Frith on Cricket - Hardcover

"Frith on Cricket" is a broad collection of the best of David Frith's writings on the game's history, personalities and controversies. It draws from almost 40 years of description, investigation and comment on cricket's great occasions, the upheavals and the colorful personalities who have made the headlines, as well as some of the lesser-knowns. The range is wide, taking in the earliest contests right up to England's victory over Australia in 2009; listening to a Test match through the night; tracking down legends such as Wilfred Rhodes and the long-lost Aboriginal fast bowler Eddie Gilbert; arguing with Don Bradman; visiting Madame Tussauds waxworks; training with the county champions; insights into the radio and television commentators; journeying to all the Test-playing countries and World Cups; firing off editorials condemning brutality and maladministration; watching women play at Lord's for the first time; cricket memorabilia and auctions; on autograph-hunting; searching for cricket on film; investigating cricketers' suicides; book reviews; the South Africa issue; some major obituaries; fun cricket; and, even a little verse...All this is supported by a quality foreword by the esteemed former "Times" cricket correspondent John Woodcock, and a wide range of illustrations.

David Frith has written thirty books on cricket since 1969 and was editor of The Cricketer from 1972 to 1978. He founded Wisden Cricket Monthly in 1979 and edited that best-selling magazine until 1996. Three of his books have won the prestigious Cricket Society Book of the Year award (1970, 1987 and 2002); another was given the Australian Cricket Society's award in 2007; and another (on Bodyline) was a William Hill Sports Book finalist and Wisden's book of the year 2002. In 1988 he was voted British Magazine Writer of the Year. His pictorial history of the Ashes Test matches has run to twelve editions and sold over 100,000 copies, while his sumptuous Pageant of Cricket (1987) was the first cricket book to contain two thousand illustrations. He is an honorary life member of the Cricket Writers Club, vice-president of the Cricket Memorabilia Society, and member of MCC, and his close friends have included John Arlott, E.W. Swanton, Sir Donald Bradman and many later cricketers and writers. He has appeared often on television news and opinion programmes and also in historical cricket DVDs. Each year since 1981 he has presented archive cricket film shows at the National Film Theatre in London to packed houses. A player himself for 49 years (some of them as a first-grade batsman in Australia), it is generally considered that in cricket matters David Frith knows what he is talking about, and has never been afraid to speak out in the interests of the game he has loved for sixty years.