When an Old Cricketer Leaves the Crease [SEP] performer
When an Old Cricketer Leaves the Crease
"When an Old Cricketer Leaves the Crease" is a track on the Roy Harper album "HQ", a prominent example of cricket poetry. Released as a single twice, in 1975 and 1978, it is possibly Harper's best-known song. The song captures the atmosphere of a village cricket match and is an elegy to the game as played during Harper's youth. Featuring Harper's 12-string acoustic guitar backed by the Grimethorpe Colliery Band, it was arranged by David Bedford
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Track listing.
1. "When an Old Cricketer Leaves the Crease" – 7:13
2. "Hallucinating Light" (Live)
Use as epitaph.
An elegiac song, the last on the album, Harper uses the game of cricket as an overwhelming metaphor for death, in its nostalgic sense for what has passed. This is underlined as the Grimethorpe Colliery Band enter halfway through. British DJ John Peel made an agreement with his producer, John Walters, that in the event of Peel's