neeraj Pandey's biopic, MS Dhoni: The Untold Story (2016). The same year saw the release of Rohit Dhawan's Dishoom, a fast-moving thriller set in the Middle East that follows no-nonsense cop John Abraham and Indo-Emirati rookie Varun Dhawan on a top secret search for Saqib Saleem, the superstar who has been kidnapped by a fanatical fan on the eve of a big cup game between India and Pakistan.

A red Ferrari belonging to Sachin Tendulkar gets stolen by law-abiding clerk Sharman Joshi in his desperate bid to help his young son realise the dream of playing at Lord's in Rajesh Mapuskar's Ferrari Ki Sawaari (2012). Another father-son storyline dominates Gowtam Tinnanuri's Jersey (2022), as a talented cricketer who was denied a chance to play for his country through racial prejudice in the 1980s agrees to participate in an exhibition game against New Zealand in order to earn the fee to buy his son an India shirt. Such was the success of this Telegu saga that Tinnanuri was invited to Bollywood to direct a Hindi remake, although its release has been delayed because of coronavirus.

Continue reading to see our pick of the best cricket films...