Book description
Cricket defines Englishness like no other national pastime. From its
earliest origins in the sixteenth century (or an early version played
by shepherds called creag in the 1300s), through the formation
of the MCC and the opening of Lord's cricket ground in 1787, to the
spread of county cricket in the next century, when the Wisden
Cricketers' Almanack was first published and the Ashes series was
born, this simple sport of bat and ball has captured the imagination
of the masses.
Throughout its 500-year history, cricket has been a mirror for
society as a whole, reflecting the changes that have brought us from
the quintessential village green to Freddie Flintoff's pedalo, from W
G Grace to Monty Panesar, via a fair number of eccentrics, heroes and
downright villains.
William Hill Award-winning writer Simon Hughes, no mean player
himself, has lived and breathed cricket his whole life and now takes
his analytical skills and typically irreverent eye to charting the
history of English cricket. But this is no dry, dusty tome. It is the
story of the mad characters who inhabit the game, the extraordinary
lengths people will go to to watch and play it, the tale of a national
obsession. It debunks the myth of cricket sportsmanship, showing the
origins of sledging and match-fixing in centuries of subterfuge,
corruption and violence. And it takes us beyond sport, to the heart of
what it really means to be English.
Simon Hughes won eight titles with Middlesex, including four county
cricket championships, between 1980 and 1991 before finishing his
playing career at Durham. He started writing for the
Independent
while still playing, and has written for the
Daily Telegraph
and broadcasted for the BBC since his retirement in 1994. He is known
to millions of cricket fans as 'The Analyst' for his role in Channel 4's
cricket coverage, and is now part of Five's cricket commentary team as
well as commentating for BBC radio. He is the author of five previous
books including
A Lot of Hard Yakka
, winner of the William Hill Sports Book of the Year Award in 1997. He
lives in Hammersmith with Tanya and their three children Callum, Nancy
and Billy.
