Britain'S Lost Cricket Grounds - Hardcover

‘Chris Arnot’s heady romantic hymn to a variety of once famous fields is a coffee-table classic for and of posterity. Everyone will mourn for a personal vanished favourite.’ – Frank Keating

Sports Books of the Year

‘Delightful new book’ - Brian Viner

'A wonderfully observed volume, thick in crucial memories, whether through sharp anecdotes or poignant photographs’

'A handsome new volume...there are many lovely old photogrtaphs and some marvellous stories, beautifully told.' - Richard Williams

‘Superb book...from the vast collection of images in the book you get a real sense of how cricket in Britain used to be’

‘For any cricket lover who cares about the game’s history this is to treasure. Britain’s Lost Cricket Grounds is a coffee-table book too luxurious to be read merely while drinking coffee. It is to be consumed, devoured and savoured’

‘Packed full of stunning photographs...this is a lovely, poignant book that will charm any reader with a historical bent’

'A beautifully written volume that is rich in history and anecdote...some magnificent photos will invoke poignant memories'

‘It should stir cricket lovers everywhere to do whatever they can to protect and preserve the grounds that are left’

'a beautifully produced and elegantly written odyssey around cricket venues that have gone for ever'

From county grounds where Denis Compton hit a century to the smallest village field Britain’s Lost Cricket Grounds movingly shows how picturesque greenery gave way to shopping malls and housing estates.

The cricket ground is as much a part of the British landscape as the parish church. Hastings used to have a historic ground in the middle of the town surrounded by elegant houses – but then recently it disappeared under a shopping precinct with a branch of River Island where the wicket used to be. Yorkshire used to play at Sheffield’s Bramall Lane – until the football club built grandstands over it. Like so many companies with works grounds, Guinness have closed their cricket ground at Park Royal and sold it for an industrial estate.

Now, in a further addition to Aurum’s successful ‘Lost’ series, following Britain’s Lost Cities and Lost Victorian Britain, Guardian journalist Chris Arnot tours the country in search of our most lamented lost cricket grounds, hearing reminiscences from former players and spectators, and finding what, if anything, is left nowadays, apart from the poignant photographs of their picturesque heyday that make this a nostalgic and rueful trip back in time.