P G Wodehouse

‘Missed’  an epic poem on dropping a catch. See here for the full text

From Vitaë Lampada by Sir Henry Newbolt 1862 - 1938

"There's a breathless hush in the Close tonight -Ten to make and the match to win" -click here for the whole poem

Clarkster

"The turning ups the thing lads" - (who turns up in a big black Beemer, whereas I can only afford a Ford. Ed)

The Nurdler

"I've been playing cricket for 20 years. If I was going to get any better it would have happened by now." 

Rodders 

"You should see the outfield, it's covered in dog shit" (unlike the game at Parliament Hill, where a dog actually shat on the wicket as we were playing. Ed)

Dr D

"Lend us a tenner Paul" (on being asked for his club sub) 

Cicero or someone

"Vescere bracis meis" Latin for "Eat my shorts."

Lord Mancroft (1914- )

"Cricket-- a game which the English, not being a spiritual people, have invented in order to give themselves some conception of eternity." 

Rev. John Mitford. 1770

"Troy has fallen and Thebes is a ruin. The pride of Athens is decayed, and Rome is crumbling to the dust. The philosophy of Bacon is wearing out, and the Victories of Marborough have been overshadowed by great laurels. All is vanity, but cricket; all is sinking in oblivion but you. Greatest of all elevens, fare ye well!"

Bradford FC 2000/2001

"We're shit and we know we are ....":

Anon

"Yorkshire born and Yorkshire bred. Strong int arm and thick int head." 

Charlie Parker

"Only two problems with our team. Brewers' droop and financial cramp. Apart from that we ain't bloody good enough." , Gloucestershire and England slow bowler (quoted by David Foot in Cricket's Unholy Trinity, 1985)

George Bernard Shaw 1856 -- 1950

Baseball has the great advantage over cricket of being sooner ended.

Patrick Leigh Fermor 1915-

Looking backward we could almost see, suspended with the most delicate equipoise above the flat little island, the ghostly shapes of those twin orbs of the Empire, the cricket ball and the blackball.

William Temple, Archbishop of Canterbury

"Cricket is organised loafing"

Robin Williams

"Cricket is baseball on Valium"

Kathy Lette

"Basically it's just a whole bunch of blokes standing around scratching themselves"

Arthur Marshall.

"If there is cricket in heaven, let us also pray that there will be rain"

Keith Miller

The flamboyant allrounder, , when captaining the NSW side, would set his field by simply by saying,"OK fellas, scatter?.

(About Rudyard Kipling)

He waved the flag during the Boer War, though he also denounced the national weakness that military failure had seemingly exposed in his poem "The Islanders," which included the scandalous lines about "the flannelled fools at the wicket or the muddied oafs at the goals," implying that the cult of sport had helped soften and not harden the national spirit. It is amusing to learn how much resentment this caused: the headmaster of one public school angrily said that most of his old boys fighting in South Africa had previously played on the rugby team.

Anon

FOOTBALL offers the world clichés; RUGBY produces facial deformity; HOCKEY provides an acceptable outlet for psychotic violence; CRICKET alone breeds myths.

Grantland Rice 1880 - 1954

For when the One Great Scorer comes To write against your name, He marks - not that you won or lost - But how you played the game.

Merv Hughes' fifth form geography report

"When Merv leaves school, he is going to have to be very good at football and cricket."

Harold Pinter

“I tend to think that cricket is the greatest thing that God ever created on earth - certainly greater than sex, although sex isn't too bad either”

Jim Jarmusch

Cricket makes no sense to me. I find it beautiful to watch and I like that they break for tea. That is very cool, but I don't understand. My friends from The Clash tried to explain it years and years ago, but I didn't understand what they were talking about.

G H Hardy

Cricket is the only game where you are playing against eleven on the other side and ten on your own.

It's a catch-21 situation."

Digicel's chairman commenting on the West Indies extracurricular activities as they toured Australia: "If they had scored as many runs as they had women's phone numbers during the tour, West Indies would have won the series comfortably."