Tom Emmett The Spirit Of Yorkshire Cricket

Lord Hawke called Tom Emmett ‘the greatest “character” who ever stepped on to the field’. Born in Halifax in 1841, Emmett worked as a mill hand and did not make his Yorkshire debut until 1866. Almost at once he was part of the most destructive fast bowling partnership in England with George Freeman. In the 1860s, he once took 16 wickets for Yorkshire in an afternoon. In the 1870s, only one other player scored over 4,000 runs and took over 400 wickets in English cricket: W.G.Grace. Emmett had his best ever season with the ball in the 1880s, aged nearly 45. In all first-class cricket, he took over 1,500 wickets at under 14, bowling in an idiosyncratic style which included wides and balls ‘which no man had ever seen or dreamed of before’. For three decades, Emmett travelled endlessly to appear in club and county matches, and went to Australia three times in five years, appearing in the first Test match. He set records and won games, but also played in a style which at one time made him ‘the most popular professional in England.’ He pleased cricket followers with his wit and enthusiasm, but his life had a large share of tragedy. How he handled those highs and lows made him the true spirit of Yorkshire cricket.

Between 1922 and 1925 Yorkshire County Cricket Club won the County Championship four years in a row, making it one of the most successful sides ever in the history of the English county game. A line-up which included Wilfred Rhodes, Percy Holmes, Herbert Sutcliffe, Roy Kilner, George Macaulay and Maurice Leyland dominated English cricket for much of the decade, taking a highly professional approach to the game. Unsurprisingly, they were heroes to many, but despite this success, the side was at times unpopular and the subject of trenchant criticism. A Game Divided takes as its starting point the events during the match between Yorkshire and Middlesex at Sheffield in July 1924, which provoked a falling out between the counties. These events and how they were portrayed shine a light on many of the divisions in English cricket of the time – between north and south, amateur and professional, employer and employee, and between different perspectives on sportsmanship and the style in which the game should be played. The book looks at the triumphs and troubles that shaped Yorkshire cricket in the decade and asks just how great was this side of match-winners.

Over two million British men were injured or killed in the First World War. Millions more people supported the war effort at home – in factories, fields or by keeping essential services going. In these circumstances, how could something as trivial as cricket continue? For some, it was not acceptable; for others, watching or playing sport were reasonable responses to government calls to ‘carry on’. A Game Sustained examines what happened to cricket at all levels in Yorkshire between 1914 and 1918; how it kept going with so many men away; how its top league managed to attract players such as Hobbs, Barnes and Woolley; and how, when peace came, cricket resumed its place in county life in 1919 and 1920. It is a story of divided opinions and of guilt and uncertainty about the correct way to behave. It is also the story of efforts to sustain traditions and to keep some sense of normality at a time of crisis.

Yorkshire County Cricket Club is by far the most successful county cricket club in history. Since the County Championship was constituted in 1890, Yorkshire has, in addition to one shared Championship, won it outright on 30 occasions and Yorkshire cricket supporters take great pride in the county's cricketing history. As well as the club's successes, there have been 42 Yorkshire players chosen as Wisden Cricketers of the Year. Many have been world-class cricketers such as Wilfred Rhodes, Len Hutton, Fred Trueman and Geoffrey Boycott, with distinguished England careers. Many thousands of Wisden pages have been filled with Yorkshire cricket, Yorkshire cricketers and Tests in Yorkshire. Wisden on Yorkshire is a fascinating journey mixing great matches, personalities, feats, controversies and unusual occurrences. Presenting the best Yorkshire info from the Almanack archives, Wisden on Yorkshire includes: Focus on the iconic Yorkshire players, such as Truman and Boycott Cricketers of the Year and Obituaries The County's history, highlighting significant years and extracts from reviews of those years Fascinating stories of both the highs and lows in the club's history colour plate section containing superb classic images Detailed records, match reports and scorecards

Acclaimed as a magisterial, classic work, A Social History of English Cricket is an encyclopaedic survey of the game, from its humble origins all the way to modern floodlit finishes. But it is also the story of English culture, mirrored in a sport that has always been a complex repository of our manners, hierarchies and politics. Derek Birley’s survey of the impact on cricket of two world wars, Empire and ‘the English caste system’, will, contends Ian Wooldridge, ‘teach an intelligent child of twelve more about their heritage than he or she will ever pick up at school.’ In just under 400 pages Birley takes us through a rich historical tapestry: how the game was snatched from rustic obscurity by gentlemanly gamblers; became the height of late eighteenth century metropolitan fashion; was turned into both symbol and synonym for British imperialism; and its more recent struggle to dislodge the discomforting social values preserved in the game from its imperial heyday. Superbly witty and humorous, peopled by larger-than-life characters from Denis Compton to Ian Botham, and wholly forswearing nostalgia, A Social History of English Cricket is a tour-de-force by one of the great writers on cricket.