The Thin White Line: The Inside Story of Cricket's Greatest Scandal tells the story of the spot-fixing scandal of 2010, which sent shockwaves through the sport. It stunned the wider sporting world and confirmed the reputation of the News of the World's Mazher Mahmood as the most controversial news reporter of his generation. It was the start of a stunning chain of events that saw the News of the World shut down, Pakistan captain Salman Butt and bowlers Mohammad Asif and Mohammad Amir banned and sent to prison, before Mahmood himself ended up behind bars. This gripping, forensic account takes the reader through the twists and turns of those fateful days late one August and beyond. For the first time, it shines a light on the tradecraft of the News of the World team and how they exposed the criminal scheming of the cricketers and their fixer Mazhar Majeed. It reveals how deeply fixing had penetrated the Pakistan dressing room, and lifts the lid on the black arts of investigative reporting which would eventually prove Mahmood's undoing.

Cricket is a very old game in Scotland - far older than football, a sport which sometimes exercises a baleful, obsessive and deleterious effect on the national psyche. Cricket goes back at least as far as the Jacobite rebellions and their sometimes vicious aftermaths. It is often felt that Scottish cricket underplays itself. It has been portrayed as in some ways an English sport, a "softies" sport, and a sport that has a very limited interest among the general population of Scotland. This is emphatically not true, and this book is in part an attempt to prove that this is a misconception. Sixty-one games (it was going to be just 60, but one turned up at the last minute!) have been chosen from the past 250 years to show that cricket does indeed influence a substantial part of the nation. The matches have been selected at all levels, from Scotland against visiting Australian teams all the way down to a Fife school fixture. These naturally reflect the life, experience and geographical whereabouts of the author. The games are quirky sometimes, (and quirkily chosen) with an emphasis on important events in the broader history of this country, notably the imminence of wars and resumptions at the end of these conflicts. But the important thing is that every single cricket contest does mean an awful lot to some people.

‘Highly readable and packed with fascinating historical detail, this is the compelling story of a ripsnorting South African cricketer whose career was smothered by the shameless colour prejudice of Cecil John Rhodes and his snobbish cronies. By turns formidable, sad, enlivening and enormously informative, this book pays Hendricks the honour that has long been his due.’  – Bill Nasson
 
William Henry ‘Krom’ Hendricks was the first sportsman to be formally barred from representing South Africa on the basis of race. Hailing from Cape Town’s Bo-Kaap, he played in 1892 for the South African Malay team against the touring English, who insisted that he was among the best fast bowlers in the world. This made his exclusion from South Africa’s tour of England in 1894 all the more unjust.
 
Ranged against Hendricks were virulent racism and a political alliance between arch-imperialist Cecil John Rhodes, Afrikaner Bond leader J.H. Hofmeyr, and William Milton, who controlled cricket at the Cape through the Western Province Cricket Union.  Too Black to Wear Whites  documents Hendricks’s tireless struggle for recognition and the public controversies around his exclusion. The book shows how Hendricks was further sidelined as club teams made up of different races were prevented from playing against one another, saving white players the embarrassment of being shown up by the country’s best fast bowler.
 
Considering his importance in South African sports history, surprisingly little is known about Krom Hendricks. The story of his life is told here for the first time in a fascinating drama that describes the formation of a segregated South Africa through the career of an exceptional cricketer who dared to test the boundaries of the system.

Here is the inside story of Fairfield Books: from its beginnings in the cricket coaching that the 45-year-old Stephen Chalke sought in the autumn of 1993 through the journeys around England and Wales that generated his first book 'Runs in the Memory' and on to the publication of 42 titles. The characters are recalled, the issues involved in creating books based on oral testimony considered, and the triumphs and disasters of small-scale publishing described. There are moments of great humour and harrowing tragedy, of unnerving encounters and unexpected revelations. 'Through The Remembered Gate' tells the story of a journey of discovery. Its author starts out with a desire to write but little knowledge of publishing, and with a love of cricket but no significant contacts in the game. By a series of accidents he becomes a chronicler of cricket's past and an established publisher of his own and others' books. Despite its moments of sorrow, it is a tale filled with joys. Into this rich mix the author adds a little of his own back story, revealing how these journeys into cricket's past have led him to see the world of his childhood with a fresh perspective.

'A superb portrait of the most brilliant cricketer of his generation' Mike Atherton Shane Warne dominated cricket on the field and off for almost thirty years - his skill, his fame, his personality, his misadventures. His death in March 2002 rocked Australians, even those who could not tell a leg-break from a leg-pull. But what was it like to watch Warne at his long peak, the man of a thousands international wickets, the incarnation of Aussie audacity and cheek? Gideon Haigh saw it all, still can't quite believe it, but wanted to find a way to explain it. In this classic appreciation of Australia's cricket's greatest figure, who doubled as the nation's best-known man, Haigh relieves the highs, the lows, the fun and the follies. The result is a new way of looking at Warne, at sport and at Australia. 'Bloody brilliant... As good as anything I have read on the game' Guardian Winner of The Cricket Society and MCC Book of the Year