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Our February publications are now available.
In The Dream That Died: Gwilym Rowland and Welsh Cricket, Andrew Hignell tells the story of Gwilym Evans Rowland, a Manchester-born businessman who tried to raise cricket’s profile in Wales by creating a team which played home internationals against Scotland and Ireland and appeared at Lord’s. Gwilym ruffled feathers at Glamorgan CCC, but paid for matches played by the Wales team and the all-amateur Welsh Cygnets, and a visit by the United Berlin team in 1930. But during 1931/32 his business conglomerate collapsed and went into liquidation, and he ended as a penniless man in Anglesey whose body was found in a ditch in 1938.
Cricket’s Revolution: Its Sudden Leap into Modernity is Eric Midwinter’s analysis of the transformation of cricket from a folk game played in various versions in isolated localities to a singular and recognisable national sport, with agreed laws and an undisputed central authority. This switch, over thirty years in the early 19th century, was a part of the equally abrupt emergence of a nation turning to the rationalisation of society and away from the arbitrary confusion of the 18th century. Against this background, Midwinter explores the development of the unified format of cricket’s laws, controls, clubs, competitions, records and statistics.
The 16th edition of the Overseas First-Class Annual is now on sale; covering all first-class cricket worldwide in 2023/24, it includes 559 full scorecards, and brief narratives plus league tables for each country’s first-class tournaments.
The latest issue of The Cricket Statistician, edited by Jonathan Northall, is sent to members in their quarterly mailings, but extra copies and previous issues are available in the shop.
Les Jackson and Cliff Gladwin: Masters of their Craft is John Shawcroft’s account of the Derbyshire fast bowlers who formed the most dangerous new-ball attack in the County Championship throughout most of the 1950s. Jackson and Gladwin came from mining villages, and their physiques were developed by years at the coalface, but they received little recognition from England’s Test selectors: Jackson appeared in only two Tests, 12 years apart, which Fred Trueman put down to snobbery, while Gladwin played eight Tests and toured South Africa, but operated in Alec Bedser’s shadow.
In Town v Gown; City v Village: A History of Cricket in Cambridge, Tony Watts examines Cambridge’s extraordinarily rich cricket culture and tradition. Though Town and Gown never harnessed satisfactorily their joint resources, the University provided first-class cricket for well over a century, bringing county and international teams to Fenner’s, while strong city clubs played ‘friendly’ cricket on college grounds run by dynasties of extraordinary groundsmen. But in recent years, university cricket has lost its first-class status, and the growth of integrated club leagues has shifted the balance from city clubs to surrounding villages. The reprint of this book has now arrived.
Simon Sweetman’s You Can’t Hurry Us: A History of Cricket in Suffolk covers the background to county cricket in Suffolk in the eighteenth century, through progress from two to three-day games, to the adoption of one-day and T20 cricket, taking in the club scene, the start of league cricket and women’s cricket. In the early years, Suffolk helped with the game’s development, but later found itself too far from cricket’s centres of power, and multiple attempts at setting up a county club petered out before the present one was formed in 1932. Since then, Suffolk have won the Minor County Championship three times outright and shared it once.
In Ernest Parker: Not a Love Story, Max Bonnell and Andrew Sproul tell the story of the finest cricketer produced by Western Australia before the Second World War. Parker, a practising lawyer, was also a tennis player good enough to win the tournament now known as the Australian Open, and his premature death in the Great War was a tragedy that resounded throughout his home state. Not a Love Story explores not only the public triumphs of Parker’s life, but also his ambivalent attitude towards his great talents, and the mystery behind his yearning for a quiet, anonymous life.
In The Cricket Professionals of Oxford, Michael Stimpson tells the stories of professional cricketers from the Oxford area over the last 200 years. These include underarm bowler Peter Bancalari in the 1820s, fiery roundarm bowler David Burrin in the 1850s, and fast man ‘Brusher’ Rogers at the end of the Victorian era; between the wars, George Brown and Johnny Arnold batted for England, and more recently Jack Brooks was a championship winner with Yorkshire.
In Outside the Tent, Stephen Musk analyses how Australian cricketers of the 20th century rebelled against the yoke of the Board of Control by taking part in unofficial international tours, or by forsaking Australia to take up careers as professionals in England – and draws attention to some unjustly forgotten tours to North America, India and South Africa, in the third book in our series on Cricket Tours.
In Best of Enemies, John Shawcroft explores the keen cricketing rivalry between Derbyshire and Nottinghamshire – whose contests in the 1930s, when both vied for the County Championship, sometimes eclipsed even the Roses matches – as well as that of their football cousins, Derby County and Nottingham Forest.
A few extra copies of Mr. Wooller’s Legacy: A history of cricket at Colwyn Bay and in Denbighshire, which sold out last year, have now become available.
A few copies remain of First-Class Matches: Pakistan 2004/05 to 2006/07, the eleventh volume of scorecards in our ‘Hard to Get’ series.
We have now sold out of A Game Emerging: Yorkshire cricket before the coming of the All England Eleven, in which Jeremy Lonsdale extended his acclaimed series on Yorkshire cricket back to the 1750s, but you can still obtain the book directly from Jeremy at livesincricket@acscricket.com as well as listen to an interview with him about the book on YouTube.
All books published in the last year which remain in stock appear under Latest Publications; these include the ACS International Cricket Year Book 2024, which provides detailed information about every current player worldwide, listing all men who appeared in any First-Class, List A Limited-Overs or Twenty20 match in the 2022/23 and 2023 seasons, as well as women taking part in international matches, and the Second Eleven Annual, which contains potted scores for all Second Eleven Championship and Twenty20 matches in 2023, with comprehensive averages, players’ biographies and statistical highlights, a detailed listing of grounds used, plus the fixtures for 2024. It remains a unique source of information about emerging county players and others who are still to break through into the first-class game.
Some of our older publications are now being made available via Google Play, including the Cricket Witness series and Lives in Cricket.
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