The Master: records prove the title good: Yet figures fail you, for they cannot say How many men whose names you never knew Are proud to tell their sons they saw you play. They share the sunlight of your summer day Of thirty years; and they, with you, recall How, through those well-wrought centuries, your hand Reshaped the history of bat and ball.

-Aristotle
  'To  John Berry Hobbs on his Seventieth Birthday'.

It's hard to bat with tears in your eyes.

-Bradman, Sir Don(ald George)
  When bowled for a duck in his final Test innings. Quoted in Colin  Jarman The Guinness Dictionary of Sports Quotations (1990).

Twinkle, twinkle, little bat! How I wonder what you're at! Up above the world you fly! Like a teatray in the sky.

-Dodgson
  Alice's  Adventures in Wonderland, Ch.7, 'A Mad Tea-Party'.

Now air is hushed, save where the weak-eyed bat With short shrill shriek flits by on leathern wing, Or where the beetle winds His small but sullen horn, As oft he rises midst the twilight path, Against the pilgrim borne in heedless hum.

-Collins,William
  Odes on Several Descriptive and  Allegoric Subjects,'Ode to Evening', l.9^14.

But afterall it's not the winning that matters, is it? Or is it? It'söto coinawordötheamenitiesthatcount: thesmell of the dandelions, the puff of the pipe, the click of the bat, the rain on the neck, the chill down the spine, the slow, exquisite coming on of sunset and dinner and rheumatism.

-Cooke, (Alfred) Alistair
Quoted in Helen Exley Cricket Quotations (1992).

Here lies, bowl'd out by Death's unerring ball, A cricketer renowned, by name John Small; But though his name was small, yet great was his fame, For nobly did he play the'noble game'. His life was like his inningsölong and good; Full ninety summers had Death withstood, At length the ninetieth winter cameöwhen (Fate Not leaving him one solitary mate) This last of Hambledonians, old John Small, Gave up his bat and ballöhis leather, wax and all.

-Egan, Pierce
  Epitaph on cricketer  John Small. Pierce Egan's Book of Sports.

They haven't cometosee you umpiring, they have come to see me bat.

-Grace,W(illiam) G(ilbert)
On refusing to leave the crease after an umpire gave him out before he had scored, attributed. Other versions of the story have the umpire refusing to call out on the first ball, explaining to the outraged bowler that the crowd had paid not to see him bowl, but to see Grace bat.

Turner looks a bit shakyand unsteady, but I think he's going to bat onöone ball left!

-Johnston, Brian
Radio commentary, during an England Test match after batsman Glenn Turner was hit on the box by a cricket ball on the fifth ball of the over.

If the wild bowler thinks he bowls Or if the batsman thinks he's bowled, They know not, poor misguided souls, They too shall perish unconsoled. I am the batsman and the bat, I am the bowler and the ball, The umpire, the pavilion cat, The roller, pitch, and stumps and all. See Emerson 313:39.

-Lang, Andrew
'Brahma'. Quoted by Alan Richardson in a letter to The Times, 18 May,1963.

Bodyline was devised to stifle Bradman's batting genius. They said I was a'killer with the ball', without taking into account that Bradman, with the bat, was the greatest killer of all.

-Larwood, Harold
  Of the'Bodyline'controversy. Quoted in Colin  Jarman The Guinness Dictionary of Sports Quotations (1990).

That bat that you were kind enough to send, Seems (for as yet I have not tried it) good: And if there's anything on earth can mend My wretched play, it is that piece of wood.

-Manning, Henry Edward
   Verse sent to Charles Wordsworth, nephew of the poet William Wordsworth, after the latter sent him the present of a cricket bat.

Come into the garden, Maud, For the black bat, night, has flown, Come into the garden, Maud, I am here at the gate alone; Maud And the woodbine spices are wafted abroad, And the musk of the rose is blown. For a breeze of morning moves, And the planet of Love is on high, Beginning to faint in the light that she loves On a bed of daffodil sky.

-Tennyson
  Maud, pt.1, sect.22, stanza1, l.850^9.