Authors Cricket Club

The original Authors Cricket Club was an offshoot of J.M. Barrie's Allahakbarries team. It also drew some of its membership from the Authors' Club, which had been founded in 1891 as a place for British authors to gather and talk. Sherlock Holmes author Arthur Conan Doyle, an excellent cricketer who would go on to play ten first-class matches for the Marylebone Cricket Club in 1903, was the team captain. The bat that Doyle used when he made 101 not out in a game for the Authors' Club vs. the Press in 1896 is still on display at the MCC Museum at Lord's Cricket Ground. This match, predating the 1899 establishment of the 'real' Authors XI, brought together several of the writers who would found the team three years later. and Jeeves author P. G. Wodehouse, who was regarded as a decent player. and Cecil Headlam. The original Authors XI played their last game in 1912. Most of the team failed to reassemble after World War I ended in 1918, both due to the advancing ages of the players and because many of them found that their appetite for games had been diminished by the war. == 20th-century revivals ==

The Authors Cricket Club has been regularly revived since the original team disbanded. There were revivals with some of the original personnel in the 1920s (including E. W. Hornung and John Snaith) which lasted until 1968. Poet Edmund Blunden, a fanatical (although untalented) cricketer who celebrated his love of the sport in 1944's Cricket Country, captained a version of the Authors in the 1940s. Among those who joined him on the team were novelists Alec Waugh, as well as Test cricket legends Len Hutton, Douglas Jardine and Denis Compton. == 2012–present team ==

In 2012, 100 years after the original team last played, literary agent Charlie Campbell and novelist Nicholas Hogg announced they were starting the Authors XI anew. Campbell serves as captain and Hogg as vice-captain of the revived team. The team adopted as its motto the phrase "Praeter ingenium nihil" (Latin meaning "nothing except intelligence"). This is a reference to a remark Australian cricketer Kim Hughes made dismissing England's Mike Brearley when they captained opposing Ashes teams in 1981: "He had nothing going for him except that he was intelligent." Fixtures and foreign tours The Authors XI play against village cricket clubs in England, as well as against clubs such as the Lords and Commons (made up of members of Parliament), the Actors XI (a team that includes Damian Lewis and Iain Glen), all former Test and One-Day International (ODI) players for England. Caddick was clean bowled by Tom Holland. In addition to games in England, the Authors XI have traveled to several foreign countries to play cricket. In 2013 and 2015, they went to India, where they played against the Rajasthan Royals as part of the 2013 Jaipur Literature Festival. The team captains rode onto the cricket pitch atop camels and the next day, the Authors made the front page of the world's largest newspaper, The Times of India. In 2015, they played against the Vatican team in Rome and presented Pope Francis with his own Authors XI cricket cap, and in 2017, they traveled to Reykjavik and played against Iceland's national team in a three-game match, losing 2–1 (but redeemed themselves the following year, defeating Iceland by 20 runs when the latter team came to England). In 2018 and 2019, they visited the island of Corfu, Greece to take part in the first and second Corfu Literary Festivals, where they participated in literary panel discussions and writing workshops and played cricket against local teams. Book Some of the team members collectively wrote a book about their first season playing together, The Authors XI: A Season of English Cricket from Hackney to Hambledon (Bloomsbury, 2013). Sebastian Faulks wrote the foreword, in which he noted that "Amateur cricketers tend to be vain, anecdotal, passionate, knowledgeable, neurotic and given to fantasy. So do writers. The game is made for the profession." and William Fiennes penned a piece on "Cricket and Memory" that ended with him drifting away in a haze as he was stretchered off the field after snapping his collarbone while diving to make a catch. Sir Michael Parkinson wrote a blurb for the book which read "I once said I never met a cricketer I didn't like and this book goes some way to explaining why. A wonderful celebration of the best of games." Journalist Simon Barnes wrote "Most cricket writers are better at cricket than at writing. Reversing this principle is a revelation." and First Story, an organization co-founded by team member William Fiennes which fosters literacy through creative writing in low-income schools. ==References==