Martin Chandler | 8:19am BST 06 July 2025
Ever since I started writing these overviews I have expected that, one day, the number of quality titles will fall away. and that the attraction of print books and the acquisition of private libraries will become a thing of the past. All I can say this time is that, yet again, authors and publishers have demonstrated that my expectations are well wide of the mark.
A not insignificant part of the reason for this has been the emergence of Pitch as a regular publisher of quality titles, so I shall begin with them. They have three more titles due this year all of which look interesting. The first is Something Changed: Beefy, Boadicea, Brixton, Bunting and How Cricket Helped Change The Nation. It will certainly appeal to those of us of a certain age, the blurb reading; through the prism of cricket and the transformative year of 1981, Ben Dobson explores how sport and popular culture can influence as well as reflect society. Taking an innovative approach, he considers the remarkable synergies between two of the era’s most iconic figures – Margaret Thatcher and Ian Botham.and the intriguing parallels in their careers, fortunes, fundamental beliefs and how their character traits and achievements would impact the future of Britain and its people. There is therefore clearly no lack of ambition on the part of author Ben Dobson.
Following that is An American Cricket Odyssey: A Journey into the Soul of Cricket in the United States by Mark Greenslade and Beth Simpson. Those of us who have enjoyed the recent efforts of Stephen Musk and Steve Smith to breathe new life into the history of American cricket, more particularly in Philadelphia, iwon’t find this one adding to their knowledge of that era. This title seems to be much more concerned with the attempts made to re-establish the game in the US since the turn of the 21st century.
And then in October, just in time for the Christmas present market, we will be getting Maestro: A Portrait of Garry Sobers, Cricket’s Greatest All-Rounder. There have been many books written about Sobers, but never a definitive biography. Author David Tossell is at pains to describe this one as a portrait rather than a biography in order to avoid any suggestion that the great man has been involved in the project. Tossell did however spend time in Barbados researching the book and, given his track record, I am confident that this one will amount to as full a biography of ‘The Greatest’ as we are ever going to get.
The good people at Fairfield Books have also been busy. In addition to recent autobiographies from Roland Butcher and the late David ‘Syd’ Lawrence they have also now released Vic Marks’ The Cricket Captains of England (1979-2025) and, to sit alongside it, have put out a new edition of the book that inspired it, Alan Gibson’s The Cricket Captains of England.
There are two more books due this year from Fairfield, both from former Warwickshire players. One is an autobiography from Andy Moles, Around The World in Forty Years. Moles is an interesting character who opened the batting with considerable success for Warwickshire for a decade in the 1980s/1990s. He has subsequently coached in South Africa, Hong Kong, Scotland, Kenya, New Zealand, Afghanistan and the Bahamas despite losing his left leg below the knee to a surgeon’s knife in 2020 after contracting MRSA.
And then we have the autobiography of Ashley Giles, The King of Spain and I. His role in the glorious Ashes summer of 2005 means that Giles’s place in the affections of English cricket lovers is secure for life, and he too has had some interesting roles in the game since retirement, in his case in administrative capacities as well as coaching.
Another UK publisher, Bloomsbury, has three books in its schedule in the near future, and have also recently released Jarrod Kimber’s The Art of Batting, one I previously overlooked.
The first of Bloomsbury’s new titles is a look back at England’s hugely successful tour of Australia and New Zealand in 1954/55 when Len Hutton’s team secured a 3-1 Ashes victory. The author is Richard Whitehead and the title Victory in Australia. The benefit of seventy years hindsight should ensure the book is much better than any of the eleven contemporary accounts as Whitehead becomes the third man, after Alan Hill and then Frank Tyson, to pen a later retrospective.
Simon Wilde’s Chasing Jessop promises to be a book for the true tragics amongst us. As the record books show despite ‘Bazball’ the record for the fastest England Test century is still held by Gilbert Jessop, whose legendary innings in 1902, which turned almost certain defeat into a remarkable one wicket victory, took 76 balls to complete. Or did it? The original scorebooks long gone Wilde re-examines all the available contemporary evidence in order to establish whether the old records are accurate or not.
Finally from Bloomsbury is 500 Declared by Scyld Berry. The sub-title is The Joys of Covering 500 Cricket Tests. Having already provided us with an excellent autobiography Scyld will doubtless use the book to look at the changes in the way the game is played that have occurred over those 500 Tests and his views on those changes.
Another book due from a mainstream publisher is Tuffers’ Ashes Heroes: Legends and Characters from both sides of Cricket’s Divide which is due from Harper Collins. It doesn’t sound like one for the connoisseur, but then I’ve thought that before about books that bear Tufnell’s name and been pleasantly surprised.
David Battersby can always be relied on to be working on something and he has just released another publication on the Pakistan Eaglets. This is unlike his previous books on that subject however. On this occasion the 16 page brochure serves the dual purpose of celebrating the first ever Eaglets game in England, in 1952, and the 200th anniversary of Lansdown CC in Bath, the Eaglets hosts for that fixture.
David is also doing a bit of distributing on the side, for a new book published in.Pakistan on the subject of Non Muslim Cricketers of Karachi, and written by Shah Wallullah Junaidi. That is the second Pakistan published book that has appeared this year the first being Nauman Niaz’s substantial work on the subject of tall scoring, In a Different Realm.
As a proud Welshman there is something else that David is involved in, this time a series of monographs that are to be published by the CC4 Museum of Welsh Cricket. Each of the monographs is to be published in a limited edition of 100 copies and the first, which has just been released, is Notes on the Evolution of Womens’ and Girls’ cricket in Wales. The second will be Notes on Pre-Victorian Cricket in Wales and the third, and this is where David gets involved, is on the subject of Glamorgan’s pre-season tour of the Caribbean in 1970.
And whilst on the subject of Welsh cricket Andrew Hignell’s Glamorgan Cricketers series, which will eventually contain biographies of all who have played for the county, should see volumes 4 and 5 out before the end of the year, covering the years 1980-1997 an 1998 to 2012 respectively. Finally from Wales, and indeed Glamorgan, Richard Bentley has written a book looking at the high points of the St Helen’s ground in Swansea, scene of more than 400 First Class fixtures including the Glamorgan v Nottinghamshire fixture in 1968 that saw The Greatest hit Malcolm Nash for six sixes in an over.
Returning to museums the Gloucestershire Cricket Museum has recently published a booklet on the subject of one of the county’s greatest players, Mike Procter. Hampshire Cricket Heritage published Stephen Saunders look at Hampshire’s Naval Cricketers earlier in the year, and has just released another booklet, John Winter’s reconstruction of the county’s 1975 John Player League Triumph, Arlott, Rice and Richards.
From Australia The Cricket Publishing Company have just published a biography of Syd Emery by Pat Rodgers, From McDonaldtown to Lord’s. As to what might follow Ronald Cardwell’s In Search of Frank Ward must be close to being ready and I believe that a new monograph in the Cricketers in Print series is due soon, this one being by Mike Coward on Rick McCosker. There are doubtless others in the pipeline, one of which must be Cardwell revisiting a subject he has written about before, the 1919 Australian Imperial Forces side that toured England, South Africa and Australia and I believe a book on the New Zealanders tour of England in 1931 is almost finished.
Elsewhere in Australia Ric Sissons and Peter Schofield’s latest book has just been released. Trumper Across the Tasman, an account of the Australian non-Test tour of New Zealand in 1914 which saw Victor Trumper playing his final First Class fixtures. Published in a high quality limited edition the book will be reviewed shortly.
Definitely due from Australia in a few weeks time is a biography of Bert Oldfield, and before then Ken Piesse has assisted Greg Chappell in putting together an anthology of his writing which is to be published as The Chappell Chronicles. November should see the release of Ten Out by Ian Brayshaw
The above apart there are a few other possibilities. An account of the twin tours of 1887/88 is finished and hopefully going to print in the near future. The Percy McDonnell biography I have mentioned previously may appear, as may a book looking back at the 1928/29 Ashes series. For bibliophiles a book is being prepared about that trickiest of subjects, the many early Australian annuals. By definition it will have a niche market but I for one, despite having neither the means nor the desire to build a collection of the annuals, would love to read a definitive study of them.
And what of Clem Hill, surely a man who deserves a biography? Clem has been Archie Mac’s pending project for as long as CricketWeb’s book review section has been going. In recent years I have heard of a couple of other potential biographers as well, but nothing has ever come of those either – perhaps I should lock the three of them in an apartment and not let them out until the job is finished?
Moving on to India there are two titles that have just been published. The first is The Diary of a Cricketer’s Wife by Puja Pujara, a book I have not seen but it is an interesting idea, if indeed it is a cricket book at all, which I suppose it may not be. And then there is an autobiography from Shikhar Dhawan, The One, Cricket, My Life and More. On a completely different tack is Gulu Ezekiel’s next project, due in August and currently titled Plucky 13: The Stories Behind the Multiple Ranji Trophy Teams. It is a lavishly illustrated coffee table book with a number of contributors.
There are three books scheduled for release by the ACS over the second half of 2025, two in the Lives in Cricket series and the other in the Cricket Witness series. The first life in cricket is Fred Bakewell by Mick Pope which will be released on 1 August. Across a handful of summers between 1928 and his fateful career-ending car crash in late August 1936 Northamptonshire opening batsman Bakewell scored over 14,000 First Class runs, including 31 centuries, and his six Test caps for England produced an average of 45.44 with one century against West Indies at The Oval in 1933. A reformed borstal boy he was naturally gifted at sport: football and cricket and graduated quickly to the ranks of county cricket in 1928 when still not out of his teenage years. Bakewell’s personal life was clouded by turbulence both before and after his playing days.
Bakewell will be followed in November by The Hills of Rookwood: An Exceptional Sporting Family by Andrew Hignell. Much further from the mainstream of cricket literature this one tells the story of the Hill family of Rookwood who had connections with South Gloucestershire and North Somerset. It was here that they initially made their money before Edward Stock Hill was sent across the Severn Estuary in during the early 1850s to manage the family’s new dry docks in Cardiff. It was a huge success. Sir Edward, his sons and daughters, and their own offspring, all played sport at county level and in two countries – representing Glamorgan to the north of the Severn Estuary and Somerset to the south. Vernon Hill, who played for Somerset and Oxford University from 1891 to 1912 and went on tours of America with Frank Mitchell and PF Warner, and his son, Mervyn, who played for Somerset and Glamorgan in the 1920s and went on the first MCC tour of India and Ceylon in 1926/27 are the best known but Hignell also includes the story of Constance Hill, a pioneering figure in the early evolution of women’s cricket.
And finally the Cricket Witness series gets yet another contribution from nonagenarian Eric Midwinter; Christianity at the Crease: Cricket and the Church. This one will not try to mythologise cricket nor to seek out any sacred origins and attributes. It is more a sociological inquiry about the relationship of the Christian church, primarily the Church of England, with cricket. Sometimes the church, or branches of it, have frowned upon cricket, while at other times it has found cricket to be a useful tool in its evangelical mission. In so doing it has undoubtedly influenced the tone and conduct of the game, although it has never actually determined the practice and laws of cricket. The book will cover: The Pre-Victorian Era; Puritanism and Cricket in Britain; Hanoverian Diffidence: Cricket in a Riotous Society; The Victorian Era: How Anglicanism Influenced Cricket at Home and Abroad; The Religious Revival; The Public School Effect; The Oxbridge Effect; The Parochial Effect.
Red Rose Books have just published three new titles in their Monographs on North American Cricket series, all three by Stephen Musk, Harry Brown’s Match, Carnage at Twilight and Their Finest Hour. That apart another book from Musk, on the 1922 tour of England by a team of Canadians is all that we will definitely see, although I was delighted to learn very recently that they do have plans to publish Max Bonnell again, with Father Marriott’s Summer Holidays. As the title suggests this is a biography of school master Marriott who spent three summers between the wars with Lancashire before moving to Kent. An accomplished leg spinner ‘Father’ played once for England, against West Indies in 1933, and enjoyed a remarkable debut, taking a remarkable 11 wickets.
Which brings me back the aforementioned Steve Smith who has already produced four books this year (five if you count his completely reworked biography of Bart King) on The Australians tour of North America in 1893, the visit there of Lord Hawke’s XI in 1891, the Staten Island Cricket Club and, for once on a different theme, a book about the history of the Sheffield Park Ground in Sussex. His one title to come returns to the Philadelphians, and their seldom remembered tour of Jamaica in 1909.
A book that has been a long time in the writing is Windrush Cricket: Imperial Culture, Caribbean Migration, and the Remaking of Postwar England by Dr Michael Collins. An associate professor of history at UCL Dr Collins’ book is published by Oxford University Press and, given that it isn’t accompanied by the sort of price tags that sometimes attach to ‘academic’ books, should have wide appeal.
And that, with the exception of another title involving the Caribbean, is all I am aware of. That one is, whilst on the subject of academics, cricket history and West Indies from Professor Brian Stobbart. He has published Playing The Game: How Cricket Made Barbados, a wide ranging survey of the history of cricket on that small island that has produced such a vast array of top class cricketers from its tiny population.
