Cricket History

Alexander Hamilton and James Madison were supporters of a strong federal government and participated in the Constitutional Convention. Together with John Jay, they wrote The Federalist Papers, one of many activities that led to the adoption of the U.S. Constitution. Learn more about the Alexander Hamilton and the “Father of the Constitution," James Madison.

Have you ever seen a feather in a hat? A long time ago, they were very fashionable. Some people would even put whole birds on their hats! To get the feathers, though, the birds had to be hunted. Learn about the women who fought to change laws in the name of conservation!

Robert Stratten Holmes (1850-1933) was a man of many and varied parts, cricket historian, author and prodigious collector of cricketing books, he was a churchman, friend and confidante of generations of English cricketers. ‘R.S. Holmes’ the fourth monograph of the James D. Coldham Series is a long biographical sketch of Reverend Holmes, the Methodist minister who became Yorkshire Cricket’s first historian, and friend the great men of Lord’s and downtrodden of his parishes. In editing my father’s corpus of work I sometimes get the distinct feeling that he was methodically ‘...

College freshman, Finley Farrow, has two fairly ambitious goals this school year: make the football team and get over Shepard Connelly. The gorgeous football player with the magnificent voice would one day be a star on or off the field. But he’ll never see her as more than his best friend’s sister. Now her eye is on the end zone. Making the team could turn out to be the easy part. Practicing with Shepard every day while ignoring her feelings? The real challenge.

The Elements of Cricket is a cricket book unlike any other published before, an extraordinary, eccentric guide and charming visual representation of the game, from the weather and wood that make it possible to the achievements of its greatest and most famous players. The book is divided into the three parts that make up the fundamental elements of cricket: bat, ball and field. Their harmony produces cricket’s unique environment; their centuries’ long conflict provides its innovation, adaptability and vast psychological hinterland.

In The Little Wonder, Robert Winder traces the central role the game has played in national life for so long. The book's 150th anniversary in 2013 is the ideal time to tell the extraordinary story of Wisden's - and cricket's - journey from Victorian times to the modern world. New every year, it feels as though it has been with us for ever.

After entertaining countless radio listeners around the world for decades, who better to convey the breathless drama of a Test match cliffhanger than Henry Blofeld? Now, in Ten to Win...and the Last Man In, he has personally selected 30 matches featuring unforgettable finishes and brought them vividly to life again in his own inimitable way.

From the William Hill Award-winning author of A Lot of Hard Yakka comes Cricket's Greatest Rivalry: A History of the Ashes in 12 Matches by Simon Hughes. A fast-paced, distinctive history of the iconic, 137-year-old cricketing rivalry between England and Australia published in the year of back-to-back Ashes contests.

‘A must have book for any Northamptonshire cricket lover or supporter interested in the history of their County Club, and for any historian of the English county game.’ When ‘Northamptonshire Cricket: A History’ was published it was the first such book about the County: a complete history from earliest beginning to the end of the 1958 season. Its author James D. Coldham wrote was a prolific researcher, article and essay writer but only wrote two full length books, of which this was the first. ‘Northamptonshire Cricket’ was at the time of its publication in 1959 a complete ...

An entertaining collection of insider yarns by an Aussie Test cricket legend. 'In the Test arena, Dennis Lillee was never beaten. West Indian champion Viv Richards had taken the sword to all the international bowlers of his era. But when he came up against Lillee, it was a heavyweight fight between unrelenting combatants. Their contests were always take-no-prisoners affairs.'

On the 9th August 2013 the Australian cricket team will step onto the Emirates Durham International Cricket Ground for a history making Ashes Test - the first ever on Durham soil. However there is a already a solid historical link between Australia and the county and nowhere is this more obvious than in ten matches arranged between Australia and a variety of sides in Sunderland between 1878 and 1977.

Few sporting records capture the imagination quite like that of the highest individual score in Test cricket. It is the blue riband record of batting achievement, the ultimate statement of stamina and skill. From Charles Bannerman, who scored 165 for Australia against England in the inaugural Test match in 1877, to Brian Lara, who made 400 not out for West Indies against England in 2004, the record has changed hands 10 times.

Following Neville Cardus's assertion that 'there can be no summer in this land without cricket', Hamilton plotted the games he would see in 2019 and wrote down reflectively on some of the cricket that blessed his own sight. It would be captured in the context of the coming season in case subsequent summers and the imminent arrival of the Hundred made that impossible. He would write in the belief that after this season the game might never be quite the same again.

Suresh Menon, easily one of India's best cricketwriters, relives the roller-coaster that was the 2011 World Cup, taking us through the highlights, the disappointments and doubts as well as the triumphs. From Virender Sehwag's boundary off the first ball of the World Cup to Dhoni's final six to the transformation of Yuvraj Singh, it's all here. A running commentary as well as a historical document of one of India's sporting epics.

For Michael Parkinson it was never really in doubt that he would spend his life in sport. His father, a fearsome fast bowler himself, indoctrinated young Michael from an early age into the Yorkshire cricket tradition and supporting Barnsley FC. All he ever wanted was to play cricket for Yorkshire and England. My Sporting Life is Sir Michael's love letter to sport, to the heroes and legends of his Yorkshire youth, to the characters of the international games he watched and wrote about, and to the very idea of sport itself.

Playing cricket in Germany in the 1930s was not always as...fraught. But it certainly had its moments. German Cricket, the second monograph in the James D. Coldham series, covers the fraught, the arcane, and the frankly bizarre aspects of the history of the game in Germany drawing on a wealth of research.

Devon Cricket is a collection of my father’s writings on the subject. The centerpiece of the monograph is the essay "The Beginnings of Devon Cricket", which is accompanied by biographical sketches of that seminal figure in Devonian cricketing folklore "John Henry Copleston", a shorter piece about "Shaw: the Nameless One", and "The Butchers of Devon", about a remarkable West Country cricketing family. In publishing this I am doing what my father would have done had he lived in our marvelously interconnected age—making this material available to the widest possible audience.

There will have been times when you have decided you will never watch them again, only to go back on the vow the next time a Test comes along. But, for every crushing disappointment there have been triumphs that evoke utter euphoria. Moments when the pain you've suffered in the past all suddenly becomes worthwhile. So sit back and immerse yourself in England's finest moments.

From Lord’s to the Fjords is the uproarious tale of cricket in Iceland: how the national press believed a stag party from Oxford were the official England team, how Sky Sports accidentally sent a crew to televise an Icelandic Cricket Cup final that didn’t exist, how the lead singer of Iron Maiden flew a passenger jet into a match under the midnight sun, how Henry Blofeld umpired in a blizzard on top of an ice cap, how the Iceland team was sold to the world’s public and became a viral Twitter sensation (incurring the wrath of Jofra Archer)....

In 1963, the West Indian Marxist C.L.R. James posed the deceptively benign question: "What do they know of cricket, who only cricket know?" A challenge to the public to reconsider cricket and its meaning by placing the game in its true social, political, and economic context. Different Class does not simply challenge the widely accepted orthodoxy of English cricket, it demonstrates how the values and belief systems at its heart were intentionally developed in order to divide the English along class lines at every level of the game.