Enjoyed this thread and my response makes it a century for this thread!!!!

That wasn't my goal, but I never would have thought that this posting would have produced over 100 responses.
Imagine if I'd inquired about baseball, which I'd always thought was the king of arcane sports detail.

elaine
Have your questions been answered ? Maybe we should start again ?

What was the question?
Oh, yes.
No, not really, well, maybe, there's certainly plenty of information here, I was just hoping for simplicity, for the simple-minded.
But I do love the humor.

I finally found the book with the chapter on cricket. It's "Here's England," by Ruth McKenney and Richard Bransten and is one of the best books about England that I've read.

There's a famous comic cricket match in AG MacDonell's 'England, Their England' - a 1920s Scotsman's mildly humorous observations on English habits. Dickens's Pickwick Papers also has one.

George MacDonald Fraser describes a game of single wicket cricket in ?Flashman?s Lady?, as well as some more conventional cricket.