Oxford - the Horror of Cricket

This is an excerpt from the tour Oxford’s Noble and Great Ones - Part 1  which explores around the southern part of Oxford.  The full tour is found on   www.obelisktours.co.uk

No sport seems more ‘English’ than cricket, and no cricket ground has a more perfect setting than the one in Merton field alongside the Christ Church meadow.  However, when it was first proposed Charles Lutwidge Dodgson (Lewis Carroll) was horrified that the meadow should be sacrificed for the sake of one sport.  He wrote a poem about this; the first stanza reads:

Amidst thy bowers the tyrant’s hand is seen,

And rude pavilions sadden all your green;

One selfish pastime grasps the whole domain,

And half a faction swallows up the plain;

Adown thy glades, all sacrificed to cricket,

The hollow-sounding bat now guards the wicket.

Sunk are thy mounds in shapeless level all,

Lest aught impede the swiftly rolling ball;

And trembling, shrinking from the fatal blow,

Far, far away thy hapless children go. 

More details about the people, places and events associated with these sites can be found on the tour Oxford’s Noble and Great Ones - Part 1 available on   www.obelisktours.co.uk