Christianity at the Crease: Cricket and the Church

by Eric Midwinter

This book, completed by Eric Midwinter shortly before his death in August 2025, examines the long history of entanglement between cricket and the church. Sometimes the church frowned upon cricket, at others it found the sport a useful tool.

Christianity at the Crease explores different stages in the relationship, taking in Puritanism in the 17th century and Anglicanism in the Victorian era. The upside of church influence was its vital role in the renewal of cricket as an orderly pastime; the downside was that, being an element of the perceived English heritage, it was party to the traditional stance of cricket.

Following the Second World War, especially from the 1960s, formal Christian belief and churchgoing declined heavily. At the same time, professional cricket has become more commercialised while recreational cricket has lost some of its momentum.

Midwinter argues that since the 1960s the pendulum swing of society has created social conditions which have both broken the presence of the church and transformed the nature of cricket.