Main content

Cricket and the English Hero

Episode 16 of 30

Clare Balding investigates the role sporting heroes, like cricketers WG Grace and Jack Hobbs, play in shaping national identity.

Clare Balding continues her investigation into how sport shaped Britain and Britain shaped sport.
In this weeks programmes she looks at how sport unites us all when we get behind out national teams and no more so, than when the character of that team can be personified by one person.
If there's one sport that embodies Englishness, it's cricket and in this programme she looks at how and why W.G.Grace, in the nineteenth century and Jack Hobbs, in the twentieth, became the epitome of a national sporting hero. Clare visits Lords Cricket ground and the Oval to discover more.
She also talks to Professor Richard Holt from The International Centre for Sports History and Culture at De Montfort University, Simon Rae, a biographer of W.G.Grace and broadcaster David Rayvern Allen. The readers are:Jo Munro and Brian Bowles.
The programme is produced in Birmingham by Garth Brameld.

Available now

15 minutes

Last on

Tue 3 Jul 2018 02:15

Broadcasts

  • Mon 20 Feb 2012 13:45
  • Mon 21 Jul 2014 14:15
  • Tue 22 Jul 2014 00:15
  • Mon 15 Aug 2016 14:15
  • Tue 16 Aug 2016 02:15
  • Mon 2 Jul 2018 14:15
  • Tue 3 Jul 2018 02:15

Featured in...

Podcast