Hard on the heels of our piece about the rise of China in world sport (PP 220) came news that the Asian Cricket Council (ACC) was organising a six-day workshop for Chinese PE teachers with a view to introducing the sport into what is completely virgin territory; at the time they gathered, not one of the 30 coaches from institutions such as Beijing and Shanghai Universities had even seen cricket on TV. In a related initiative, the ACC has translated the Laws of Cricket into Mandarin (albeit in a run of only 500 copies so far, so Mao’s Little Red Book it ain’t… yet!).

In the longer term, the plan is to see China entering the Cricket World Cup and Will Buckley in the Observer speculated recently that the match everyone will want to see by the end of this century won’t be England vs Australia but India vs China. However, crystal ball gazing was last month’s PP thing; this month I take you back 96 years to 1911 and the publication of a book called Training for Athletics and General Health by one Harry Andrews.

The connection with the ACC publishing initiative comes in the appendix of Andrews’ book where the prevailing AAA (Amateur Athletic Association) Laws and Recommendations are reproduced. Though some basic elements have not changed, there are things here that might as well be in Mandarin for the 21st century reader: the ‘scale of penalties’ to be applied in open flat handicaps, for example, or the section ‘As to prizes’ (rule 3: no prize to be greater than £10, 10s (£10.50)).

But herein lies the charm for those interested in how our forebears went about their sport and recreation. The meat of the book is the practical advice Andrews offers and the pleasure is in the fact that this 2005 edition appears in exact facsimile of the original. Not for Harry scientific analyses and references to academic journals: ‘I am not… an educated man, and… the information which follows is the result of practical experience only. If I run counter to theories put forward by more learned people, my excuse is that I judge from results… without having gone deeply into the why and the wherefore.’

Equally, it’s not for us to take a holier-than thou approach with all the benefits of our modern science, for the results were often pretty impressive: one of Andrews’ athletes was Alf Shrubb of The Little Wonder fame (reviewed in PP 207) while another was Montague A Holbein, the channel swimmer who survived Harry’s regimes to go on to write the sister title in the series, Swimming. And who’s to say such successes came despite the use of ‘aperients’ or enemas (a wonderful brew of salt, senna, liquorice and ginger!), or his admirably levelheaded approach to athlete’s ‘funk’ (pre-race nerves), or the consumption of sponge cake soaked in champagne during endurance events?

It’s perhaps unfair to single out the nutritional aspects of a book such as this, which is ‘of its time’, but the facsimile comes complete with pages of fascinating ads and the biggest of these promotes ‘Plasmon’, a substance eagerly plugged by the author some pages later: ‘Plasmon is the nourishing food substance of pure fresh milk in the form of granulated powder, so prepared that it is practically the most easily assimilable form in which food can be taken into the human frame.’ At this point, too, I couldn’t help thinking of China: for Harry and his Plasmon, read Ma Junren and his turtles? Have things moved on that far since 1911?

Book review by Andy Etchells, founder editor of Peak Performance

Training by Harry Andrews is published by Bloomsbury Books and retails at £7.99