Cricket is defined by the characters who have played it, watched it, reported it, ruled upon it, ruined it and rejoiced in it. Humorous and deeply affectionate, Cricketing Lives tells the story of the world's greatest and most incomprehensible game through those who have shaped it, from the rustic contests of eighteenth-century England to the spectacle of the Indian Premier League. It's about W. G. Grace and his eye to his wallet; the invincible Viv Richards; and Sarah Taylor, 'the best wicketkeeper in the world . . . male or female'. Paying homage, too, to the game's great writers, Richard H. Thomas steers a course through the despair of war, tactical controversies and internecine politics, to reveal how cricket has always stormed back to warm our hearts as nothing else can.

*A MULTIPLE AWARD-WINNING SPORTS WRITER* 'Hamilton's book is a marvel . . . I'm not sure he could write a dull sentence if he tried' Spectator One of Duncan Hamilton's favourite writers on cricket, Edmund Blunden, wrote how he felt going to watch a game: 'You arrive early, earlier even than you meant . . . and you feel a little guilty at the thought of the day you propose to give up to sheer luxury'. Following Neville Cardus's assertion that 'there can be no summer in this land without cricket', Hamilton plotted the games he would see in 2019 and write down reflectively on some of the cricket that blessed his own sight. It would be captured in the context of the coming season in case subsequent summers and the imminent arrival of The Hundred made that impossible. He would write in the belief that after this season the game might never be quite the same again. He visits Welbeck Colliery Cricket Club to see Nottinghamshire play Hampshire at the tiny ground of Sookholme, gifted to the club by a local philanthropist who takes money on the gate; his village team at Menston in Yorkshire; the county ground at Hove; watches Ben Stokes's heroics at Headingley, marvels at Jofra Archer's gift of speed in a Second XI fixture for Sussex against Gloucestershire in front of 74 people and three well-behaved dogs; and realises when he reaches the last afternoon of the final county match of the season at Taunton, 'How blessed I am to have been born here. How I never want to live anywhere else. How much I love cricket.' One Long and Beautiful Summer forms a companion volume to Hamilton's 2009 classic, A Last English Summer. It is sports writing at its most accomplished and evocative, confirming his reputation as the finest contemporary chronicler of the game.

Crickets oldest, and fiercest, rivalry! No contest in cricket comes close to matching The Ashes for drama, passion and sporting theatre. When England and Australia go head to head, two countries hold their collective breath and prepare for a roller-coaster ride of power, pride, pain and victory at all costs. But it's also about respect - a love of the game and the realisation that two great sporting nations are entwined through one of sport's greatest rivalries. With over 135 years of Ashes history, here's a collection of the best quotes and defining moments - from 'Bodyline' to 'Botham's Ashes', from Lord's to the Gabba, from 'The Don' to 'The Barmy army'. 'England have only three major problems. They can't bat, they can't bowl and they can't field.' - Martin Johnson's assessment at the start of the 1986-87 tour. England's recovery to win the Ashes later led Johnson to remark: 'Right quote, wrong team.'

If someone were to say 'it's not tennis', or 'not football' of shabby behaviour in any walk of life, he or she would not be understood. If they said 'it's not cricket', they probably would be (though less reliably than a century ago). Is there some special spirit of cricket? The laws of cricket, like the laws of the land, aim at a sort of justice or balancing between different factions. The purpose behind cricket's laws, and behind changes in them, is often to calibrate the balance in the game between batsmen and bowlers, between attack and defence, between safety and risk. Cricketing lawmakers are interested in the overall appeal of the game to players and spectators alike. In Spirit of Cricket, Mike Brearley alternates between issues and examples within the game - from 'Mankading' and the 'Sandpaper' affair to sledging, mental disintegration and racism - as well as broader issues such as the spirit and letter of the law. Brearley examines the issue of how far what purports to be justice (in law or in spirit) may or may not be the expression of the powerful within the activity or within society. He also contrasts cheating and corruption, and reflects on the nature of penalties in regard to each. He discusses the significance of the notion of the spirit of the game for umpires, groundsmen, administrators, media and spectators - and, of course, for players. Intelligent and insightful, Spirit of Cricket points to qualities in cricket that enhance our development as people - including a sense of fair play, the embracing of striving both for our team and for ourselves and the important values of playfulness in life and professional sport.

ENGLAND WILL NEVER BE THE SAME. Loosely based on the sad tale of the cricketers of Clifton College, whose cricket first eleven all volunteered for active service at the commencement of the First World War, suffering the inevitable consequences. The story follows the early adventures of the cricket-mad public schoolboys of Wickham Dale, where sexual scandals are simmering beneath the surface. The boys smutty, knockabout, knob-orientated humour is a spoof of the 'Boy's Own' derring-do adventures in early C20 junior fiction, as is the underlying morality of the time, cricket etiquette and outdated values that perished on the bloody fields of Flanders and France. Underpinning the story is the relationship between shy, introverted would-be poet Jack Bigglesworth and his childhood playmate, the liberated, free-spirited, audacious and impetuous Kitty Ketteridge. Their subsequent fate, anguish and disillusionment of the survivors is recounted in awful detail, as is the deserved fate of the school miscreants.

'A highly entertaining read, deftly melding social history with sporting memoir and travelogue' Mail on Sunday A history of Latin America through cricket Cricket was the first sport played in almost every country of the Americas - earlier than football, rugby or baseball. In 1877, when England and Australia played the inaugural Test match at the MCG, Uruguay and Argentina were already ten years into their derby played across the River Plate. The visionary cricket historian Rowland Bowen said that, during the highpoint of cricket in South America between the two World Wars, the continent could have provided the next Test nation. In Buenos Aires, where British engineers, merchants and meatpackers flocked to make their fortune, the standard of cricket was high: towering figures like Lord Hawke and Plum Warner took star-studded teams of Test cricketers to South America, only to be beaten by Argentina. A combined Argentine, Brazilian and Chilean team took on the first-class counties in England in 1932. The notion of Brazilians and Mexicans playing T20 at the Maracana or the Azteca today is not as far-fetched as it sounds. But Evita Burned Down Our Pavilion is also a social history of grit, industry and nation-building in the New World. West Indian fruit workers battled yellow fever and brutal management to carve out cricket fields next to the railway lines in Costa Rica. Cricket was the favoured sport of Chile's Nitrate King. Emperors in Brazil and Mexico used the game to curry favour with Europe. The notorious Pablo Escobar even had a shadowy connection to the game. The fate of cricket in South America was symbolised by Eva Peron ordering the burning down of the Buenos Aires Cricket Club pavilion when the club refused to hand over their premises to her welfare scheme. Cricket journalists Timothy Abraham and James Coyne take us on a journey to discover this largely untold story of cricket's fate in the world's most colourful continent. Fascinating and surprising, Evita Burned Down Our Pavilion is a valuable addition to cricketing and social history.

Cricket is a strange game. It is a team sport that is almost entirely dependent on individual performance. Its combination of time, opportunity and the constant threat of disaster can drive its participants to despair. To survive a single delivery propelled at almost 100 miles an hour takes the body and brain to the edges of their capabilities, yet its abiding image is of the gentle village green, and the glorious absurdities of the amateur game. In The Meaning of Cricket, Jon Hotten attempts to understand this fascinating, frustrating and complex sport. Blending legendary players, from Vivian Richards to Mark Ramprakash, Kevin Pietersen to Ricky Ponting, with his own cricketing story, he explores the funny, moving and melancholic impact the game can have on an individual life.

A TIMES SPORTS BOOK OF THE YEAR 'A treasure of recollections and reactions, talking heroes, controversies and big themes' i paper 'Brearley is at his best in these quirky, delightful essays when he is exploring the human qualities of humbler players . . . Brearley's admiration for his friends' decency, craftsmanship and modesty seems to recall a golden age of country cricket' The Times 'Brearley has a knack for paying respect to the past without denigrating the present and for calmly considering the future' Mail on Sunday Mike Brearley was arguably one of England's finest cricket captains; not just for his outstanding record leading his country but also for the way he orchestrated, during the 1981 Ashes series, one of the most extraordinary reversals in sporting history. In this collection of sparkling essays, Brearley reflects on the game he has come to know so well. He ranges from the personal - the influence of his Yorkshire father and the idols of his youth - to controversial aspects of the professional game, including cheating, corruption, and innovation, the latter often being on a borderline between genius and rebellion. Brearley also evaluates his heroes (amongst them Viv Richards, Bishan Bedi and Dennis Lillee), the game changers, the outstanding wicketkeepers, the 'Indian-ness' of four generations of Indian batsmen and the important commentators (including Harold Pinter, John Arlott and Ian Chappell). The Ashes, the most sustained love-hate relationship in the history of sport and key to Brearley's test-playing career, are raked over. Central to the book is an important section on race and cricket, and the legacy of C. L. R. James. Insightful and humorous, On Cricket is an intelligent exposition of the game's idiosyncratic culture and its enduring appeal.

The third edition of the hugely successful Ashes Miscellany, a bestseller in 2005 and 2007. Fully revised, updated and repackaged to include the victorious 2009 and 2010/11 series, the book celebrates the rich history of one of the oldest and greatest rivalries in sport. Packed with facts, figures, lists, quotes and anecdotes - from the legend of the burning of the bails in 1871 to England's amazing triumph in 2011, from W.G. Grace and Don Bradman to David Boon's Ashes record of drinking 58 beers on the flight from Sydney to London!

Former Gloucestershire Media Sports Writer of the Year Rob Harris has been playing village cricket for almost 40 years. In inner cities some kids join street gangs in search of respect, but in Rob's childhood the gangs were village cricket clubs and the weapon of choice was a Gunn & Moore bat. Won't You Dance for Virat Kohli? is an honest, funny and colourful account of sporting obsession and how a childhood passion for cricket can dominate grown-up thoughts, dreams, relationships - and weekends. This is the story of one humble club cricketer's misguided search for personal respect and fulfilment in the strangest of places, foregoing holidays and family time to spend long summer days lounging around village greens with other screwed-up 'weekend warriors', whilst secretly wishing he was somewhere - anywhere - else. It is a book that will resonate with anyone who knows and loves grass-roots cricket.

Sachin and Azhar at Cape Town is the story of an incredible partnership between Tendulkar and Azharuddin in the Newlands Test of 1997. Replying to 529, India slumped to 58/5 against Donald, Pollock, McMillan and Klusener. What followed was an exhilarating counter-attack from both ends, seldom seen in Test cricket. With Nelson Mandela watching on - he met the players during lunch that day - the pair added a magical 222 in 40 overs, treating the lethal bowling attack with disdain. Arunabha Sengupta and Abhishek Mukherjee relive the partnership, recounting and analysing every stroke, but as they do, they also bring to life the cricket, history and society of the two countries. Covering a multitude of topics as diverse as apartheid, Mandela and Gandhi, Indians in South Africa; cricket isolation and non-white cricket in South Africa, rebel tours; the television revolution and commercialisation of cricket; with other historical details and numerical analysis of the game supporting the text, this is a fascinating snapshot of cricket at that time through the prism of that impressive sixth-wicket stand.

Alongside the SAS, Harry's other lifetime love is cricket. An improvised game of cricket was often the circuit-breaker Harry and his team needed after the tension of operations. He began a tradition of organising matches wherever he was sent, whether it was in the mountains of East Timor with a fugitive rebel leader, or on the dusty streets of Baghdad, or in exposed Forward Operating Bases in the hills of Afghanistan. Soldiers, locals and even visiting politicians played in these spontaneous yet often bridge-building games. As part of the tradition, Harry also started to take a cricket bat with him on operational tours, eleven of them in total. They'd often go outside the wire with him and end up signed by those he met or fought alongside. These eleven bats form the basis for Harry's extraordinary memoir. It's a book about combat, and what it takes to serve in one of the world's most elite formations. It's a book about the toll that war takes on soldiers and their loved ones. And it's a book about the healing power of cricket, and how a game can break down borders in even the most desperate of circumstances.

For over a decade Luke Fletcher has been a firm fan favourite at Trent Bridge. This 6'6" gentle giant never gives less than 100 per cent for Nottinghamshire, but a laugh and a joke are never far from his lips. Within the space of a week in 2017 he went from the highs of winning a Lord's cup final to suffering a serious injury. As with most events in his life, the incidents provided scope for his infectious humour, much of it self-deprecating. An uncanny ability to be in the wrong place at the wrong time and his on-off relationship with the strength and conditioning gurus has often landed him in hot water, providing ammunition for witty comebacks. But although a clever quip is never far away, the broad-beamed paceman has earned the respect of everyone in the game. He has played against - and got the better of - virtually every opponent he has faced and has a career record to be proud of. In Tales from the Front Line, 'Fletch' serves up laughs aplenty as he takes us on an anecdotal journey through our summer game.

From English cricket's embarrassing failure at the 2015 World Cup to their heart-stopping victory four years later, Nick Hoult and Steve James vividly describe the team's dramatic journey from abject disappointment to finally lifting the trophy. Morgan's Men reveals how the team became the most aggressive limited-overs side in the world, led by their inspirational captain Eoin Morgan, whose vision and determination to succeed captured the imagination of the nation. Hoult and James follow England's journey from Bangladesh to Barbados, from Melbourne to Manchester, to present the inside story of the team's rebirth. They tell us how players dealt with the Ben Stokes court case, the sacking of Alex Hales for a drugs ban, and reveal the innovative new strategies and tactics that helped them become the best in the world, culminating in a World Cup final that was arguably the greatest one-day match of all time.