SNOW STOPPED PLAY

The Mysterious World of the Cricket Ground in Winter

Graham Coster

Cricket is a summer game, intended to be played on green fields under blue skies and warm sun.

But, for the first time, a book explores the mesmerising beauty of cricket grounds in winter, carpeted with snow, through remarkable colour photographs depicting grounds from Lord’s to the smallest village pitch in Lancashire, and internationally from New Zealand to the Indian Himalayas. For this aspect alone, Snow Stopped Play will be seized upon as the perfect gift for the cricket fan even by those utterly uninterested in the sport themselves.

But Snow Stopped Play is also a fascinatingly eccentric and charming disquisition, in the best tradition of cricket classics like Carr’s Dictionary of Extra-Ordinary Cricketers, on the game of cricket itself, through its hitherto unexamined relationship with snow. Did John Arlott really find a snowflake on his sleeve at Lord’s in June? Why did a Derbyshire batsman have to take his false teeth out after a snowfall at Buxton in 1975? And has the Sussex fast bowler and poet John Snow ever written a poem about snow?

Graham Coster was formerly Publisher at Aurum Press, and is the author of The Flying Boat That Fell to Earth. He lives in London.

978 0 9932911 0 4
112pp
138 x 216mm
Jacketed hardback

“A delightful new book… the theme of the book is to look at ‘the mysterious world of the cricket ground in winter and in 100 stunning photographs it does it quite brilliantly. But also in its text it reveals some wonderful tales of snowy cricketing adventures involving big names on and off the field”, Steve James, Daily Telegraph 

A “charming little book… these wonderful photos show the 22 yards as they’ve rarely been seen before”, Daily Mail

 “A small polished pearl… The photographs are like arty Christmas cards. Coster’s words are as good as the pictures, if not better,” Duncan Hamilton, Wisden Cricketers' Almanack 2016

 “A beautiful new book”, All-Out Cricket 

 “A lovely book”, Gideon Haigh, The Australian 

 “A delightful romp through such ‘wintry’ tales, all laid out in a coffee-table format and complemented by wonderful photographs”, Chris Waters, Yorkshire Post

 “A fantastic book! Amazing colours/atmospheres”, Jack Russell, former England wicket-keeper

“A quite lively and sometimes startling portfolio of photographs… A book that surprised me and I liked it a lot”, Bulletin of the Cricket Society