Sydney University Cricket Club is one of the oldest cricket clubs in Australia. Only a few years after the University was founded in 1850, the University fielded a cricket team against the Garrison Club, and played on what was once called the Garrison Ground, and is today the Sydney Cricket Ground. Over the next 150 years, the club fielded players of all levels of ability, and has been fortunate to have some very talented players on its teams. This book details the people and events that have shaped the development of the club: from Tom Garrett, the University's first Test player, men of prominence such as Edmund Barton and Doc Evatt, through to today's elite players like Ed Cowan.

Once A Pear... is the enthralling cricketing story of Daryl Mitchell - the ultimate 'one-club man'. Daryl graduated from the village game to become the first Worcestershire captain born in the county since 1925. He turned down offers from other, more famous counties to play for the club for 17 years in a turbulent career that saw five promotions, five relegations and short-form triumphs in the Pro40 competition and the Twenty20 Blast. A club legend, 38 first-class county hundreds put him sixth in the all-time list of Worcestershire centurions, while his 295 catches place him eighth in the fielding records. Four years as chairman of the Professional Cricketers' Association speaks volumes for the esteem he is held in by fellow professionals. In Once A Pear... Daryl reveals what it takes to be a successful county cricketer, and the impact on a player's mental health, while exploring how the game has changed in the last 20 years. This is the story of a true cricket man.

When the first lockdown came, finding himself without cricket for the first time in his life, Geoffrey Boycott sat down and began to write a retrospective warts-and-all diary of each of his Test match appearances. It is illuminating and unsparing, characterised by Boycott’s astonishing memory, famous forthrightness and unvarnished, sometimes lacerating, honesty. That 100,000 word document forms the basis for Being Geoffrey Boycott, a device that takes the reader inside Geoffrey’s head and back through cricket history, presenting a unique portrait of the internal and external forces that compelled him from a pit village in Yorkshire to the pinnacle of the world game. Now 81 and still one of the most recognisable cricketers England has ever produced, Boycott has teamed up with award-winning author Jon Hotten in this catalogue of his tumultuous time with the national side. Dropped for scoring a slow double hundred, making himself unavailable to play for England for several years, captain for eight seasons of a group of strong, stroppy and extremely talented players at Yorkshire, bringing up his hundredth hundred at Headingley against the Old Enemy, seeing David Gower and Ian Botham emerge as future greats, playing under Mike Brearley in the 1981 Ashes, in this enlightening book Boycott reveals a host of never-before-heard details regarding his peers and his playing days.

India's first Test series win in England in 1971 was epic and magical, with a resonance far beyond the scorecards. The cricket was riveting, with twists and turns right up to the last ball, and the excitement was garnished by a baby elephant parading the outfield of The Oval on the final day. The victory had immense significance for a country that had gained independence from Britain less than 25 years earlier and was tottering on the brink of a history-defining war. In the background were the British illusions of moral and cultural superiority even as decolonisation went through its final phase. The Indians often accepted these illusions as they struggled for the most basic necessities of life, battling against poverty, malnutrition and illiteracy. Thus, the victory provided a major equaliser for the national psyche. Elephant in the Stadium examines the many reasons for the myth and magic that still surround the triumph, including the complex historical relationship between Britain and India.

It's Raining Bats and Pads: The Story of Lancashire County Cricket Club 1988-1996 vividly captures the sporting and cultural landscape of the late 1980s to mid-90s, and shows the sea change between then and now. It's a romantic jaunt through the halcyon days of Mike Atherton, Neil Fairbrother and Wasim Akram as seen through the eyes of the author, who as a child and young adult lived through that era. It harks back to the glory days of lazy linseed summers when life was much simpler, time was not strictly of the essence and kids had to entertain themselves. Although primarily a tale of Lancashire's success on the field - punctuated by some lively spectator incidents at the grounds - the book also explores broader societal questions. Is the game in a better place now? Has the standard of cricket improved? Has freedom of choice caused the game's popularity to fall among the young? And is the Hundred an allegory for a society that simply can't wait for better?

Curious about the game of cricket? Start here! Cricket For Dummies, Third Edition will help you understand the basics of cricket, the internationally popular sport that has leagues around the globe. With this guide, you can enjoy watching matches, and even set up a casual game with friends. The book includes clear explanations of the rules, step-by-step guides to strategy and tactics, and info on all the most popular tournaments around the globe. Learn about the cricket greats of today and yesterday, plus get updates on the latest developments, including Major League Cricket and the Cricket World Cup. This new edition of Cricket For Dummies is a fascinating and thorough introduction to the sport, in the classic, easy-to-understand Dummies style. Learn the laws of cricket so you can watch games and follow league play Set up a game of cricket and play with your friends Get the latest updates in the cricket world, including upcoming must-watch tournaments Figure out the strategies and techniques that make cricket so interesting Cricket For Dummies, Third Editionis a valuable resource for new fans who want to understand the game of cricket.

Legendary cricket broadcaster Henry Blofeld takes the reader on a journey from A-Z through the world of cricket. In his trademark charming style, Blowers goes through the alphabet, explaining some of the puzzling cricket terminology and regaling his favourite anecdotes from his fifty years in the sport. This gift book is perfect for fans of cricket who want to understand the sport from Henry's unique point of view - this is a humorous and entertaining jaunt through the cricket landscape.

For over half a century, Henry Blofeld has conveyed his unfailing enthusiasm for the game of cricket as a much loved broadcaster and journalist. His characteristically patrician tones, overlaid with those of the bon viveur, have delighted listeners to the BBC's Test Match Special where the personality of the broadcaster comes second only to a deep knowledge of the game and its players. With his engaging conversational tone it is easy to see why listeners feel as if they are actually at the Test match watching in Henry's friendly company. Now that 'Blowers' has decided to declare his TMS innings closed, his book reveals the secrets of life in the commentary box and of the rich cast of characters with whom he shared it, from the early days of John Arlott and Brian Johnson to Aggers and new boys Boycott, Swann, Vaughan and Tuffers. Henry is equally revealing of his own performances and self-deprecatingly recalls his several verbal misfortunes while live broadcasting. Like the greatest commentators and writers on the game Blofeld has always understood that there is a world beyond the cricket field. Not forgetting pigeons passing, red buses and much loved cricket grounds, Henry Blofeld writes of his favourite countries, and experiences while travelling, and meeting and interviewing many cricket-loving celebrities. His passionate and entertaining book will become one of the classics of cricket's literature.

Cricket's Strangest Tales is a fascinating collection of cricketing weirdness - and there's a lot of it to choose from! Within these pages you'll find a game that was played on ice, meet a plague of flying ants who failed to dampen players' enthusiasm, and examples of the grand old tradition of one-armed teams versus one-legged teams. The stories in this book are bizarre, fascinating, hilarious, and, most importantly, true. This brand new edition, redesigned in splendid hardback for 2018, is the perfect gift for the cricket fanatic in your life. Word count: 45,000 words

Andrew Strauss, one of the most successful and respected England cricket captains of the modern era, announced his retirement from professional cricket at the end of 2012. In DRIVING AMBITION he gives a candid account of the highs and lows of his remarkable career for Middlesex and England. An outstanding opening batsman and natural leader, Andrew Strauss captained his country in 50 of his 100 Tests. During his time in charge, England emerged from a turbulent and controversial period to become the world's top team. Fully updated to cover the past year in Andrew's life; the transition from player to pundit and the fortunes of English cricket. This is an honest and entertaining story of a quiet, modest but fiercely ambitious man who became a magnificent man-manager, leading England to victory in the 2009 Ashes series and again in Australia the following year. Strauss is a fine raconteur and this revealing autobiography will appeal to all those who love cricket.

In the early 80s, 20 black West Indian cricketers were paid more than $100,000 each to take part in rebel tours of apartheid South Africa. Some, such as Lawrence Rowe and Alvin Kallicharran, were household names in the Caribbean and around the world, while others were fringe players seeking a short cut out of poverty. All would be condemned by the international cricketing fraternity. Accused of pocketing 'blood money' in order to prop up a regime that systematically discriminated against people of their own colour, they were banned for life from playing the sport they loved. In many cases, they were shunned by their fellow countrymen. A few turned to drugs and gangs, some turned to God - and others found themselves begging on the streets and dealing with mental illness. Forgotten and neglected for close to four decades, The Unforgiven tells their often-tragic stories through face-to-face interviews that explore the human cost of an onerous decision made early in these young men's lives.

This is an exacting social history of Indian cricket between 1780 and 1947. It considers cricket as a derivative sport, creatively adapted to suit modern Indian socio-cultural needs, fulfil political imperatives and satisfy economic aspirations. Majumdar argues that cricket was a means to cross class barriers and had a healthy following even outside the aristocracy and upper middle classes well over a century ago. Indeed, in some ways, the democratization of the sport anticipated the democratization of the Indian polity itself. Boria Majumdar reveals the appropriation, assimilation and subversion of cricketing ideals in colonial and post-colonial India for nationalist ends. He exposes a sport rooted in the contingencies of the colonial and post-colonial context of nineteenth- and twentieth-century India. Cricket, to put it simply, is much more than a 'game' for Indians. This study describes how the genealogy of their intense engagement with cricket stretches back over a century. It is concerned not only with the game but also with the end of cricket as a mere sport, with Indian cricket's commercial revolution in the 1930s, with ideals and idealism and their relative unimportance, with the decline of morality for reasons of realpolitik, and with the denunciation, once and for all, of the view that sport and politics do not mix. This book was previously published as a special issue of the International Journal of the History of Sport

Of all games, cricket has long prided itself on its ethical traditions, but to modern sceptics the idea of cricket encapsulating a higher morality is actually something of a myth. Playing the Game? looks at the changing ethics of cricket, from its gentlemanly roots right up until the present day. After decades of sledging, intimidatory bowling, blatant gamesmanship and dissent, the MCC adopted `The Spirit of Cricket' in 2000 in an attempt to reclaim the game's original ethos - but was it already too late? While the concept is a noble one, its impact has so far been limited, as award-winning cricket scribe Mark Peel explains. As well as looking back to the infamous Bodyline series of 1932/33, Peel also investigates the effects of Kerry Packer's World Series Cricket; takes the ICC to task on their failure to quell rowdy behaviour and gamesmanship; examines the double standards of Western cricketing nations towards Pakistan; and delves into the recent ball-tampering affair that has tainted Aussie cricket.

*Standard format hardback* Wisden 2019 charts the rise and rise of the England one-day team as they head towards a home World Cup in the summer. It also revisits the 1979 tournament, when England made it to the final, but lost out to Clive Lloyd's all-conquering West Indians. Jon Hotten lifts the covers on the tricky life of the groundsman, under pressure from player and administrator alike, while Richard Hobson examines how cricket began again in 1919, a few months after the end of the First World War. Jonathan Liew considers the traditional measure of the batsman's art, 250 years after the first century was recorded. There's a look beyond the cricket ground, too, now that Imran Khan, one of the towering figures of Pakistan cricket, has become prime minister. Peter Oborne and Richard Heller size up the scale of his task. And Wisden meets an astonishingly courageous young man: Waleed Khan was shot eight times in a terrorist attack on his school in Peshawar, but has found a renewed zest for life through a deep love of cricket. Everything from the cricket year - from Ben Stokes's trial for affray to the game in Leicestershire that had to be stopped when a parrot landed on a fielder's shoulder and wouldn't budge - is here. @WisdenAlmanack

THE SUNDAY TIMES BESTSELLER AND WINNER OF THE 2019 WILLIAM HILL SPORTS BOOK OF THE YEAR Duncan Hamilton is already a multiple award-winning sports writer, but it is hard to imagine he will write a better book than this superb, elegiac portrait of the sociable, feted, but ultimately unknowable, man who virtually invented modern sports writing...This is writing every bit the equal of Cardus himself. - Daily Mail 'Hamilton is a worthy biographer... as much sublime writing comes from his keyboard as from Cardus's pen.' The Times 'With its verve, insight and generosity of sympathy, this is by some way the best full-length life of a cricket writer, perhaps even of any sports writer.' Guardian Neville Cardus described how one majestic stroke-maker 'made music' and 'spread beauty' with his bat. Between two world wars, he became the laureate of cricket by doing the same with words. In The Great Romantic, award-winning author Duncan Hamilton demonstrates how Cardus changed sports journalism for ever. While popularising cricket - while appealing, in Cardus' words to people who 'didn't know a leg-break from the pavilion cat at Lord's'- he became a star in his own right with exquisite phrase-making, disdain for statistics and a penchant for literary and musical allusions. Among those who venerated Cardus were PG Wodehouse, John Arlott, Harold Pinter, JB Priestley and Don Bradman. However, behind the rhapsody in blue skies, green grass and colourful characters, this richly evocative biography finds that Cardus' mother was a prostitute, he never knew his father and he received negligible education. Infatuations with younger women ran parallel to a decidedly unromantic marriage. And, astonishingly, the supreme stylist's aversion to factual accuracy led to his reporting on matches he never attended. Yet Cardus also belied his impoverished origins to prosper in a second class-conscious profession, becoming a music critic of international renown. The Great Romantic uncovers the dark enigma within a golden age.

A great depression, worsening Anglo-Australian relations, the declining British Empire and the challenge from an Australia striving to find a national identity are the context which explain bodyline and its repercussions. Bodyline was a watershed in the history of cricket and politics were publicly seen as part of sport. This book offers a radical reappraisal of bodyline which challenges the official interpretations of the events, and places them in a unique social and political context. .

Winner of the Cricket Writers' Club Book of the Year 2016 Shortlisted for the MCC Book of the Year Shortlisted for Cricket Book of the Year at the Sports Book Awards Scyld Berry draws on his experiences as a cricket writer of forty years to produce new insights and unfamiliar historical angles on the game, along with moving reflections on episodes from his own life. The author covers a range of themes including cricket in different areas of the world, and abstract concepts such as language, numbers, ethics and psychology; Scyld Berry relishes the joys cricket provides and is convinced of the positive effect it can have in people's lives. Cricket: The Game of Life is an inspiring book that reminds readers why they love the game and prompts them to look at it in a new way.

Five Trophies and a Funeral: The Building and Rebuilding of Durham County Cricket Club is the story of how English cricket's youngest first-class county quickly became the country's top team, before overstretching themselves financially to the brink of extinction. When Durham joined the professional game in 1992 they aspired to be a major on-field force and a home to top international cricket. The high demands put on them as a condition of entry, together with their own lofty ambitions, pushed the club to five major trophies in seven seasons while providing England with top-quality players reared in the North East. But striving for ever more at a time of economic downturn led them to live beyond their means, and they were heavily punished for overspending that the authorities partly encouraged. Now they are looking to restore past glories under the chairmanship of Sir Ian Botham. Part fairy tale, part cautionary story, Five Trophies explains how Durham arrived where they are, and where they aim to go next.

**Voted Wisden Cricket Monthly's best cricket book ever in 2019** WINNER, BEST CRICKET BOOK, BRITISH SPORTS BOOK AWARDS 2010 _________________ Golden Boy is a blistering expose of the tumultuous Lillee/Marsh/Chappells era of Australian cricket, as viewed through the lens of flawed genius Kim Hughes. _________________ Kim Hughes was one of the most majestic and daring batsmen to play for Australia in the last 40 years. Golden curled and boyishly handsome, his rise and fall as captain and player is unparalleled in cricketing history. He played several innings that count as all-time classics, but it's his tearful resignation from the captaincy that is remembered. Insecure but arrogant, abrasive but charming; in Hughes' character were the seeds of his own destruction. Yet was Hughes' fall partly due to those around him, men who are themselves legends in Australia's cricketing history? Lillee, Marsh, the Chappells, all had their agendas, all were unhappy with his selection and performance as captain - evidenced by Dennis Lillee's tendency to aim bouncers relentlessly at Hughes' head during net practice. Hughes' arrival on the Test scene coincided with the most turbulent time Australian cricket has ever seen - first Kerry Packer's World Series Cricket, then the rebel tours to South Africa. Both had dramatic effects on Hughes' career. As he traces the high points and the low, Christian Ryan sheds new and fascinating light on the cricket - and the cricketers - of the times.

Shortlisted for the 2017 Cross Sports Autobiography of the Year 'Full of illuminating anecdotes, piercing insights and unsparing self-analysis from the former England batsman' The Cricketer Jonathan Trott was England's rock during one of the most successful periods in the team's history - he scored a century on debut to clinch the Ashes in 2009, and cemented his position as their pivotal batsman up to and beyond the team's ascendancy to the number 1 ranked test team in 2011. Yet shortly after reaching those heights, he started to crumble, and famously left the 2012-13 Ashes tour of Australia suffering from a stress related illness. His story is the story of Team England - it encompasses the life-cycle of a team that started out united by ambition, went on to achieve some of the greatest days in the team's history but then, bodies and minds broken, fell apart amid acrimony. Having seen all of this from the inside, Jonathan's autobiography takes readers to the heart of the England dressing room, and to the heart of what it is to be a professional sportsman. Not only does it provide a unique perspective on a remarkably successful period in English cricket and its subsequent reversal, it also offers a fascinating insight into the rewards and risks faced as a sportsman carrying the hope and expectation of a team and a nation. And it's a salutary tale of the dangers pressure can bring in any walk of life, and the perils of piling unrealistic expecations on yourself.

THE HILARIOUS NEW BOOK FROM ONE OF BRITAIN'S BEST-LOVED NATIONAL TREASURES! This is not a book of life lessons. But Freddie Flintoff has had a moment to reflect and he's noticed that throughout his four decades, although there's been little method in the madness, there has been the occasional common thread. The Book of Fred is filled with anecdotes, observations and the odd opinion all told with Fred's trademark humour and no-nonsense style. Fred's approach to life draws on the sublime (his series winning performance in the 2005 Ashes) and the ridiculous (singing Elvis Presley's 'Suspicious Minds' in front of a live audience), from highs (making the transition to top TV presenter) to occasional lows (accidentally upsetting the lovely Bruce Forsyth), from the profane (discussing Shane Warne's barnet with Hollywood royalty) to the profound (why 'having a go' leads to self-respect). Throughout, Fred shares his code for success, happiness and a life fully lived - and gives his readers a laugh, some joy, and (the occasional) pause for thought along the way.