The? trust is a charity dedicated to the preservation of the county’s history and was established in 2014. There at the beginning, and later when the Museum and Learning Centre were opened at the county’s Nevil Road headquarters in Bristol, Roger was one of the Trustees.

It was in that capacity that I came across Roger a few years ago, and in various email exchanges he kept me up to date with the Museum’s occasional publications. Roger himself was the author of the best of them and, while there is no full length book in my collection that bears his name, his monographs have been some of the most welcome addition??s in recent years.

It must, I suppose, be possible and even likely that Roger had some assistance with the design and lay out of the booklets, but at their heart was the fascinating content. In each case the monogr??aphs covered examples of diligently researched and lesser known aspects of Gloucestershire cricket made all the better by the fact that in addition to acquiring a thorough understanding of his subjects Roger was also an excellent wordsmith.

He began 2015 with In Memoriam, a tribute to the Gloucestershire cricketers who made the ultimate sacrifice for their country in the Great War. That one was reprinted in 2019 together with three more. The monograph that remains my personal favourite concerned the scarcely credible story of a proposed tour of India by a Gloucestershire side back in 1936/37, The Tour That Never Was.

The other two 2019 titles were Delayed in Transit, an account of the formation of and playing record of the West of England XI, a side that played through the wartime summers of 1944 and 1945, and Dealings With a Dead Man. That latter title I am confident would never have seen the light of day had it not been for Roger. It is the story of his discovery that, for many years, the game’s historians, archivists and statistician’s had misidentified a man who made three anonymous performances for Gloucestershire ?in Victorian times.

And that was that, for three years until 2022, when four more titles appeared from Roger’s cottage industry. Concerning CB Grace was the first, a memoir of the legendary WG’s youngest son, Charles Butler Grace, who appeared on four occasions in the First Class game. George Pepall: Cricketer and Countryman, was, like Dealings With a Dead Man, a look at a man who played occasionally for Gloucestershire around th?e turn of the twentieth century who had an interesting back story.

The other two 2022 titles are fascinating glimpses at social and cricketing history. Holidays at Home: Gloucester Cricket Week 1943 looked at the holiday time entertainment available to Gloucestershire’s populace in wartime, and Bristol Cricket Challenge ??Cup Com?petition 1885-1892 reconstructs the history of something the Victorian club game ultimately? wasn’t quite ready for, a knock out cup.

In the circumstances I had rather hoped that, another three years on, we would have seen another quartet of?? publications from Roger but, sadly, his passing would seem to have put an end to that idea unless there are?? titles in the course of preparation. If there are I sincerely hope that they are sufficiently well advanced to enable his colleagues at the Heritage Trust to finish the projects and get them into print.

As well as a historian Roger was also a collector but I am told that, unlike some cricket tragics, he was interested in a good deal more than cricket. An accountant by profession he was clearly, from the fulsome tributes that have appeared in the last few days, excellent company and a fine raconteur. I did meet him once, as recently as last November, at an event organised by Stephen Chalke at Lansdowne Cricket Club. For me it was an enormously enjoyable event, meeting many people who I had only ever corresponded with by email. At one point Roger came up to me, apologised for interrupting but said he wanted to introduce himself and said that doubtless we could talk later. Sadly we never did, and now never will, but even in that briefest of meetings he exuded bonhomie, good humour and knowledge. The accompanying photograph of him signing some of his monographs in Boundary Books�showroom, captures that very well.

Moving forward the most prolific publisher of cricket titles in recent years has consistently been Pitch. I hope that will continue although, at this stage, I am only aware of four titles due for the first six months of 2025. ?Two are biographies, one ancient and due in May, and one more modern one that is scheduled for March.

The modern title comes from the pen of Mark Peel, an accomplished biographer who numbers Ken Barrington, Douglas Jardine, Ray Illingworth and Roy Gilchrist amongst his previous subjects. This time he tells the story of one of the finest England cricketers of my lifetime, Derek Underwood. The book which could only be titled Deadly will, I have no doubt, be a fitting tribute to a unique bowle??r, courageous tail end batsman an??d, always, thoroughly decent and modest man.

The ancient is a Yorkshireman and the first in the White Rose’s line of orthodox left arm spinners that continued with Bobby Peel, Wilfred Rhodes, Hedley Verity and Johnny Wardle. The title of this one is Ten Drunks and a Parson, giving the clue as to why??, at the peak of his powers and ?aged just 32, Peate was sacked by Yorkshire.

Also due in March is The Club from Rod Lyall. The clue is in the sub-title, Class, Power and Governance in World Cricket. The blurb explains that Lyall uncovers the fascinating history of cricket’s world governing body as it evolved from the Imperial Cricket Council, established in 1909 to bring together the major cricket-playing countries of the Empire, into the International Cricket Council, a multi-billion-dollar business dominated by the Indian Board of Control and its allies.

The fourth title from Pitch is also due in May and is from Andrew Murtagh. Murtagh played for Hampshire in 1970s before spending a long career as an English teacher at Malvern College. In retirement he has written a number of fine biographies, Colin Cowdrey, Barry Richards and Tom Graveness amongst his subjects, but Cricket’s Black Dog promises to be a rath??er different book, looking as it does at the prevalence of mental ??health issues amongst the fraternity of professional cricketers. Having played the game and battled depression himself the book promises to be an illuminating study of an important issue.

Fairfield Books, the quality of whose wares has lost none of its quality in the change of management from Stephen Chalke to the men responsible for Wisden Cricket Monthly and The Nightwatchman have a number of titles in preparation. One is Vic Marks�continuation of Alan Gibson’s Cricket Captains of England which will take the story on from 1979 and up to, p?resumably, Ollie Pope.

Annie Chave, the driving force behind the splendid County Cricket Matters also has her first book due next?? year. It will involve the stories of a number of important cricket people, I beli??eve the plan is eleven in all, but their stories will be well outside the mainstream and certainly hitherto untold.

Finally, until the second half of the year, is the follow up to Scott Oliver’s magnificent Sticky Dogs and St?ardust: When the Legends Played in the Leagues, a project which prom?ises to be the gift that goes on giving, and indeed an idea which other writers in other cricketing countries could do well to copy. I have in mind in p?articular the appearances of a number of West Indian fast bowlers in Indian domestic cricket in the early 1960s.

Turning now to the ACS they have two books due in their Cricket Witness series. The first is The Dream that Died: Gwilym Rowland and Welsh Cricket by Andrew Hignell.  This tells the story of the Manchester-born businessman who tried to raise the profile of cricket in Wales by creating a team which played home internationals against Scotland and Ireland and appeared at Lord’s. Based in North Wales, Gwilym ruffled feathers at Glamorgan CCC, but paid for matches played by the Wales team and the all-amateur Welsh Cygnets, and the visit by the United Berlin team in 1930. He funded similar footballing activities, but during 1931/32 his business conglomerate collapsed and went into liquidation, He died in poverty.

Hignell has contributed, with Eric Midwinter, more than anyone to that series and Midwinter too has another contribution due, Cricket’s Revolution: Its Sudden Leap into Modernity. The summary I have been sent is for two hundred years, cricket was a folk game played in various versions in scores of isolated localities for exercise. Then, in a thirty-year period, early in the 19th century, with relative suddenness and little opposition, cricket adopted the basics of a fully accepted national format. Laws were agreed and central authority was undisputed as cricket developed into a singular and recognisable sport. Why and how did this switch happen? The book explores the development of the unified format of cricket’s laws, controls, clubs, competitions, records and statistics against the background of the equally abrupt emergence of a nation turning to the rationalisation of society away from the arbitrary confusion of the 18th century.

An extremely popular series of ACS books (with all at CricketWeb in particular) series is Lives in Cricket, which has so far spawned 61 titles. The 62nd is on the subject of David Walker by Andrew Dawson. Walker’s will be an unfamiliar name to most but he was, in his day, the finest batsman England never had. The chairman of selectors Sir Pelham Warner believed he would have opened for his country if he had joined one of the first class counties who invited him. Instead he opted to play for the county of his birth: Norfolk. He became captain of Oxford University, led an MCC side in Ireland, played with I Zingari, the Free Foresters and Sir Pelham Warner’s XI, and toured Egypt with H.M. Martineau’s XI. This book draws upon contemporary accounts of David Walker’s character and abilities, material from his family’s archive and the testimonies of those who knew him. He died aged 28 on active service with the RAF over Norway in 1942.

Two annual publications that will appear are the ACS First-class counties Second XI Annual and the ACS International Cricket Yearbook 2025 and then, finally for the first half of the year there is a retrospective tour account, Brick by Brick: The Australian Cricketers in England 1964. The ACS summary reads this book tells the story of the visit of the Australians to England in 1964, a Test series which is often written off as dull. And yet it has a fascination of its own, because it’s an object lesson in how a cricket team can overcome its limitations, first by adopting the right strategy, and then by pursuing it with the necessary discipline.  Besides which, 1964 remains a fascinating, pivotal year, both for Britain generally and for cricket. It was the year in which thirteen years of Conservative government ended, after an election that was presented as a choice between a revitalised, modernised country and the class-ridden, outmoded shackles of the past.  The game of cricket, it seemed, stood at a similar crossroads, having chosen to update itself by abolishing the distinction between amateur and professional players, and by introducing one-day cricket to the professional sport, bu??t all you really need to know is that the author is Max Bonnell, a copper bottomed guarantee of a fascinating account that will look well beyond events on the cricket field.

The Sussex Cricket Museum has three titles due next year. Two have been announced before, one of them (a biography of John Wisden by Stephen Baldwin) a number of times, but I am assured that it is now nearing completion. The second is the collection of Arthur Smallwood’s photographs from the 1960s and 1970s that I mentioned in July. In addition I am told that another book by David Boorman, this time on cricket in the north of the county in the Victorian era is also due, though?? probably later in the year.

Looking north anything new from Red Rose Books is always welcome round these parts. At the moment all that can be said for certain, apart from future monographs in Martin Tebay’s Notable Lancashire Victories series, and Stephen Musk’s Monographs on North American Cricket series is a book from Musk on the subject of Norman Seagram’s Canadian team in England in 1922. The former series is already three monographs old, In Memory of Surrey Pride, Nash Surpasses the Ordinary Hat-Trick and A Most Gamely Contested Match.

Returning to the forthcoming Stephen Musk title the Seagram tour is not a major one by any means. None of the seven matches played had First Class status and although the Canadians were able to salvage draws in only two of their seven games a look at the scorecards suggests they must have been the standard of a decent club side. The highlight of the tour for them would have been their two day game against the MCC at Lord’s. That one was lost by an innings and 11 runs, but the MCC fielded eight men with First Class experience one of them being Guy? Earle who played a good deal for Somerset in the 1920s, and Robert Fowler, who all real cricket tragics will know of because of his remarkable all-round performance in the Eton v Harrow fixture of 1910.

Test Cricket – A History by Tim Wigmore is due from Quercus in April. Stretching back as it does to 1877 the subject is a vast one and it will be interesting to see how Wigmore approaches his subject. If it doesn’t involve a detailed look at the matches themselves then it certainly has the potential to be a successful book.

David Battersby has two titles due in the first half of 2025, one of which is the now delayed biography of New Zealander Ian ‘Crankyâ€?Cromb. The cause of the delay is the best possible one however, the emergence of new material. David’s other project is a monograph dealing with his recent visit to Pakistan. Will it deal with the recent series between England and Pakistan, or with his meetings whilst there with the great and the good of the game in Pakistan? I suspect it will be both.

In the past we have reviewed a number of books and booklets from Adrian Gault, all of them directly or indirectly concerned with Mitcham Cricket Club and/or one of its favourite sons, James Southerton. He is currently working on two projects. The first is of a biography of Jack Harrow. He played for Mitcham Wednesday XI in the 1920s and was offered professional terms as a cricketer but preferred to pursue a soccer career. After joining Croydon Common, he made more than 300 appearances for Chelsea including the 1915 FA Cup final. He then served in the Air corps in WW1, became? Chelsea captain after the War and gained two England caps before then joining the Chelsea training staff for many years. So the cricket content will not be high but it will still be a story well worth reading.

The second is a biography of Howard Lacy, who was Mitcham captain during WW1 and was mentioned briefly in Adrian’s booklet on the AIF vs Mitcham match in September 1919. Lacy was manager of the 1919 touring side and known to the Australians as the father of Australian cricket in Lo??ndon.

Looking overseas if there was not much news coming out of India last time then I clearly didn’t have my ear close enough to the ground. Amongst those I missed were Aditya Bhushan’s homage to Sachin Tendulkar, Sourav Ganguly, Rahul Dravid, VVS Laxman and Virender Sehwat, The Fab Five, and Sandeep Patil’s autobiography with Clayton Murzello, Beyond Boundaries. That pair I have been able to review, but I am still waiting for an opportunity to the same for a 75th birthday tribute to Sunil Gavankar, Sunny G, by Shyam Bhatia and Debashis Dutta, a book about the 2023 World Cup by Aditya Iyer, Gully Gully and, most recent of all, Molinder Amarnath’s autobiography, Fearless. Moving forward I underst??and a pictorial book ?on the life and career of Dilip Vengsarkar will be with us soon, and that a book about the life and times of Syed Kirmani has just appeared.

Turning to Australia there are several interesting titles that are due to appear. First is likely to be Michael Lefebvre’s biography of Karl Schneider, the immensely promising Australian batsman who, tragically, never appeared in a Test match due to his passing at the age of 23 with Leukaemia, the p??lace that many expected him to take in the Australian Test side in 1928/29 instead going to another promising youngster, Donald Bradman. Lefebvre has had access to a substantial family archive and the book is one I am c??ertainly looking forward to.

At the Cricket Publishing Company I am given to understand that John Benaud’s retrospective account of the 1972/73 tour is likely to be their first book of 2025 to be followed by Pat Rodgers biography of Sid Emery and Ronald Cardwell’s of Frank Ward. As to others there are, as always with this publisher, many titles being worked on and, have been caught unawares by this one and this one I wouldn’t be at all surprised to see something else Victor Trumper related at s??ome point in the year.

Another retrospective tour account due from?? Australia is from Barry Nicholls, Playing to Win: Australia and the 1972 ?Ashes with a foreword from Australian skipper Ian Chappell is scheduled for February. The publisher is Wakefield.

After his remarkable effort on Charlie Macartney I believe Peter Lloyd is still co?ntemplating his next major project, but in the meantime is working with Pat Rodgers on a monograph on the subject?? of Bert Folkard. The name is not a familiar one but it seems that, had it not been for the intervention of the Great War, Folkard would have been a Test cricketer.

Other recent books from Australia include an autobiography from Glen Maxwell, The Showman, a read which has been described by Gideon Haigh as like having Phar Lap talk you through the 1930 Melbourne Cup a comment that, I would have thought, is guaranteed to help shift plenty of copies. Another new Australian title is Top Knocks from Brad Hodge,looking at the best 20 innings by Australian batsman over the last 50 years. Pat Cummins and Shane Watson have also gone into print, although it doesn’t look to me like Tested and The Winner’s Mindset are directly concerned with cricket.

Finally in Australia I understand that a new biography of Doug Walters is due, and that an account of the 1886 Ashes series is in the course of preparation. I believe I am right in saying that it is the one contest between England and Australia that has not been the subject of a book. Given that England won the three Test series 3??-0 that is a surprise, the more so that the account that is eventually forthcoming is from Australia.

And then there is the Caribbean, not usually a fertile of source of new books it has to be said, but I can confirm that a biography of Richie Richardson has just been published by the Unive??rsity of ??West Indies Press. The author is Densil Williams and the book is the tenth in a series of books that bears the title Caribbean Biography.

In the coming weeks we will also be seeing a new book from Royards Publishing in Trinidad, this one a collaboration with CricketMASH. Cricket Across Dark Waters is the latest addition to the oeuvre of Arunabha Sengupta, and looks at the ebb and flow of the cricketing relationship between India and West Indies, one that began in 1952/53 when I side led by Vijay Hazare lost a five match Test series 1-0. In addition the three new books from CricketMASH that I mentioned last year are still due to appear, and Sengupta also has another book due, one in similar vein to his Sherlock Holmes and the Birth of the Ashes, but this time titled Elementary My Dear Wodehouse.

The tourists played 17 matches in all, of either two or three days duration. None of the fixtures were First Class??, but the West Indians still faced some strong opposit?ion.

The arrangements for the tour were made by a private club, the West Indian club who, at that time, operated from the Howard Hotel in Norfolk Street in London. One of the club’s stated objects, on formation in 1898, was to afford facilities for organising in connection with the West Indies and British Guiana, annual cricket matches and other kindred amusements recognised by our English Universities and Public Schools.

The subsequent story of the West Indian club would doubtless be an interesting one but, for now, all I am aware of is that closed in the 1970s. If, and I know not whether this is? the case, it had never moved fro?m the Howard Hotel then its demise may well have been caused by the hotel’s closure as a result of the demolition of Norfolk Street.

The touring party was led by Aucher Warner, the older (by 14 years) brother of ‘Plum� There were 15 players, all bar two of them amateurs. Ten of the p??arty were white and just five black. The black players were the two professionals, Tommie Burton and ‘Float�Woods, as well as Fitz Hines and the two most recognisable names, Lebrun Constantine (father of Learie) and Charles Olliviere (who stayed behind after the tour and qualified to play for Derbyshire).

The opening fixture proved to be som??ething of? a mismatch as London County proved far too strong for the tourists, eventually running out winners by an innings and 198 runs. The next three games, against Worcestershire, Warwickshire and the Gentlemen of the MCC were defeats as well, before victory was finally achieved over a Minor Counties XI.

Gloucestershire then handed out another heavy defeat before, thanks in large part to a century from?? guest opener ‘Plum� the West Indians defeated Leicestershire. The low point of the tour, an innings defea??t to Minor County Wiltshire was still to come, but by and large the West Indians, no doubt in part due to an increasing familiarity with English conditions, became more competitive as the tour progressed and their best performance came at the Oval where they achieved an innings defeat over Surrey. The home side were not at full strength, but it was a significant victory nonetheless.

By the end of the tour the West Indians had won five times, drawn four matches and lost eight and the trip was considered a success. The two leading batsmen had been Ollivierre an??d Constantine, and the two professional bowlers, Woods and Burton, were the most successful bowlers by a distance, in respect of both average and ??wickets taken.

The lack of any First Class fixtures makes this tour, despite its wider significance, very much a minor one and no publisher went near it. There is however one contemporary souvenir of the tour, a nicely prod??uced 50 page booklet that was published by the West Indian Club. Unsurprisingly the booklet is a scarce one and copies?? rarely appear on the market. It is an interesting period piece.

The booklet begins with an overview of the tour by ‘Plumâ€?which summarises the background to Anglo-West Indian cricket before going on to describe the tour’s progress, and thence to pass judgment on ??the playing records of the individual West Indians. 

Modesty prevents ‘Plumâ€?making mention of his own contribution against Leicestershire, but his observations can at times be quite sharp. Of Woods he observed that the pace bowler was on occasions up to his best West Indian form, but at other times he seemed to lose heart very easily. Of the batsmen generally one comment is that in the early part of the tour they were both individually, and as a team, the worst judges of a run I have ever seen.

After the Report there is a summary?? of the results followed by the important business of a scorecard of each match and the tour averages. That takes the booklet to its half way point, and there is some interesting narrative to follow.

To begin with there are a couple of reprints from The Field, a magazine on the subject of cou??ntryside pursuits and field sports that remains in print to this day. Both are positive in their reaction to the West Indian visit.

By far the largest part of the booklet however, 23 pages, is devoted to a verbatim account of the speeches and toasts given at the Banquet to the Visitors given by the West Indian Club. ??There is even a list of the music that was played although, perhaps disappointingly, no menu to inform us as to wha??t the guests dined on.

We do however know who attended, as there is a list of the names of the 57 who did, the evening being chaired by one of English cricket’s grandees, Lord Harris. The West Indian players were present, including Hinds and Ollivierre. Sadly it seems that Woods and Burton, presumably because of their status as professionals, were not there, but there in no explanation for Constantine’s absence – I would like to think there was a principled objection involved.

And so that is that for one of the more unusual items in my collection, but it wasn’t quite the last word on the 1900 tour as, more than twenty years later, a book was published in Trinidad on the subject of the tour, and the next two West Indian tours to England. Written by local journalist Lloyd Sydney Smith I really should get round to reading it.

The lack of any real knowledge beyond the basis of his Test career and his sadly early death was a source of frustration for some time, but something that I found easy enough to live with until I got round to reading Garry Sobers�2002 published My Autobiography, the opening chapter of which is a heartfelt homily to the friend he lo?st in that tragic road accident in 1959.

It was inevitable therefore that when, a few years later, I found an outlet for my musings on the subject of cricket and cricketers that on??e of the first subjects I wanted to write about was Collie Smith.

There are books aplenty that have been written about Sobers, and I found material in those as well as books by or about Everton Weekes, Frank Worrell and Clyde Walcott and also the various histories of West Indies cricket and accounts of the few series in which Collie app?eared. But what I couldn’t track down was a biography of Collie himself, and I knew there was one as it had a passing mention on, of all places, his Wikipedia page.

Where I couldn’t find any reference to the book, titled The Happy Warrior and written by Kenneth Chaplin, was in Padwick’s Bibliography of Cricket. The first edition of Padwick appeared in 1977, and an updated and expanded second edition seven years later. I did for a while think that perhaps it was one of those books that was written but never actually published, but then I did see a copy. It was in a dealer’s shop, but was not in great condition, was not substantial and, even if I could have overcome those concerns, was priced way in?? exc?ess of what in those days I was prepared to pay for a cricket book.

By 2012 I had seen no other copy of The Happy Warrior so, on the basis I had researched everywhere else that I could find mention of Collie, I wrote the feature, that appeared as this, back in March 2012. I was happy enoug??h with the result and, always the beauty of anything that appears online, figured I could t??inker with it when and if a copy of the book ever appeared.

For the next dozen years I kept on looking for the book. I regularly asked dealers, in hope rather than expectation, whether they had copies and the answer was always ?no. I never saw a copy on a dealer’s website, in a catalogue or up for auction. I also trawled eBay daily, and regularly used a variety of search sites in the hope some bookseller somewhere in the world would list a copy.

So obsessed was I with this search that I took to asking? everyone in the Caribbean that I came across to keep an eye open for a copy for me. Over the years I have also had dealings with a few clients whose roots were in Jamaica, and have offered them all huge discounts on fees if they could source a copy for me. It got to the stage where I have made similar offers to anyone I know with the most tenuous connection with the Caribbean, and of course nothing ever came of any of these requests for assistance.

At one stage I even managed to secure an email address for author Kenneth Chaplin, sadly no longer with us. To be fair to him Chaplin did respond to my email, albeit simply to say rather unhelpfully that the book ‘has long been out of print�and ‘I cannot help you with finding a copy� I did ask him a few follow up questions?? about who published the book, the size of its print run and the like but, perhaps understandably, I didn’t hear from him again.

I often p??ondered why the book should be so vanishingly rare. It wasn’t a limited edition as such, although I accept that is a misnomer in the sense that any book is limited by the number of copies printed, but then interest in Collie was huge. Tens of thousands of Jamaicans turned out for his funeral, so there was surely a demand. I can also accept that many of those wh??o did buy copies were not cricketing bibliophiles, nor indeed ‘book people�at all, but surely some copies must have been kept?

I can also appreciate that in 1960 the world was a much larger place, and news of the book’s publication may not have reached acros??s the world, but surely some of the many friends who Collie made in his two seasons in the Lancashire League with Burnley would have heard of the book?’s existence and made sure a few copies arrived here?

Well it ultimately seems like at least one did as, a few weeks ago, I got home from work and, for want of something to occupy my mind before the 7pm news began, had a look on eBay and, lo and behold, there was a copy of The Happy Warrior, and I didn’t even ?have the stress of an auction to endure as it had a ‘buy it now�price, which I duly paid.

And so, a couple of days later, after all those years a copy of Collie Smith’s biography finally dropped through my letterbox. The most remarkable thing about the sale was that to the best of my recollection the original listing must have gone up at least eight hours before I saw it – am I really the only cricket collector with an obsession with The Happy Warrior?

One of the characteristics that collectors have, and one of the things that I believe puts us well and truly ‘on the spectrum� is that the thrill of the acquisition conquers all. Thus I had owned The Happy Warrior for a full six weeks before the thought of actually reading the thing occurred to me, and it ?was only because I was stuck with very little to do last Saturday morning that I actually did so. Would it have made much difference to the feature I wrote all those years ago? I reasoned that I owed it to myself to find out.

The 62 pages took less than an hour to read. Its author, I had found out, passed away in 2019 at the age of 90. He was a career journalist, not primarily in sport reporting, but you simply have to google his name to see that he was a highly respected man who served as press secretary to four Jamaican Prime Ministers. As far as sport is concerned his main contribution seems to have been as a football referee, and a FIFA recognised one for 18 years. As far as I can see The Happy Warrior is his only book.

I had wondered if perhaps the book was simply not very good, and that the?? lack of quality contributed to why it was so elusive. That thought was certainly mistaken, as the book is a well-written one and sheds a great deal of light on Collie’s upbringing, his religious values and his life at home. Letters that he wrote from England to his mother and his fiancee appear in the text to further illustrate his character.

But in terms of my feature there is, I was pleased to note, nothing to change. I had managed to pick up all of Collie’s cricke??ting achievements from elsewhere, although were I writing the feature today I might have mentioned having finally learned where the name ‘Collie�came from, the explanation being it was a pet name, after her maid Conchita, that Collie’s grandmother gave to him and which stuck to him for the rest of his days.

The one slight surprise in The Happy Warrior is that there is no mention of th???e ‘special relationship�with Sobers, but then Chaplin had not as far as I can see, with the exception of Gerry Alexander who provides a foreword, spoken to any of Collie’s West Indies teammates. The book is very much a case of one Jamaican paying tribute to another, so perhaps that is the explanation for that.

It goes without saying that I was delighted to finally track down a copy of a book I have been actively looking for for the best part of two decades. Equally with success in finally doing so something has gone out of my life, so I will have to find something else to apply the same energy to finding – i wonder what it will be?

Perhaps the most important of those was a surprise release from Red Rose Books, one of my favourite publishers, from Max Bonnell, one of my favourite authors. The subject was an Australian bowler of the Golden Age, Tom McKibbin. Only a generation after McKibbin Australia’s wicketkeeper was William ‘Barlow�Carkeek, another man whose biography appeared earlier this year from another personal favourite, Gideon Haigh.

Next in this category is a book I have not yet seen, but Tea and Biscuits in India: Through the night with the England team 2023-2024 has been self-published by Stephen Blackford – an old fashioned tour account perhaps?

Moving on to the rest of the year I will start with Pitch, who have already published several excellent books this year. They are not finished yet and in addition to the titles I mentioned six months ago there are four more to come. The first is a biography of the Yorkshire fast bowler of the inter-war period, Bill Bowes. An Unusual Celebrity: The Many Cricketing Lives of Bill Bowes is written by a man who knows all about cricket in Yorkshire, Jeremy Lonsdale, a?nd I am confident he will do full justice to a man who was neither an ar??chetypal Yorkshireman or a typical fast bowler.

Then there is Faces On A Wall by Andrew Radd. Steeped in the history of Northamptonshire cricket Radd’s book profiles all of the counties captains since 1878, whose portraits appear in the pavilion at the county ground. They are a diverse bunch, ranging from top class players to men whose cricketi??ng abilities did not warrant them getting anywhere near the First Class game and it is a book I am much looking forward to.

Overthrowing The Empire at Cricket is Jarrod Kimber’s first book for Pitch, and one of those where the sub-title tells you all you need to know; The Stories of How Every Team Beat England for the First Time. The matches concerned are all, by definition, historic, and ?the one I will be particularly interested to read about is the Pakistanis�victory at Th?e Oval in 1954, on their very first visit to England.

Finally for 2024 from Pitch, due at the end of September, is a new book from Christopher Sandford.  The Cricketers of 1945 looks at how the game picked itself up after five lost summers, and relies not just on contemporary reports and books but also draws extensively on the surviving correspondence and diari?es of those involved.

One piece of news that disappointed cricketing bibliophiles a couple of years back was the announcement of Stephen Chalke’s retirement. In fact that s??eems to have proved to be news that was good rather than bad as we now have the best of all worlds. Fairfield Books are under a dynamic new management that respects and seeks to enhance their reputation, Stephen is still involved and, best of all, he seems not to have l??ost his appetite for writing.

I am therefore delighted to announce that a new Chalke will be appearing in the autumn, and it is some?thing of a departure. He has written a number of biographies in the past, all of them amongst the very best of that genre, but hitherto he has always worked with living subjects. This project is Brian Close, who has been the subject of several previous books but Stephen’s will undoubtedly be the definitive biography of a man who may not have been the greatest cricketer of his era, but although there is one fellow Yorkshireman who might not have agreed, would almost certainly be regarded as the greatest character.

Out this coming week from Fairfield is a new autobiography from Brian Lara, Lara – The England Chronicles, which I will be reading as soon as I have finished the long awaited (and not just by me) David Tossell retrospective on the 1974/75 Ashes series, Blood on the Tracks. Fairfield’s other book for 2024, expected in the autumn, is fro??m Stephen Brenkley and looks at another historic A??shes series, that of 1926. Played against the background of the General Strike and a set of grim economic conditions across the world I am expecting a book that deals with much more than cricket.

A recent book from Bloomsbury has mixed cricket with social history. Richie Benaud’s Blue Suede Shoes: The?? Story of an Ashes Classic is, on the face of matters, concerned so?lely with the Old Trafford Test of 1961. It is a great deal? more than that however, co-authored by renowned historians/writers David Kynaston and Harry Ricketts, the start of the swinging sixties looms large.

As always the ACS have a few books in the pipeline, including two in the popular Lives in Cricket series of biographies. The first of those, due in August, is authored by Max Bonnell and for that reason alone is one I am particularly looking forward to. The subject is Ernest Parker who, like his biographer, was a lawyer. A Western Australian, Parker was the first from the state to record a Firs??t Class century and was likened to Trumper by some. He was also an outstanding tennis player, winning the men’s singles in the 1913 Australian Championship. Sadly Parker was one of the many   who lost their lives on the Western Front.

Another August publication is ‘You Can’t Hurry Us’: A History of Cricket in Suffolk’ by Simon Sweetman. It tells the story of how the game started in Suffolk, as well as the various attempts to form a county club, and the development of the men’s and women’s game at all levels through to the modern day. 

November will see another three books from the ACS. John Shawcroft, a man who has written several previous books with Derbyshire subjects turns his attention, for the Lives in Cricket series, to the phenomenally successful new ball pairing of the post war years Les Jackson and Cliff Gladwin, neither of w?hom found favour very often with the England selectors. 

Also out in August is A History of Cricket in Cambridge by Professor Tony Watts, a book that will look at the game in the city at all levels, and it is worth bearing in mind that, albeit briefly, Cambridgeshire were a? First Class county between 1857?? and 1871.

Peter Mason, who has previously written a biography of Learie Constantine, has written one of Clyde Walcott that is to be published in the autumn by the Manchester University Press. It is surprising given Walcott’s pre-eminence that he has not previously been the subject of a biography, albeit he did produce two autobiographi?es, in 1958 and 1999.

Back in 2023 Derek Barnard self-published a biography of the Kent stalw??art of the late 1950s and 1960s, Alan Dixon. It was a decent read if noticeably light on Dixon’s views on the many great players he played with and against. It would appear now that that a??pparent oversight was in fact intentional, as a second book from the Barnard/Dixon collaboration is in the course of preparation.

There are some interesting projects being worked on by the Sussex Museum. The long awaited biography of John Wisden by Stephen Baldwin is, it seems, back on track, and a booklet by Nicholas Sharp to mark the 60th anniversary of the county’s 1964 Gillette Cup win is also due. There is also a title due that I am told, by my source at the museum, is our best book ever! It is a limited edition coffee table boo?k showcasing the camera work of Arthur Smallwood, who?? took many photographs at Hove in the 1960s and 1970s.

Two other titles due from the museum are a book from David Boorman looking at cricket in Warnham, a village a couple of miles north of Horsham and one that, at this stage, all I know is that it is a pamphlet about a record breaking day in Leicester, a description that certainly has me intrigued.

The Gloucestershire Museum has plans for three publications. None have fixed publication dates as yet, but it is hoped all will see the light of day before the year’s end. One ??is a tribute to Mike Procter, with recollections and reminiscences from former players, friends and colleagues. The other two are also biogr??aphical in nature. The men featured are Gilbert Jessop (celebrating the 150th anniversary of his birth) and Billy Midwinter. The museum currently have the bat that Jessop used in the famous 1902 Test, and hope to secure on loan from Australia the bat that it is believed Midwinter used in the inaugural Test back in 1877.

A new book just published in Derbyshire is a first title from the county’s photographer, historian and statistician David Griffin. The Jewel in Derbyshire’s Crown is a history of the game at the renowned Queen’s Park ground in Chesterfield.

Two of the Max Books titles I mentioned in January have yet to appear, but should do soon. They are the collection of cartoons drawn by Neville Cardus and Keith Gregson’s book on the Olympic cricket tournament of 1900. Two other titles are also expected, ??one a 180,000 word history of Hockley Heath Cricket Club which, if nothing els??e, complete with more than 300 illustrations, will surely be the bulkiest club history ever published.

And then there is Charles Dickens and Cricket by Eric Midwinter. This is the fourth occasion in my lifetime that the renowned English novelist, who died as long ago as 1870, has been the subject of a book on his cricketing connec??tions. Before Midwinter the authors concerned have been Irving Rosenwater, John Goulstone and James Merchant, so altogether an exceptional quartet.

Red Rose Books have three titles confirmed. A biography of Geoff ‘Noddy�Pullar will b??e out very soon, and later on Steve Smith will continue his look at Philadelphian cricket with a booklet about a tour there by the Gentle??men of Ireland in 1909. The Irish played two First Class matches, dominated by the remarkable Bart King.

Also appearing from Red Rose is a biography of Charlie Shore from Stephen Musk. Shore was primarily an orthodox left arm spinner who player club cricket professionally in the Liverpool area, appeared occasionally in county cricket for Lancashire and Nottinghamshi?re before, and this is of course how he attracted Musk’s interest, later relocating to Norfolk. Although not definite we may also see something from Musk on a tour of England by a Canadian side in 1922.

David Battersby has been adding items regularly to the canon of cricket literature for some time now, and he has one more monograph for this year,and anot??her that may sneak in before 2025, but if not will certainly appear then. The one we will see continues David’s fascination with the Pakistan Eaglets and amounts to a further supplement to his earlier work on that subject. There is something new on all of the tou?rs that have been covered before, and a good deal on the 1969 tour about which, until now, virtually nothing has been known.

The next Battersby will be something different, and the biography of the New Zealand all-rounder of the 1930s Ian ‘Cranky�Cromb. The biography was inspired by the acquisition of an exten?sive scrapbook relating to the tour of England by the New Zealanders in 1931 so will doubtless contain much material that has not been published before and, let’s face it, anyone given that nickname by their teammates has to be an interesting character.

For those interested in Scottish cricket Richard Miller has some more books in his Scottish Cricket Memories series in the pipeline. Number 21 is going to be The First Scottish Cricket Union 1879 – 1883 by Neil Leitch, Number 22 is The Cricket Grounds of Dundee (Part 1) 1830 – 1890 by Richard himself and Number 23 is likely to be The Story of a Cricket Picture – Craigmount 1870, again by Richard himself. Others including Arbroath United CC – A History, Early Cricket in Dunfermline and some player profile series are also in the course of preparation. Still in Scotland Richard is also helping Charlie Clark’s History of Lasswade CC into print.

Age is no barrier to writing, and Henry Blofeld continues to illustrate that as, in September, he has a new book released. Sharing My Love of Cricket: Playing the Game and Spreading the Word is Blowers comparing the cricketing landscape of t??oday with the cherished memories of yesteryear. 

And what of Australia. There are still several of the books that I mentioned in January that have not yet been published, although on the other side of that coin Nathan Anderson’s splendid The ??Bird O’Freedom Portrait Gallery ??of Golden Age Cricketers did come through from nowhere. Two others that are well placed to appear in the coming weeks are biog?raphies of George Bonnor and Sid Emery, from the the pens of Mr Cardwell himself and Pat Rodger??s respectively.

Elsewhere in Australia Ken Piesse is publishing an autobiography, Living the Dream and, unsurprisingly, there is a new book due with the name of the greatest batsman who ever lived in the title, Harry Hodgetts – The Flawed Broker Behind Don Bradman’s Move To Adelaide  by John Davis. I’m not sure there will be much in the way??????????????????????????? of cricketing content, but it will doubtless be an intriguing story nonetheless.

Those few apart there is not a great deal of news. Rick Smith’s book about the South African visit to Australia in 1910/11 is almost ready, and I believe that books about the AIF side ?of 1919 and the tours of Australia in 1887/88 by differe?nt English teams led by Aubrey Smith on the one hand, and George Vernon on the other are well advanced. Ric Sissons and Peter Schofield have embarked on another project, covering the Australian non-Test tour to New Zealand of 1913/14 and I believe a book is being written about the 1928/29 Ashes series, but that is all the news that has reached me.

As far as India is concerned I am not aware of anything being released in the immediate future, although I harbour hopes that the success of Gulu Ezekiel’s splendid biography of Salim Durani is going to result in a veritable flood of similar projects by Indian writers, bringing names like Umrigar, Solkar, Baig, Surti, Contractor and Nadkarni to life for the IPL generation. In the meantime one title that has very recently appeared is what looks to be an interesting autobiography by Ravichandran Ashwin, I Have the Streets: A Kutti Cricket Story.

And finally one not for 2024, but certainly worthy of a mention. I am delighted to learn that Annie Chave, the driving force behind the thoroughly worthwhile County Cricket Matters magazine, is working on her first book, which it is hoped will be with us next year. All I know about it at the moment is that it is about (probably 11) people where cricket has made a difference to their lives, ??an observation that opens up a number of possibilities, al??l interesting.

In Panini 83, turning over from Brearley’s introduction we find Derbyshire player stickers: Wood, Anderson, Hill, Kirsten, Hampshire, Barnett, Miller, Taylor, Maher, Newman, Oldham, and Tunnicliffe. Each county has its badge, a team photo from 1982, and a list of honours. Each player gets a pen portrait, same as the 1930s Player’s cigarette cards. ‘Born Ossett, 26/12/1942. Right-hand bat, bowls right-arm medium. Capped 12 times by England during his 14 years with Lancashire, Barry Wood moved to Derbyshire in 1980, becoming captain in 1981 and taking them to the NatWest final. A gritty bat, he is also an economical bowler in one-day cricket. Highest score 198; best bowling 7-52.’

Now, surely this would include his one-day international appearances and white-ball best score and bowling. We might start with the coach rather than the captain. Not included is a Scandinavian who would be Derbyshire’s break-out star of 1983.

There are 268 cards including 28 foils in 1983 Panini cricket. For the generations, Panini is synonymous with schoolyard swaps and ‘shinies’ (silver foil cards). The albums became a phenomenon and are still going strong, with the 2014 World Cup football album its biggest seller. Greg Lansdowne’s book about the company, Stuck on You, was published by Pitch in 2015. There was even a 2??017 film of the same name about the craze.

And now I’ve written Lost Cricket Stickers: The Search for 1983’s World of Cricket Sticker Album Heroes, tracking down a player per county plus a few more to tell the whole, repr?esentative story of the year, highlighting the profound changes in the game bet??ween then and now.

County by county I repeatedly flicked through the well-thumbed Panini album until reaching the back page, which is an advert for Gola Turf 83 shoes. ‘Howzat for Design!â€?There’s a poorly drawn cartoon of some players and an umpire. The shoe looks cool. Minicards Ltd 20p. Stickers were 10p a packet of six. A complete album could cost as little as £25 now. Not many threw them away. Unopened packets, which are illustrated with the album cover, might be £5. Individual stickers are around £1 each, if you want to complete your album 40 years on. The 1938 Players album you can get for £10. These heirlooms are cherished. Poet Philip Larkin (1922-85) collected them: â€™I searched the sand for Famous Cricketersâ€?is a line from 1969’s To the Sea.

You rip open the paper packet and don’t know what’s in there. Got, got, need. It’s big business. The 1983 schoolyard collectors are now mostly in their fifties and have disposable income. They might start collecting them all over again. They are tactile, nostalgic, generational, healthy, magical, mysterious and it gets adults and kids off their screens. At the very least, there’s?? an audience who want to read about their halcyon days.

The history of Panini began in a newsagent’s kiosk in Modena, Italy, an unexpected place to become the world capital epicentre for collecting cricket. In the 1950s and 1960s and early 70s you collected cards with bubble-gum in the packets and us?ed glue to stick them into albums. Even Brooke Bond had cards to collect in their packets of tea. An album ??gives the stickers a life and an identity.

Before that, from the 1890s-1930s cigarette cards were what little boys scrounged off their Dads or picked up off the pavement when tossed away outside tobacconists. In 1938, million?s of brightly coloured cards featuring Len Hutton, Don Bradman and Wally Hammond were collected before the war ended such fripperies.

A sports book publisher called Peter Dunk came into Panini UK in 1976 and launched Football 78, edited by colleague Peter Gregory. The stickers with their high-quality photos (no more tinke??ring with heads stuck onto foreign bodies as there used to be when decent pictures weren’t available) were pre-gummed and had peelable backs. Gluey fingers became obsolete when self-adhesion stuck.

The albums came to life in 1978. Peel and stick into the album with two packets free with Shoot or Tiger or Dad’s news?paper. The momentum from football led to branching out into cricket on the back of Ashes mania from?? 1981 and the World Cup in England of 1983.

Dunk remembers a golden age of stickers around the football World Cup of 1982 in Spain. There were lots o?f ideas. Hulk Hogan and the WWF (World Wrestling Federation) was more successful with the kids than England’s heavyweight, Ian Botham. Even the royals, on a high after Diana’s wedding in 1981, got an album.

Swapping football stick??ers in the playground developed business and social skills, 10 ordinaries for one shiny. ??Schools banned football stickers, after bullies tried to steal them from collectors, which was good for PR. WH Smith’s ran swap shops. But the schoolyard did not have enough cricket fans, so the critical mass for swapping never happened.

It’s a guilty pleasure to wallow in wistful memories of swapping in the school playground, shinies and recurring doubles. I started in 1978 with the football album (525 stickers), but didn’t finish, apart from Bristol City (Keith Fear, Tom Ritchie etc.). Too old by 1983, the pull of the cricket album made me collect again, sending off for the last 25 (including no more than five silver stickers â€?county badges, trophies and the national flags) at 3p each as advertised on the inside back cover. ‘We’re sure that all you would-be Ian Bothams and Mike Brearleys, when you’re not outside this summer at the wicket or in the slips, will be building up this fantastic collection and swopping (sic) with your mates.â€?Who was a wannabe Mike Brearley?

My Dad would have helped with the cricket stickers, sensing an alb?um to add to his collection. His love of cricket had been sparked by the 1938 Players cigarette cards. Mine was turned on by 1983 Panini. The bright watercolours of neatly side-parted and blazered Norman Yardley, Neil McCorkell and Eddie Paynter enthused the old man. The 45-year on version features photos of the mighty moustaches, comb overs and perms of 1983’s Wayne Larkins, Ray Illingworth and Kevin Saxelby (who told me, when more closely cropped in 2023, that in 1983 h??e would still usually be bowling into the wind for Nottinghamshire, even when Richard Hadlee was at the World Cup).

Go back further and you get Victorian cards by Baines Litho of Bradford with the likes of Tom Emmett pictured with a handlebar moustache, a crest and legend or inscription which is printed on a card. Bainesâ€?earliest home-made coat of arms features a cricketer and a rugby player flanking a Bradford city escutcheon and a boar’s head heraldic device, replaced in the late 1880s by the lion &?amp; unicorn crest. One for real cartophiliacs. The cards were produced to be collected, creating a who’s who that leaves a legacy, that brings back childhood, that gives on-human comfort, shows loyalty to a cause and ability to accumulate useful things. Signed cards are touched with the spirit of the signer. They make a story and they’re fun.

Willsâ€?pink-hued watercolours of 1896 and 1901 (WG In a striped blazer and cap, Stoddart in a boater, Forster in a fedora for instance. A signed Walter Mead card was offered for £200 in 2011). Then there’s Capstan 1901 and 1907, with Australians such as Cotter and Armstrong among the 1907 cards. Willsâ€?1908 features SF Barnes. Godfrey Philips (1926) uses photos rather than paintings with the cards looking more like postcards. Players (1926) and Wills (1928) use cartoons/caricatures. In the heyday of the late 1920s and the 1930s there’s the familiar (to me as they ??decorated our walls when I was a kid and do now after I inherited them) 1928 Wills and 1934 and 1938 Players; all vivid illustrations in th?e style of the era, a sort of optimistic rosy-cheeked realism. 

Paul Circosta, from Brisbane, Australia, collected any card with a cricket theme. David Frith’s Cricket’s Collectors  (Cricket Memorabilia Society 2012) profiles Circosta among other obsessives including necktie, postcard and Yorkshire-only hoarders. There’s an 1899 Goodwin & Co card from the Games and Sports series, a 1915 Susini hand tinted card of an unidentified Wilfred Rhodes, issued in Cuba, a Stollwerck German chocolate card with the umpire at leg slip, a German Sanella Margarine card from 1932 showing Jack Hobbs hooking and a Dutch Blue Band marge 1955 card featuring Leslie Compton and Bill Edrich at wicketkeeper and first slip. Circosta’s Australian and New Zealand Cricket Collector Cards 1965-1995 book features Australian Dairy Corporation 1983/84 Butter Swap cards and the Australian Scanlen’s four sticker series (given away with sweets/gum in collaboration with Panini from 1982/83-86/87), Sanatorium Weet Bix 1994/95 cards, as well as obscure Stimorol, Sunicrust and Vegemite collectors’ items. Collecting cards is an investment. Scanlen’s produced an AFL ‘Polly’ Farmer card that sold for $7,200 in 2014. In 2022, a 1952 Topps baseball Mickey Mantle card sold for $12.6 million.

Greg Lansdowne, the Essex-based expert on the subject, says: “It’s always been about the football stickers/cards over here, whereas cricket in Australia is as big as any other sport really. They’ve had some lovely collections over the years: Australia there has been at least one card/sticker collection (mainly cards) for decades. But over here we have been starved.”  In the UK, Panini only had one more go at cricket, with a glitzier sticker album in 1995, featuring more action shots, and less text.

However, the future of cards and (less so) stickers looks strong. There  w?ere Topps IPL Cricket Attax sets published in India, sta?rting in 2011. The Hundred has seen a revival of cards in the UK, with Topps producing Match Attax collections since 2021.

In terms of cricket card releases in the UK, Lansdowne  advised Australian company Tap ‘n’ Play about the most recent collection besides those for The Hundred, published in 2018.

It was the first collection to feature the England women’s cricket team. Comparing that to Mike Brearley’s Panini 1983’s references about persuading your great aunt to bowl to you, this perhaps reflects how the modest cricket card and sticker has a bigger influence, turning youngsters on to and mirroring the evolvement of the game.

After that regular trips from England to Australia and Australia to England began, and the first Test match was played in Melbourne in 187??7. A number of contemporary accounts of those trips appeared, and there have been other retrospective accounts since.

Tour books have, over the years, become one of the favoured targets of cricketing bibliophiles as have the the related subject of pre tour brochures. By their nature slimmer and more ephemeral such br??ochures, originally intended primarily as a vehicle to introduce the tourists to a wider audience, have proved to be at least as collectable as the tour accounts th?at would appear later.

As the twentieth century wore on the tour brochure changed and became what amounted to a glossy magaz?in??e, almost a book in itself. There was plenty to read, but they lost their charm, and after the 1970s became something else.

Over the ?years, as I acquired more and more books, I started to collect the brochures as well. Like books the general rule is the older a brochure is the rarer and more expensive it becomes, so when was the first?

It wa?sn’t a question that occurred to me until recently, but as one or two from the 1890s came within reach it became something I needed to know. The answer is, of course, in the game’s bibliography and a quick look through the various incarnations of Padwick gave me the answer. The first was for the 1890 Ashes contest. 

There were three Tests scheduled for 1890, and the thirteen man Australian party had, by 21st century standards, an eye watering 34 First Class fixtures arranged. No one has ever written an account of ??a tour in which England won at Lord’s and the Oval and the third Test was (at Old Trafford) abandoned without a ball bowled. The rival captains were two men who would become good friends, Billy Murdoch and WG Grace.

In 1890 there was one established cricketing periodical in England, Cricket: A Weekly Record of the Game had begun in 1882. From the off there was a link between what is more widely known simply as Cricket, with a journalist in Australia, Clarence Moody.

Moody, a South Australian, generally wrote on cricket under the byline of Point. He had been born in 1867, the son of a printer, so it was no surprise that he began working for his father’s newspaper in 1881 and from 1889 wrote on cricket. He also covered politics and Australian Rules Football (as Goalpost).

Moody came to England in 1890 with Murdoch’s team, and at the start of the tour Cricket’s publisher issued their landmark brochure, The Seventh Australian Team in England 1890, sub-titled Biographical Sketches.

The brochure consists of 20 page?s, including the front and re??ar covers. There is a single team photograph on the front cover, and that apart the first four pages and the last four are advertising. All the advertisers are suppliers of sporting goods, amongst them a familiar name, Dukes.

The remaining twelve pages comprise biographies of the thirteen players, and a rather shorter one of manager and?? former Test player Harry Boyle. The ‘sketches�are genuine pen portraits and not the the short introductions that were to become the norm in years to come. By far the most interesting, and the one that immediately caught my eye, is that of Ken Burn.

I remember the Burn story from my childhood. A Tasmanian, legend has it (confirmed in Wisden so it must be true) Burn was supposedly selected as reserve wicketkeeper only to, somewhere on the trip over to England, admit he had never kept wicket in his life. Having read Moody on Burn I have to say that it seems to me that Wisden may well have been sold a pup with that story, and that editor Sydney Pardon really should have spoken to Moody, or at least read his b??rochure.&n??bsp;

Moody went on to write four cricket books. The most significant appeared in 1894, Australian Cricketers 1856-1894. Essentially an anthology Moody’s book also contained a list of Test matches between England and Australia which? has been accepted as definitive ever since. In the book he also revived the idea of contests between the two countries being for ‘The Ashes�

The remaining three Moody titles all appeared in 1898. One was George Giffen’s autobiography, With Bat and Ball,  which Moody ghosted. South Australian Cricket: Reminiscences of Fifty Years was another, this time a collection of articles that had originally appeared in the Adelaide Observer and South Australian Register newspapers. It is a book that the current noted Australian historian Bernard Whimpress felt sufficiently importa??nt to justify the publication of a facsimile edition of eighty copies in 2016.

For many the best of Moody’s contributions to the literature of the game is Cricket Album: Noted Australian Players. This was, in the manner of a handful of contemporary English publications, originally published in weekly parts and then bound together. It is not as large as Alcock’s Famous Cricketers and Cricket Grounds, or CB Fry’s Book of Cricket, nor as substantial as Cross-Standing’s Cricketers of Yesterday and Today. It is however a thing of beauty, printed on ??high quality paper and well worth ?investing in comprising photographs of the leading Australian cricketers of the day accompanied by brief pen pictures. 

After that burst of activity there were to be no further books from Moody, although he continued writing for newspapers. In that respect ventures of his own in Adelaide were not successful, and after the Great War Moody moved to Sydney where he joined the Sydney Sun. He died aged 70 in 1937.

And that I thought would be that. By the time I wrote the second post I had already managed to acquire just about all of the limited editions I had written about in the first, so Irving Rosenwater rather slipped to the back of my mind. From time to time I would see various Rosenwaters turn up in auctions and in dealers�catalogues, although such sightings were generall??y disappointing as values have certainly not been increasing.

It was no surprise to see a few more turn up in Knights Auction catalogue in November 2022, but what I h??adn’t expected to see was Lot 1,326, Irving’s own copies of his limited edition publications. There were 38 of them altogether, most of them encased in envelo??pes that Irving had created himself. All, of course, were number one of the run.

I was reminded as I read through the listing that the self same collection had been sold at Christies in 2012, the hammer on that occasion dropping at £6,000. The Knights estimate was £3,000 to £5,000, either demonstrating a somewhat fragile state for the memorabilia market at the present time or that interest in Rosenwater is on the wane or, heaven forfend,? both.

Hand on heart I really did not intend to bid, and I think even my wife is prepared to accept that, but as the auction wore on I thought perhaps I should. The reason not to was, naturally, the fact that I had almost a??ll the booklets anyway, but then I kept coming back to the idea that the acquisition of Irving’s own personal archive was an opportunity I should not pass up completely. 

So I?? chose to compromise. I decided that I had to be prepared to bid up to £3,000. Even taking into account the buyer’s premium that would still produce an average cost of only fractionally over £100 for each booklet, and for that I would have something very special indeed. The complementary thought, that being the amount I had already spent, is not something I have dwelt on at any length.

I never expected the bid to succeed but, as no one came in at all, I certainly couldn’t allow Lot 1,326 to be passed, so I opened up at £2,600. That immediately prompted someone to push that to £2,800 so I went u?p to my maximum safe in the knowledge, so I thought, that the real bidders could then start. But they didn’t, and after what seemed like an interminable time the hammer came down.

So I am now, despite Royal Mail’s Special Delivery Servi?ce entirely failing to cover itself in glory in the following weeks, the proud owner of a full set of Rosenwaters, all bar two being the author’s personal copies. And what are those two? Well he did do one limited edition that was nothing to do with cricket, and another that it looks like he was on the brink of finalising when he died. Having sourced those two elsewhere over the year??s I can add them, together with the other correspondence that Rosenwater’s niece kindly passed to me, to this collection. With a bit of luck and a fair wind it will be many years yet before Irving’s archive comes up for sale again, but I do hope my heirs do rather better than my vendor did.

Which b?egs the question as to what I might be able to do to assist them in their endeavours, and that can only be to do what I can to foster interest in this fascinating body of work, so in the coming weeks I will review each and every one of Irving Rosenwater’s published works.

And I will stay in India for a few titles I missed last time round. Two are autobiographies, from Pravin Amre and Amrit Mathur, Two more I have recently reviewed are an anthology, Indian Cricket: Then and Now which is edited by Venkat Sundaram, and The Great Indian Cricket Circus? : Amazing?????????????????????????? Facts, Stats and Everything in Between by Joy Bhattacharjya and Abhishek Mukherjee.

Those Indian titles not yet reviewed are The Lords of Wankhede: Tales Between Two Titles by W.V. Raman and R. Kaushik and Of Spins, Sixes and Surprises: 50 Defining Moments in Indian Cricket by Shom Biswas and Titash Banerjea.

Moving back to the UK by far the best selling cricket title this festive season would doubtless have been Stuart Broad’s autobiography, Broadly Speaking – if anyone who has bought the book or received it as a Christmas gift would like to review it for us please get in touch.

Fairfield Books published three books in recent weeks, the long awaited biography of Sir Frank Worrell by Vaneisa Baksh, Ricky Ellcock’s Balls to Fly and Kit Harris’s intriguing looking title, From Lord’s To The Fjords, a look at cricket in Iceland. Moving into next year I believe David Tossell’s retrospective look at the 1974/75 Ashes, appropriately titled Blood on the Tracks, is still on schedule.?? Tossell has, I know, another project in mind, but about that one I am sworn to secrecy.

Pitch have, as always, a number of titles due in the early months of 2024.The first is a re-release, and I believe a genuine second edition, of Barry Nicholls The Establishment Boys?, an account of the other side of Australian cricket during the two seasons of World Series Cricket.

Out at the end of February is a new book from Richard Sydenham, Cricket’s Hard Men, sub-titled The Toughest Characters from the History of Cricket. Pitch say the book takes an innovative look at character, psychology and mental health in cricket to produce a fascinating study of the sport’s toughest players of all time. Richard Sydenham consulted prominent ex-cricketers and broadcasters before studying this select band of 22 cricketers from around the world.

At the same time Jonathan Campion’s book, Getting Out, is due. I made reference to this one in July, but it is well worth another mention. Pitch describe the book as telling how Ukraine’s cricketers escaped from Russia’s invasion in February 2022, including first-hand accounts of the war. As the foreign-born players fled the bombings, the team’s Ukrainians took themselves to the front line. The book also holds many light-hearted stories about the surprising and eccentric history of cricket in Ukraine.

A week later and another title appears from the pen of Richard Sydenham, Almost Invincible, an account of the the 1984 series in England which resulted in a 5-0 defeat for the home side at the hands of Clive Lloyd’s West Indians. It was a remarkable summe?r, as is the realisation it will be the fortieth anniversary of what, in a rather different age, was des??cribed as a ‘blackwash�

A couple years ago Giles Wilcock’s excellent biography of Yorkshireman George Macaulay appeared, and that is followed now by a very different book. Forgotten Pioneers: The Story of the Original English Lady Cricketers tells the story of the world’s first professional women cricketers. They played a series of exhibition matches in Britain throughout 1890 and 1891 before collapsing amid allegations of fraud in the latter season and subsequently have been forgotten by history – until now.

Pitch published an excellent book by Matt Appleby last year, and have another interesting one from him this year. Lost Cricket Stickers is the inside story of the 1983 cricket season, locating lost heroes and discovering their journeys with the help of a Panini sticker album. This is a warm, funny and insightful tale of tracking down a fondly remembered player from each county, each with his unique take on how cricket has changed.

The very earliest cricketing publications, dating back to the mid 18th century, were poems, and again in March Pitch publish Bob Doran’s Cricket in Poetry. Subtitled Run-Stealers, Gatlings and Graces the book is a history of the genre and as a result breaks new g?round.

And then there is an autobiography from Steve Perryman (the Warwickshire and Worcestershire seamer and not the rather better known Spurs midfielder), written with the assistance of Brian Halford. This one deserves the full blurb, which is; As a bowler with Warwickshire, he was tipped to play Test cricket for England. An ambition that was killed by coaches who tampered with his bowling action. With the result that, within months, he went from an England contender to free transfer. Steve recalls that time of his life with no bitterness �just humour and gratitude at playing when county cricket was filled with the world’s best. If his derailed career was a test, a much bigger one lay ahead.

“A Cricket Man” is more than a cricket book, it is also a love story and a life story. Perryman became a fine bowling coach, helping Warwickshire to the Championship title. Always beside him, inspiring him was his beloved wife Carol. She was his cornerstoneâ€?until their lives were turned upside down when Carol was diagnosed with cancer, and she passed away in 2018. Perryman recounts that heartbreaking time in his life, in powerful chapters where his sadness is underpinned by strength, and heartbreak is accompanied by joy at having shared so much of his life with Carol. An ultimately uplifting story is complete when Steve finds a new love.

To digress for a moment George Dobell and Azeem Raffia’s It’s Not Banter, It’s Racism: What Cricket’s Dirty Secret Reveals About Our Society is now due for release on 25 April. The long awaited account will hopefully prove to be worth the wait. It will not however be the only book that deals with that subject to appear in 2024, nor even the first, as Pitch publish From Azeem to Ashes by Jon Berry in March

The sub-title of Berry’s book suggests it will cover similar ground to Rafiq and Dobell; English Cricket’s Struggle with Race and Class. That said the blurb from Pitch suggests perhaps not; the Azeem Rafiq affair made cricket ask itself tough questions about race and class. From the end of Joe Root’s reign to the T20 World Cup and on to Bazball’s triumph at a breathless Oval, this book takes an unsentimental yet affectionate look at how cricket can face up to these challenges. It is written for lovers of the game.

Finally from Pitch the end of March will see the release of Batting For Time: The Fight to Keep English Cricket Alive by Ben Bloom. Described as the exploration of a sport in existential crisis. Lucrative global franchise leagues threaten to leave behind an English cricket structure rooted in the Victorian era. Pitting traditionalists against modernisers, and romantics against pragmatists, the need for change has sparked a host of civil wars to keep the sport alive I fear the book may not ?make for the happ??iest summer reading.

After their strong end to 2023 there are as many a??s half a dozen new books or booklets due from Red Rose Books. Most eagerly awaited, by me anyway, is a biography of JT Tyldesley by Stuart Brodkin, a book that I first mentioned a decade ago. 

There are also plans for two more books from Stephen Musk. The first is a biography, Shore Whipped In… Charlie Shore. Primarily a left arm spinner Shore was from the well known cricketing nursery of Sutton-in-Ashfield in Nottinghamshire and played briefly for both his home county and Lancashire in the 1880s before, and th??is will doubtless be the main focus of Musk’s efforts, bowling with great success for Norfolk between 1895 and 1901.

The other Musk title is The Forgotten Philadelphians: the story of the Philadelphia Pilgrims tour in England in 1921. As Bart King’s biographer Musk is well placed to write this account of what was the last significant tour of a Philadelphian side to these shores, and even then there were, unlike the tours of 1897, 1903 and 1908, no Fi??rst Class fixtures, and no JB King.

Staying with North America Red Rose are also publish?ing a new book by King’s ‘other biographerâ€? Steve Smith, this one about the visit of the 1878 Australians to the USA and Canada following their tour of England of that summer. 

Martin Tebay himself has one title due, Someday, he’ll be a better bat than ever I was, which is about the younger of the Roe Green Tyldesley’s, Ernest, more particularly his performances in the Minor Counties Championship in 1906/07/08 – one small spoiler is that, surprisingly, Bradmanesque they most certainly were not!

Another author published regularly by Red Rose is Gerry Wolstenhome and his Essex by the Sea: One Hundred Years of Lancashire v Essex at Blackpool 1924 – 2023 will appear. This one won’t be entirely happy reading for Lancastrians as of the ten fixtures between the counties at Stanley Park Essex have won three with Lancashire coming out as victors just twice, the other five contests be?ing drawn.

Finally from Red Rose will be A Schoolboy’s Cricketing Summer by Roy Cavanagh MBE, ??which will doubtless transport its reader back to the early 1960s.

St??aying in Lancashire I expect three books from Max Books. Firstly another long awaited biography, or at least memoir, this time of 1930s Lancashire captain Peter Eckersley. After that expect a book of cartoons drawn by Neville Cardus, never previously published, plus some other artists?? cartoons of Cardus. Finally there is a new book on the first and only Olympic Cricket Match of 1900 due to be published to celebrate the return of cricket in the 2028 Olympics.

Further north Richard Miller in Dundee has a number of projects in various stages of preparation, although precise timing is uncertain. Definitely appearing will be A History of the First Scottish Cricket Union 1879 – 1883 by Neil Leitch, and A Complete History of Perthshire Cricket Club by William Sievwright.  On the ‘to be completed soonâ€?list are Reminiscences of R W Sievwright 1930, A History of Arbroath United Cricket Club and The Lost Cricket Grounds of Dundee.

The ACS have three titles currently scheduled for next year. The first, in February, is Cricket Professionals of Oxford by Michael Stimpson, George Brown’s biographer. Th??is book tells the story of cricket professionals from Oxford, from the early days to the present era, covering not only those born in the area but those who came to live there. Charting the development of the game in the city, it is not only about players, but about those w?ho earned their income from the game in other ways such as groundsmen, coaches, promoters, umpires, retailers etc.

In May there will be a statistical book, South Africa Non-Racial Scores compiled by Keith Walmsley. It will contain the full scorecards of the 223 three-day matches played between 1971/72 and 1990/91 by non-racial sides in South Africa, and which were granted First Class status by Cricket South Africa?? in 1996. This will be the first time these scores have ever been brought together in print. The book will also include an extensive records section relating to these matches.

May will also see a History of Cricket in Suffolk by Simon Sweetman. The book looks at rather more than the history of the County Club over its several reformations, but also at when and where cricket has been played in the county by clubs, schools, works teams and country houses and the development of locally based cricket. Not just the gentlemen’s game, but the game of schoolboys, agricultural labourers and eventually women. The author also explains how the social and political changes have impacted on the game since th?e middle of the eighteenth century.

CricketMash have three books definitely planned, two by authors they have published previously, and one by someone new. The recognised names are Pradip Dhole, whose A Baker’s Dozen will feature thirteen pioneering events in cricket history, and Mayukh Ghosh’s Played Down will be a compilation of the unsung but pivotal performances in the history of the cricket World Cup. The new face is Rosa Burlong who has penned an unusual book with the working title Legal Eagles, Star Struck and Death Squads: A Book of Cricketing Elevens, which leaves a great deal to the imagination.

W?hat of Cricketweb favourite David Battersby? I am still much looking forward to his monograph on the the ??single Test fast bowler from the 1960s, Farooq Hamid, and I believe David’s continuing research into the various Pakistan Eaglets touring sides of the 1950s and early 1960s will mean that another booklet on that subject will the light of day at some point in the not too distant future.

And what can we expect from Australia? As always the Cricket Publishing Company work on many projects, but which of those will emerge in the first half of next year? Due imminently are Between Wickets 10 and Paul Sheahan on Keith Stackpole in the Cricketers in Print series. Beyond that a tribute to Brian Booth will surely emerge, and Jack D’Arcy’s autobiography will be with us to coincide with his birthday in April.

Beyond th?at the runners and riders for the next six months are two more Cricketers in Print, Lyall Gardner on John Watkins and Bill Francis on Richard Collinge. We should also see John Benaud’s book on the 1972/73 series between West Indies and Australia, Bi?ll Francis again on the New Zealand historian Don Neely and Ronald Cardwell and Pat Rodgers on Arthur Watson, a man from Victorian times who the authors believe umpired more matches in New South Wales than anyone else, before or since.

Other Cricket Publishing Company titles due in the coming months are a history of the Sydney branch of the Australian Cricket Society, and a book about Gordon Cricket Club and its players during World War Two. Another I sincerely hope will appear is James Merchant’s Arthur Mailey – The Bohemian Cricketer.

Elsewhere in Australia my enquiries have not thrown up too many new titles, although one I am certainly looking forward to is Max Bonnell’s A Long Way To Go. The book will appear initially in a limited edition of 50 copies before, a few weeks later, paperback and ebook versions are released. It is an account of the first ever series between Australia and West I??ndies, in Australia in 1930/31, a tour that took place against the backdrop of the great depression ??and saw the end of the tragically short Test and First Class careers of Archie Jackson.

Another book that is approaching completion is Peter Lloyd’s follow up to his superb biographies of Warren Bardsley and Monty Noble. This one is a comprehensive story of the life ?of Charlie Macartney, and will once again be a limited edition that has the same ‘no expense spared�qualities of?? its predecessors.

News of one title from New Zealand has reached me. Any day a collection of pen portraits by Dylan Cleaver is due for release. Modern New Zealand Cricket Greats is certainly one that will fill in a few gaps in the literature of the game and more particularly the sto??ries of the best of its current and recently retired players.

Returning to the UK for a few more books that are on their way one that will certainly be worth reading is Bill Edrich by Leo McKinstrey, due for publication by Bloomsbury in July. Already the author of acclaimed biographies of Jack Hobbs and Geoffrey Boycott then given that Edrich led such a full life this one will surely be well worth investing in. Another biography is, hot on the heels of Vaneisa Baksh’s book, one of Frank Worrell by Simon Lister, this one published by Simon and Schuster.

Bucking the trend this summer we had two books on the Ashes, one from Gideon Haigh and one from Lawrence Booth and Nick Hoult, but I don’t suppose we will see any more contemporary accounts of Test series before the 2025/26 Ashes. We do however have another three retrospective accounts to look forward to as well as Blood on the Tracks, that being Richard Thorn’s Champions: the West Indies Cricket Tour of Great Britain 1966, the summer that ?England won the FIFA Wo?rld Cup and, if there were ever any doubt, Garry Sobers convinced many that he was indeed ‘The Greatest�

Also due to be revisited are, for by no means the first time, two series when England regained the Ashes. The first is the famous victory under Len Hutton in Australia in 1954/55, and the other the h??ome success in 1926 when, after four draws, a new captain (Percy Chapman) led England to a famous victory at the Oval, built on the bowling of 21 year old Harold Larwood and 48 year old Wilfred Rhodes, and a historic opening partnership between Jack Hobbs and Herbert Sutcliffe. The authors are respectively Richard Whitehead and Stephen Brenkley, and the publishers Bloomsbury and Fairfield.

There are not so many historical books around this time, but I have managed to locate one, released I believe tomorrow, which will be of particular interest to Essex supporters. Nineteenth Century Essex Cricket is by Richard Cooper.

And finally, a book that uses as its title a very minor variation on what previously used by the great John Arlott. Echoing Greens: How Cricket Shaped the English Imagination by Brendan Cooper is due to be released by Constable at the end o??f May. In such turbulent times the p??ublisher’s blurb makes for pleasant reading; The importance of cricket to the English imagination has been immortalised in the art and literature of a thousand years. It is a story that is known in part, but one that has never before been explored in full.

Nauman’s museum contains around 7,000 cricket books, so he and I c?ould talk for hours on end without the need to stray outside my comfort zone, but that won’t alter the fact that in total his library extends to around 19,000 items, so there is a great deal more to learn.

But first an insight or two into Nauman. His?? academic achievements alone are remarkable. He began his education at St Mary’s Academy in Rawalpindi before moving on to the famous Aitchison College in Lahore. 

From there Nauman did his first degree, back in Rawalpindi at the Rawalpindi Medical College, before he spread his wings and undertook further degrees at the Royal College of Physicians in London, Edinburgh, Ireland and Glasgow, a PhD from the University of Western Australia and a Post Doctorate from Oxford University. Combining as he has his stellar careers in medicine and journalism/broadcasting I was not surprised to learn ?that Nauman is a man who exists on three hours sleep a ni??ght!

The demands his professions place ?on him notwithstanding Na??uman has still had plenty of time to engage with his passion for cricket and his overarching desire to connect with the past, particularly 18th and 19th century Britain.

Nauman also ?acknowledges a considerable debt to his lineage. His late father ?was Lieutenant General Hamid Niaz of the Pakistan Army, so there is warrior blood in him. Whilst Nauman’s father was not a collector as such, he still passed on to Nauman a number of items that form part of his collection today, not least amongst those being two signed cabinet cards of Abraham Lincoln that were presented to Hamid on a trip to the US.

So what are Nauman’s non-cricketing bibliograp??hical passions? Many and varied is the short answer to that one, and b??oth fiction and non-fiction are well represented in his collection.

Charles Dickens is one of the most famous names in English literature and published 15 novels. Nauman’s collection contains copies of them all, nine second second editions and six first and, amongst those, a copy of Oliver Twist signed by Dickens.

A more recent area of fertile ground for collectors are what are referred to in general terms as ??‘modern firsts� Ian Fleming’s James Bond novels are as collectable as any. There are 13 of them all together and Nauman has signed copies of all of them complete, of course, with their original dust jackets.

Moving on to non fiction Nauman is a great aficionado of Winston Churchill, and his collection houses a copy of each of Churchill’s 72 published works, all first editions and around half of them signed. Not necessarily the most valuable, but perhaps the most desirable are his signed set of the seminal six volume History of the Second World War.

One?? particularly interesting item in the Niaz collection is a copy of Gandhi’s eight volume collection of his own writings. Naturally it is a first edition (1953), and one on the volumes is signed. Special enough but there was also a limited edition published in South Africa that was ??bound in cloth taken from Gandhi’s dhoti, a traditional item of attire for male Hindus, and Nauman’s copies come from that edition.

As a ten year old I recall vividly sitting with my father whilst he watched a news programme on the television about the death of Bertrand Russell, and my father explained me to me that Russell was a man with a mighty ?intellect, primarily a philosopher and mathematician, who had just died at the age of 97.

Later in life I grew up to understand more about Russell, whose bibliography is immense. His most famous work is A History of Western Philosophy, first published in 1945. Nauman has a signed first edition of that one in its original dust jacket, and the same applies to many of Russell’s other books. But his prized possessions in that part of his museum are the three volumes of Principia Mathematica, published be??tween 1910 and 1913 and, of course, author signed.

But what is the one thing that Nauman doesn’t have but would like to own above all others? The answer to that one is the signature of William Shakespeare. That the Bard’s autograph would be an expensive one does not surprise, but until Nauman wistfully explained the situation to me I hadn’t re??alised that only six examples are known. Five of those are owned by British institutions, and the solitary example in private hands last changed hands in 2006, for the small matter of $4,600,000. 

So the acquisition of a Shakespeare may prove problematic, so in my opinion Nauman would be well advised to stick to a couple of alternative ambitions, the comparatively easy one of a full set of Wisden in original condition, or the greater challenge of adding the other fourteen editions to his currently somewhat lonely copy of Britcher’s Scores, but that brings us back to cricket, and a subject for another day, but for now a further selection of images from the collection ……