I am a member of the Karnataka State Cricket Association, and I live down the road from the Chinnaswamy Stadium. Yet when the opening game of this year’s Indian Premier League was played there last week, I was at home, not watching the action on television but reading a recently published book on cricket, albeit about a rather different kind of cricket from that promoted by the IPL. The book was Scyld Berry’s 500 Declared: The Joys of Covering 500 Cricket Tests.

The first person to watch 500 Test matches was the great Richie Benaud, 63 of these as a player, the rest as a journalist and commentator. Scyld Berry was the second, and also the first to cover 500 England Test matches live, working variously for The Observer, The Sunday Correspondent, The Independent on Sunday, The Sunday Telegraph, and The Daily Telegraph.

His book moves seamlessly through the decades, from England playing New Zealand at Trent Bridge in June 1973 to England on tour in Rawalpindi in October 2024. Along the way, he provides the reader illuminating vignettes of brilliant spells and match-winning innings, of richly diverse crowds and even more diverse landscapes. He notices much more than the cricket, as when he writes: “I compare Bengal to...

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