Our Beloved Cricket - Hardcover

Brian Scovell's 26th book "Our Beloved Cricket" will be a delight for cricket's aficionados. After spending a lifetime reporting on the game for the Daily Sketch and Daily Mail he knows a host of leading players whom he persuaded to play for his wandering side Woodpeckers and various press sides. And his hilarious accounts of these matches in lowly cricket - mainly on village greens - provide a richly entertaining and unique addition to cricketing literature. Among those mentioned are Sir Gary Sobers, Learie Constantine, Ian Bishop, Colin Croft, Don Bradman, Geoff Lawson, Mark Slater, Geoff Boycott, Trevor Bailey, Ken Barrington, Denis and Nick Compton, Ian Ward, Peter Roebuck, Ashley Giles, B.S. Chandrasekhar, Anil Kumble, Sarfraz Nawaz, Aftab Gul who was convicted of having Sam missiles, and many more. He has played on more than 500 grounds, including Lord's and the Oval and 26 other Test grounds around the world. He has also been on forty tours abroad and his experiences in India, Sri Lanka, Australia, NZ, South Africa, West Indies, Namibia, Italy and other cricketing countries make mirthful reading.

Born at St. Lawrence, Isle of Wight, Brian Scovell spent forty years with Associated Newspapers (Daily Sketch and Daily Mail) as a cricket and football writer and is now concentrating on writing books. This is his 26th. Several were best sellers and four, about Jim Laker, the England football managers, Brian Lara and Bill Nicholson, were short listed for the British Sports Books Award. John Harding of the Daily Mail said of his previous book, an autobiography called Thank You Hermann Goering - The Life of a Sports Writer "It is a terrific read." He has played cricket all over the world and skippered the Cricket Writers' Club team for more years than he can remember. As a former chairman and secretary, and now chairman of the Facilities Committee, he advises the Test match grounds about their press facilities. He ran Woodpeckers CC for more than forty years and is now Life President, fixture secretary and PR advisor.