When An Old Cricketer Leaves The Crease

Recording History

 * Roy Harper wrote and recorded this elegiac song for his fifth album HQ, released on the Harvest label in 1975, as a single in that year and again in 1978. It was arranged by David Bedford and featured Harper's acoustic guitar backed by the Grimethorpe Colliery Band. It was included on the 2005 double album compilation Counter Culture (Science Fiction HUCD039).

Song Overview

 * Harper uses the game of cricket as an overwhelming metaphor for death, empahasising this by making it the last track on the album. He states that, though a loved one may be dead, the memory never fadess, and they can often be imagined to be alive, or still in the game, as he has it ('Sometimes you just catch a fleeting glimpse/Of the third man at silly mid on.') Death has no favourites ('it could be Jack or it could be John'), but acknowledges that this is maybe just slightly drunken musings ('it could be this sting in the ale'), finally realising that it comes to everyone ('it could be me or it could be thee'). Harper states on his website that the inclusion of the brass band was a tribute to the heroic stature in his childhood memories of footballers and cricketers.

Show Appearances

 * Harper recorded no less than ten Peel sessions between 1967 and 1978. His 1975 session (first broadcast 23 June 1975 on Top Gear) was no doubt intended to promote HQ, as he included versions of 'Referendum', 'Hallucinating Light' and 'The Spirit Lives', all of which are on the LP, but 'Cricketer' was not recorded.
 * Known plays of the song were on 19 December 1975, as part of Peel's Top 10 singles of 1975, 27 December 1976, as an entry in the inaugural Festive Fifty, and 31 July 2001, as a tribute to John Walters.

Festive Fifty Entries

 * 1976 Festive Fifty, #47.