Herr Howzat?
Uncovering unlikely cricket fanatics
Field of Shadows: The Remarkable True Story of the English Cricket Tour of Nazi Germany, 1937. By Dan Waddell. Bantam Press; 259 pages; £16.99. Buy from Amazon.co.uk
THE evidence is a bit thin, but it seems that Adolf Hitler was not a cricket-lover; apparently, he thought batsmen who wore pads were sissies. However, the Nazi Reichssportführer, Hans von Tschammer und Osten, was. Gratified by a good lunch at Lord’s with MCC, England’s premier cricket club, he invited an English team to play a German XI. Three games were played in Berlin in 1937, and, unlike England’s football team which was photographed a year later raising a cringe-making Nazi salute, the English cricketers offered a rather muted Sieg Heil.
This article appeared in the Culture section of the print edition under the headline "Herr Howzat?"
From the May 10th 2014 edition
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