On a warm afternoon almost made for cricket, a good- sized audience turned out to hear the game celebrated in verse at the Community Centre.

Marcus Moore selected the poems and presented several, quite delightfully, including a passable West Indian accent for a description of an over of spin by Jim Laker to Clyde Walcott.

His face shone, he seemed genuinely delighted to be on stage and his selection was a gentle examination of what he insisted was "the beautiful game".

He was joined by Nicholas Parsons, who read extremely well and chipped in with some nice anecdotes. These included bowling Dennis Lillee with his "one good one of the season" in a charity game - then going into bat and seeing the fearsome fast bowler waiting to steam in.

Both men were of the old school, recalling summers and players of yesteryear with ease - Bradman, Len Hutton, Sir Garfield Sobers.

The one-day game at Bristol between England and Zimbabwe, which was on at the same time, seemed a very long way away from stories of W G Grace at Gloucester and John Arlott's beautifully written Cricket at Worcester 1938. A charming afternoon, one that reeked of yesteryear, although I would dearly have loved to hear about the modern game as well. Cricket, it seems, is too big a game to be confined in the boundaries of one hour.

David Edwards