To be fair, the title of this post is a bit of a cheat. John Snow, the former England fast bowler who's the subject of this article, was of course more of a cricketer who did a bit of poeting, but there you go – poetic licence and all that.

I was too young to see Snow at anything like his best - my memories are of seeing him in a test against the West Indies in 1976, and a few Sunday League games. But reading about his career, it strikes me that he is not given the credit he deserves. Beyond the bare statistics, he saved most of his best performances for the Aussies and the West Indies, and in 1970-71 he won the Ashes back for England with a performance that shaped a whole generation of Aussie cricketers, bizarrely – Ian Chappell consciously set out to create a team that played the way Ray Illingworth's did, with one or more John Snows dishing out the short stuff.

Anyway, it's a really excellent article. Take a look, and enjoy.