by John Major
Sports/History
From early beginnings as a yokel's game in the Weald to the pre-WW1 Golden Age, cricket has a rich and sometimes surprising history. Taken up by the English elite, mastered by professionals, spread by Empire; it has embodied a nation and enriched the world.
It's no secret that I'm a huge cricket fan and I've been looking for a book about its origins and early history since I read Flashman's Lady. I finally found it in John Major's [yes, that John Major] excellent book. Full of anecdotes and ably mixed with wider history, this is a wonderful journey through cricket's past. Major includes facts and figures (it's cricket after all!) but never gets bogged down in them, always returning to the personal stories of the early cricket greats. There are tales here, some tall, some small and many of them only barely related to cricket itself but all of them entwined with a nation's sport.
This is a great read, as a biography of a sport and a historical overview. I highly recommend it to all cricket lovers and I hope that Mr Major is working on a post-WW1 sequel.