MORE THAN A GAME

John Major (Harper Press, £25)

With Tony Blair departing as Prime Minister in a whirlwind of final tours and publicity, comparisons are inevitable with the previous occupant of 10 Downing Street, who left office in very different circumstances and in a very different way.

On the day after his May 1997 defeat, John Major slipped away to The Oval, heading "for a leisurely lunch and a soothing afternoon of cricket".

The first sentence of this wide-ranging and engaging book sets the tone: "All my life cricket has been a joy." And in More Than A Game, he explores its development from the 1300 wardrobe accounts of the Prince of Wales playing 'creag' to the present world of ball-tampering, big money and technology.

Inevitably, Major concentrates on English cricket. Like the great John Arlott, he believes that you cannot understand, let alone love the game, without understanding its context in society. In other words, who knows cricket who only cricket knows? As Major writes: "The history of cricket is often seen in a vacuum, as if it developed unaffected by the turbulent history of the nation that gave it birth."

And in this story, rich in anecdote and extravagant characters - from Lord Frederic Beauclark, a direct descendant of Charles II and Nell Gwynne to the colossus W.G. Grace - Oxford, too, finds a place.

Samuel Johnson played cricket at Oxford University in 1729; the university provided much-needed money to professional cricketers as coaches in the 19th century and many on the roll call of cricketing fame, from C.B. Fry to Colin Cowdrey and Imran Khan, learnt their skills and the tools of their trade in the University Parks.

There are a few flaws here - some of his history is rather 1066 and all that - but whatever you think of John Major as a politician, as a cricket historian he is Test class.