Som

Writing’s never easy at the best of times, but it’s next to impossible while listening to Test Match Special with the Aussies mounting the kind of rearguard everyone knew they would. Yet could there be a better backdrop to surveying the meagre filmography inspired by the battle for the Ashes?

Despite the fact that the United States played Canada in the first international cricket match in 1844, Hollywood has curiously plumped for baseball as its favourite summer sport. Nevertheless, the sound of leather on willow has been heard in such Blighty-set pictures as Accident (1967) and The Crying Game (1992), as well as in more exotic locations in The Beach (2000) and Syriana (2005). Aussie Peter Weir even attempted to rewrite sporting history in Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World (2003) by having the crew of the HMS Surprise invent overarm bowling before the usually accredited Kentish Maid, Christina Willes.

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