Cricket in Corfu

Cricket in Corfu 

(Daily Telegraph)

How passionate Greeks (and determined Englishmen) are keeping the sport alive - Alex Preston

"What has kept cricket alive on Corfu for two centuries? Determined Englishmen, passionate Greeks and the readers of the Telegraph, as Alex Preston discovered at the wicket in Spianada Square. Forty years ago this month, an Olympic Airways 737 carrying a motley group of British celebrities and sportsmen landed on the dusty airstrip just outside Corfu’s Old Town. Down the steps of the plane came Nicholas Parsons, Roy Kinnear, Willie Rushton and John Cleese, blinking at the force of the Greek sun. There was also Ken Barrington, one of England’s greatest-ever cricketers, along with fellow internationals John Price and Jack Robertson. They’d come as part of a Lord’s Taverners touring party to play..."

Photo: Jim Potts (not 2018)

"Among our number were Sebastian Faulks and Tom Holland, Peter Frankopan and Richard Beard. We arrived at our hotel full of the happy anticipation of five days of good company, cold retsina and the astonishing beauty of Corfu...Before the cricket came the inaugural Corfu Literary Festival, held in the Corfu Reading Society, a gorgeous, wood-panelled 19th-century library. A 100-strong audience turned out to hear us discussing My Family and Other Animals and witness Faulks, Holland and Frankopan sparring over the writing of history...I spent much of my time in Corfu in the company of an Anglo-Greek couple, the irrepressibly ebullient Nikos and Annabelle Louvros. If there’s an English team playing cricket on the island, you can be sure that they brought them there"

From the article by Alex Preston.