More sport. This time in the form of a striking (literally) little passage from the preface of a book by Richard Tomlinson about the famed Victorian era cricketer W.G. Grace:
By the time he was twenty-seven, Grace had scored fifty first-class centuries. He performed this feat at a time when pitches were so poor, and cricket gear so flimsy, that batsmen risked their lives whenever they took guard. In one match at Lord’s – a ground where he would pick stones out of the rutted pitch – W.G. scored a hundred and then saw another batsman killed by a ball that smashed his head.
Despite the gear having got a lot less flimsy, cricket deaths, even now, occasionally happen.