New Books – An Overview for January 2025

Martin Chandler | 9:24am GMT 05 January 2025

Another New Year is upon us, and once again there are plenty of new books around, even if some of them have been ‘on the drawing board’ for longer than some of us would have liked. There are also, as ever, a few that have previously slipped past me unnoticed, and once again for completeness I will mention them, albeit belatedly. Examples are Vic Rigby’s excellent account of the last Test tour before the Great War, Barnes, Taylor & a Playboy and a book by Steve Smith on the subject of a short tour of North America by a side led by Ranji in 1899 

Moving forward the most prolific publisher of cricket titles in recent years has consistently been Pitch. I hope that will continue although, at this stage, I am only aware of four titles due for the first six months of 2025. Two are biographies, one ancient and due in May, and one more modern one that is scheduled for March.

The modern title comes from the pen of Mark Peel, an accomplished biographer who numbers Ken Barrington, Douglas Jardine, Ray Illingworth and Roy Gilchrist amongst his previous subjects. This time he tells the story of one of the finest England cricketers of my lifetime, Derek Underwood. The book which could only be titled Deadly will, I have no doubt, be a fitting tribute to a unique bowler, courageous tail end batsman and, always, thoroughly decent and modest man.

The ancient is a Yorkshireman and the first in the White Rose’s line of orthodox left arm spinners that continued with Bobby Peel, Wilfred Rhodes, Hedley Verity and Johnny Wardle. The title of this one is Ten Drunks and a Parson, giving the clue as to why, at the peak of his powers and aged just 32, Peate was sacked by Yorkshire.

Also due in March is The Club from Rod Lyall. The clue is in the sub-title, Class, Power and Governance in World Cricket. The blurb explains that Lyall uncovers the fascinating history of cricket’s world governing body as it evolved from the Imperial Cricket Council, established in 1909 to bring together the major cricket-playing countries of the Empire, into the International Cricket Council, a multi-billion-dollar business dominated by the Indian Board of Control and its allies.

The fourth title from Pitch is also due in May and is from Andrew Murtagh. Murtagh played for Hampshire in 1970s before spending a long career as an English teacher at Malvern College. In retirement he has written a number of fine biographies, Colin Cowdrey, Barry Richards and Tom Graveness amongst his subjects, but Cricket’s Black Dog promises to be a rather different book, looking as it does at the prevalence of mental health issues amongst the fraternity of professional cricketers. Having played the game and battled depression himself the book promises to be an illuminating study of an important issue.

Fairfield Books, the quality of whose wares has lost none of its quality in the change of management from Stephen Chalke to the men responsible for Wisden Cricket Monthly and The Nightwatchman have a number of titles in preparation. One is Vic Marks’ continuation of Alan Gibson’s Cricket Captains of England which will take the story on from 1979 and up to, presumably, Ollie Pope.

Annie Chave, the driving force behind the splendid County Cricket Matters also has her first book due next year. It will involve the stories of a number of important cricket people, I believe the plan is eleven in all, but their stories will be well outside the mainstream and certainly hitherto untold.

Finally, until the second half of the year, is the follow up to Scott Oliver’s magnificent Sticky Dogs and Stardust: When the Legends Played in the Leagues, a project which promises to be the gift that goes on giving, and indeed an idea which other writers in other cricketing countries could do well to copy. I have in mind in particular the appearances of a number of West Indian fast bowlers in Indian domestic cricket in the early 1960s.

Turning now to the ACS they have two books due in their Cricket Witness series. The first is The Dream that Died: Gwilym Rowland and Welsh Cricket by Andrew Hignell.  This tells the story of the Manchester-born businessman who tried to raise the profile of cricket in Wales by creating a team which played home internationals against Scotland and Ireland and appeared at Lord’s. Based in North Wales, Gwilym ruffled feathers at Glamorgan CCC, but paid for matches played by the Wales team and the all-amateur Welsh Cygnets, and the visit by the United Berlin team in 1930. He funded similar footballing activities, but during 1931/32 his business conglomerate collapsed and went into liquidation, He died in poverty.

Hignell has contributed, with Eric Midwinter, more than anyone to that series and Midwinter too has another contribution due, Cricket’s Revolution: Its Sudden Leap into Modernity. The summary I have been sent is for two hundred years, cricket was a folk game played in various versions in scores of isolated localities for exercise. Then, in a thirty-year period, early in the 19th century, with relative suddenness and little opposition, cricket adopted the basics of a fully accepted national format. Laws were agreed and central authority was undisputed as cricket developed into a singular and recognisable sport. Why and how did this switch happen? The book explores the development of the unified format of cricket’s laws, controls, clubs, competitions, records and statistics against the background of the equally abrupt emergence of a nation turning to the rationalisation of society away from the arbitrary confusion of the 18th century.

An extremely popular series of ACS books (with all at CricketWeb in particular) series is Lives in Cricket, which has so far spawned 61 titles. The 62nd is on the subject of David Walker by Andrew Dawson. Walker’s will be an unfamiliar name to most but he was, in his day, the finest batsman England never had. The chairman of selectors Sir Pelham Warner believed he would have opened for his country if he had joined one of the first class counties who invited him. Instead he opted to play for the county of his birth: Norfolk. He became captain of Oxford University, led an MCC side in Ireland, played with I Zingari, the Free Foresters and Sir Pelham Warner’s XI, and toured Egypt with H.M. Martineau’s XI. This book draws upon contemporary accounts of David Walker’s character and abilities, material from his family’s archive and the testimonies of those who knew him. He died aged 28 on active service with the RAF over Norway in 1942.

Two annual publications that will appear are the ACS First-class counties Second XI Annual and the ACS International Cricket Yearbook 2025 and then, finally for the first half of the year there is a retrospective tour account, Brick by Brick: The Australian Cricketers in England 1964. The ACS summary reads this book tells the story of the visit of the Australians to England in 1964, a Test series which is often written off as dull. And yet it has a fascination of its own, because it’s an object lesson in how a cricket team can overcome its limitations, first by adopting the right strategy, and then by pursuing it with the necessary discipline.  Besides which, 1964 remains a fascinating, pivotal year, both for Britain generally and for cricket. It was the year in which thirteen years of Conservative government ended, after an election that was presented as a choice between a revitalised, modernised country and the class-ridden, outmoded shackles of the past.  The game of cricket, it seemed, stood at a similar crossroads, having chosen to update itself by abolishing the distinction between amateur and professional players, and by introducing one-day cricket to the professional sport, but all you really need to know is that the author is Max Bonnell, a copper bottomed guarantee of a fascinating account that will look well beyond events on the cricket field.

The Sussex Cricket Museum has three titles due next year. Two have been announced before, one of them (a biography of John Wisden by Stephen Baldwin) a number of times, but I am assured that it is now nearing completion. The second is the collection of Arthur Smallwood’s photographs from the 1960s and 1970s that I mentioned in July. In addition I am told that another book by David Boorman, this time on cricket in the north of the county in the Victorian era is also due, though probably later in the year.

Looking north anything new from Red Rose Books is always welcome round these parts. At the moment all that can be said for certain, apart from future monographs in Martin Tebay’s Notable Lancashire Victories series, and Stephen Musk’s Monographs on North American Cricket series is a book from Musk on the subject of Norman Seagram’s Canadian team in England in 1922. The former series is already three monographs old, In Memory of Surrey Pride, Nash Surpasses the Ordinary Hat-Trick and A Most Gamely Contested Match.

Returning to the forthcoming Stephen Musk title the Seagram tour is not a major one by any means. None of the seven matches played had First Class status and although the Canadians were able to salvage draws in only two of their seven games a look at the scorecards suggests they must have been the standard of a decent club side. The highlight of the tour for them would have been their two day game against the MCC at Lord’s. That one was lost by an innings and 11 runs, but the MCC fielded eight men with First Class experience one of them being Guy Earle who played a good deal for Somerset in the 1920s, and Robert Fowler, who all real cricket tragics will know of because of his remarkable all-round performance in the Eton v Harrow fixture of 1910.

Test Cricket – A History by Tim Wigmore is due from Quercus in April. Stretching back as it does to 1877 the subject is a vast one and it will be interesting to see how Wigmore approaches his subject. If it doesn’t involve a detailed look at the matches themselves then it certainly has the potential to be a successful book.

David Battersby has two titles due in the first half of 2025, one of which is the now delayed biography of New Zealander Ian ‘Cranky’ Cromb. The cause of the delay is the best possible one however, the emergence of new material. David’s other project is a monograph dealing with his recent visit to Pakistan. Will it deal with the recent series between England and Pakistan, or with his meetings whilst there with the great and the good of the game in Pakistan? I suspect it will be both.

In the past we have reviewed a number of books and booklets from Adrian Gault, all of them directly or indirectly concerned with Mitcham Cricket Club and/or one of its favourite sons, James Southerton. He is currently working on two projects. The first is of a biography of Jack Harrow. He played for Mitcham Wednesday XI in the 1920s and was offered professional terms as a cricketer but preferred to pursue a soccer career. After joining Croydon Common, he made more than 300 appearances for Chelsea including the 1915 FA Cup final. He then served in the Air corps in WW1, became Chelsea captain after the War and gained two England caps before then joining the Chelsea training staff for many years. So the cricket content will not be high but it will still be a story well worth reading.

The second is a biography of Howard Lacy, who was Mitcham captain during WW1 and was mentioned briefly in Adrian’s booklet on the AIF vs Mitcham match in September 1919. Lacy was manager of the 1919 touring side and known to the Australians as the father of Australian cricket in London.

Looking overseas if there was not much news coming out of India last time then I clearly didn’t have my ear close enough to the ground. Amongst those I missed were Aditya Bhushan’s homage to Sachin Tendulkar, Sourav Ganguly, Rahul Dravid, VVS Laxman and Virender Sehwat, The Fab Five, and Sandeep Patil’s autobiography with Clayton Murzello, Beyond Boundaries. That pair I have been able to review, but I am still waiting for an opportunity to the same for a 75th birthday tribute to Sunil Gavankar, Sunny G, by Shyam Bhatia and Debashis Dutta, a book about the 2023 World Cup by Aditya Iyer, Gully Gully and, most recent of all, Molinder Amarnath’s autobiography, Fearless. Moving forward I understand a pictorial book on the life and career of Dilip Vengsarkar will be with us soon, and that a book about the life and times of Syed Kirmani has just appeared.

Turning to Australia there are several interesting titles that are due to appear. First is likely to be Michael Lefebvre’s biography of Karl Schneider, the immensely promising Australian batsman who, tragically, never appeared in a Test match due to his passing at the age of 23 with Leukaemia, the place that many expected him to take in the Australian Test side in 1928/29 instead going to another promising youngster, Donald Bradman. Lefebvre has had access to a substantial family archive and the book is one I am certainly looking forward to.

At the Cricket Publishing Company I am given to understand that John Benaud’s retrospective account of the 1972/73 tour is likely to be their first book of 2025 to be followed by Pat Rodgers biography of Sid Emery and Ronald Cardwell’s of Frank Ward. As to others there are, as always with this publisher, many titles being worked on and, have been caught unawares by this one and this one I wouldn’t be at all surprised to see something else Victor Trumper related at some point in the year.

Another retrospective tour account due from Australia is from Barry Nicholls, Playing to Win: Australia and the 1972 Ashes with a foreword from Australian skipper Ian Chappell is scheduled for February. The publisher is Wakefield.

After his remarkable effort on Charlie Macartney I believe Peter Lloyd is still contemplating his next major project, but in the meantime is working with Pat Rodgers on a monograph on the subject of Bert Folkard. The name is not a familiar one but it seems that, had it not been for the intervention of the Great War, Folkard would have been a Test cricketer.

Other recent books from Australia include an autobiography from Glen Maxwell, The Showman, a read which has been described by Gideon Haigh as like having Phar Lap talk you through the 1930 Melbourne Cup a comment that, I would have thought, is guaranteed to help shift plenty of copies. Another new Australian title is Top Knocks from Brad Hodge,looking at the best 20 innings by Australian batsman over the last 50 years. Pat Cummins and Shane Watson have also gone into print, although it doesn’t look to me like Tested and The Winner’s Mindset are directly concerned with cricket.

Finally in Australia I understand that a new biography of Doug Walters is due, and that an account of the 1886 Ashes series is in the course of preparation. I believe I am right in saying that it is the one contest between England and Australia that has not been the subject of a book. Given that England won the three Test series 3-0 that is a surprise, the more so that the account that is eventually forthcoming is from Australia.

And then there is the Caribbean, not usually a fertile of source of new books it has to be said, but I can confirm that a biography of Richie Richardson has just been published by the University of West Indies Press. The author is Densil Williams and the book is the tenth in a series of books that bears the title Caribbean Biography.

In the coming weeks we will also be seeing a new book from Royards Publishing in Trinidad, this one a collaboration with CricketMASH. Cricket Across Dark Waters is the latest addition to the oeuvre of Arunabha Sengupta, and looks at the ebb and flow of the cricketing relationship between India and West Indies, one that began in 1952/53 when I side led by Vijay Hazare lost a five match Test series 1-0. In addition the three new books from CricketMASH that I mentioned last year are still due to appear, and Sengupta also has another book due, one in similar vein to his Sherlock Holmes and the Birth of the Ashes, but this time titled Elementary My Dear Wodehouse.