LONDON, March 19 Adolf Hitler, the German dictator, had once played cricket and had wanted to 'Nazify' the game by rewriting its rules, according to a new book.

The book says that after the game the Fuhrer had “advocated the withdrawal of the use of pads” because the “artificial bolsters” were “unmanly and un-German”.

Hitler “advocated the withdrawal of the use of pads. These artificial 'bolsters' he dismissed as unmanly and un-German. He also recommended a bigger and harder ball,” John Simpson wrote in the book on 20th-century reporting, citing a piece of article in the Daily Mirror in 1930.

The Fuhrer had an ulterior motive for wanting to learn the game. “He desired to study it as a possible medium for the training of troops off duty and in times of peace. He also wanted the game to be Nazified,” The Times said quoting the 1930 article.

The Mirror piece that appeared under the headline, “Adolf Hitler As I Know Him” on Sept 30, 1930, was written by Oliver Locker-Lampson, an MP and fervent admirer of Hitler. It revealed that the dictator was taught the rules of the game by British troops to play a friendly match against some POWs of the First World War. In the article, Locker-Lampson describes the series of event to the only game played by Hitler.

He informs how in 1923, shortly after the Munich putsch, Hitler had asked some British POWs to teach him the game and “how they (prisoners of war) have written the rules for him in the best British sport-loving spirit”.— Dawn-Times of India News Service