By Ken Hook & Frank Bennett
This is a long overdue and lovingly researched work, updating the history of Herefordshire cricket from the publication of the last comprehensive study way back in 1903. This 236-page book contains over 250 illustrations, including many not previously published, and covers Herefordshire cricket from grass roots level, including youth and women’s cricket, to the County Club’s recent elevation to the Minor Counties Championship.
When I began my BBC career at Worcester in 1966, one of the first visitors to our box was Reg Perks, a great friend of commentator John Arlott. Reg was one of 19 Herefordshire-born first-class cricketers but only the second of four to represent England. The others were Jack Sharp and the Richardson brothers, Peter and Dick. Justin Vaughan, who emigrated to New Zealand from Hereford when he was eight months old, appeared in six Tests and 18 limited-overs internationals for his adopted country.
I had the privilege of playing for Brockhampton while I lived near the centre of Hereford for two years in the late Eighties and returned a decade later with a Lord’s Taverners team that played at Fownhope.
You will find references to more than 250 clubs, a fund of cricketing stories and an affectionate foreword by Tom Graveney. The authors have done an excellent job and I warmly recommend their work.
Copies, signed by both authors, are available at £14.95, plus £3 packing and postage, from Frank Bennett at 73 Seaton Avenue, HEREFORD, HR1 1NP.
Green Umbrella Publishing £16.99 (780 pages)
As an essential companion to the season as Wisden and Playfair, the 28th edition includes statistics and a portrait for every cricketer who appeared for a County 1st XI in 2006, plus many who have been registered for the current season. Justin Langer contributes a thought-provoking forward to an admirable book.
Edited by David Rayvern Allen with Hubert Doggart.
Paperback edition - Methuen - £14.99 (490 pages)
One of cricket’s most accomplished editors and biographers has assembled a treasury of the game’s finest verse. Byron, Keats, Wordsworth, Wodehouse and Betjeman feature among those contributing over 260 poems, rhymes and songs embracing almost 300 years. An ideal companion in this summer of extended rain breaks.
This specialist publisher of cricket books has produced a notable hat-trick featuring three England cricketers with hugely differing lives. Handsomely produced by Bath Press, they are each a worthy addition to any cricket library.
by Ken Taylor
The author adds to his burgeoning reputation as a highly readable and entertaining biographer with this study of an unique all-rounder. For a while Ken Taylor combined his professional cricket and soccer careers with full-time study at London’s Slade School of Fine Art. In addition to more than 50 colour exhibits of his talented artwork featuring cricketers, footballers and local scenes, this 144-page large-format hardback includes many photographs and reproductions of the memorabilia of his life. Now an artist and teacher, Taylor appropriately resides in the Norfolk village of Constable.
£20
by Tom Cartwright
A tally of 1,536 wickets at 19.11, 13,710 runs with a best of 210, and 331 catches is confirmation of an outstanding first-class career. In English conditions Tom Cartwright was a truly great bowler, incredibly accurate and extraordinarily unlucky to be selected for a mere five Test matches. He was a highly perceptive coach who taught Ian Botham the art of bowling. Fiercely independent and loyal to his working class upbringing, his knowledge of cricket is prodigious. In this absorbing 224-page illustrated hardback, Stephen Chalke reveals the dramatic details of Cartwright’s withdrawal from England’s 1968-69 tour of South Africa which resulted in the D’Oliveira affair and South Africa’s eventual expulsion from the ICC.
£16
by Peter Walker
Into this highly entertaining 192-page illustrated hardback, Peter Walker packs a fast-moving account of an extremely eventful and rounded life. As the title promises, this is not a conventional international cricketer’s autobiography. How could it be when the first-class career that brought him 17,650 runs, 13 hundreds, 834 wickets and the monumental tally of 697 catches began after running away to sea? Those catching skills were founded by potato-throwing contests with a semi-pro baseball player on a three-month voyage. We first worked together when he presented BBC2’s coverage of the Sunday League and it was great fun being on a Gullivers Sports Travel panel which he chaired in Brisbane last winter.
£15
