The creator of Jeeves was an ardent cricket lover. This might not be a surprise, considering the fact that P.G. Wodehouse was an Englishman, and played regularly as the medium pacer for the cricket team of Dulwich College, where he studied at the turn of the 19th century. But the link between England’s arguably greatest comic writer and England’s national passion runs much deeper than this. PGW actually appeared in flannels no less than six times at the Lord’s cricket ground. Interestingly, his first captain at the cricketing Mecca was a person by the name of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle.

PGW gave birth to Jeeves, the patron saint of all butlers in English literature. He pilfered the name Jeeves from that of a Warwickshire county cricketer who had lost his life in the war in France. However, in typical Wodehousian manner, the author always maintained that he saw Jeeves playing for Gloucestershire!

Cricket and literature have always been bedfellows. The leisurely pattern of the game, its quiet grace and charm attracted the poet and the novelist. There are frequent references to cricket in Wodehouse’s fiction. But he said in a BBC interview in 1975 that he preferred baseball to cricket. Is this true or is it an instance of Wodehouse’s wry humour? In fact, this could not have been his actual feelings. For PGW was devoted to cricket. So much so that even in the United States of America, he was a regular at the cricket meets held in the Hollywood Cricket Club where such famous actors as Charles Aubrey Smith and Boris Karloff entertained.

When asked why he preferred baseball to cricket, PGW answered that in cricket you may go to the ground and find your favourite team fielding the whole day, whereas in baseball you are sure to see them perform and get an immediate result as well. It is difficult to believe that Wodehouse, with his fascination for traditional cricket, actually preferred a shorter version of the game. But if this is true, he would surely have welcomed Twenty20 cricket heartily.

Recently, Murray Hedgcock has edited a book entitled Wodehouse at the Wicket: A Cricketing Anthology. It is based entirely upon Wodehouse’s writings on cricket that reveal his deep interest in the game and his wide knowledge of its rules. Wodehouse writes in the distinctive, whimsical style well known to his readers. It is the laidback style of an enquiring and observant mind. No excitement ever rattles his composure. His wit is typically British, but with a dash of originality that gives him a class of his own.

In 1941, Wodehouse was in an internment camp in Upper Silesia. He was 59 at that time, but his love for cricket still raged. He surprised his guards and other inmates one day as he turned his arms to bowl a slow legspin. However, his batting never really flowered. Wodehouse said that he was very consistent in his batting performance, zero being his favourite score. Further, he added, “I would have made a century if the boundaries had been closer.”