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Hi Justsolve,

Chambers (I seem to quoting it a lot today) gives "virtually" as one definition of "as good as" so I' think that covers the answer.

21a: two letter synonym for mum/keep quite and then a very old three letter word for round or smooth.

22a: a+four letter synonym for friend + two abbreviation for sport backwards.

19a: your first letter is wrong.

Hi mathi
I didn't parse 21 as you have - see Brendan @27, for what I think is the correct parsing.

Thanks Chrise. I parsed it somewhat differently. I thought it was an archaic poetic contraction of ‘even’, as said in Chambers!

Mathi, that’s a really interesting alternative parsing, which works for me, though I’m fairly sure was not the intended parsing

Ah, thanks, yes that makes perfect sense in that context! Must stretch brain furrher!

To be clear, thanks to Chris and Brendan!

Yes Jono. We often get the answer first, and then cook up the parsing later!

Really enjoyed this, some brilliant clues. Loved 9ac, 12ac and 22ac, especially as a 22ac cricketer.

I’m probably missing the obvious (again) but I can’t parse 23a. Keeper of dog for men.

The word that fits is a “keeper” in the museum sense, which gives me a regular 3 letter crossword synonym for a dog, but then I can’t see how “for men” fits for the other four letters.

No doubt it’ll dawn on me seconds after pressing “add post”...

the "men" are the usual crossword ones at the end. i don't know about the other 2 letters - there's a possible explanation, but again it seems very loose.