THE NATURE OF CRICKET
A Natural History of the Cricket Ground
Graham Coster
Everyone’s image of the ideal cricket ground will be a village field, fringed by trees, the outfield dappled with clovers and buttercups, swallows flitting above… And what of all the other wildlife associated with this most natural of sports?
Only the other day Phil Tufnell, commentating remotely on the Sri Lanka series from the Oval, was musing on the comings and goings of the ground’s resident foxes. At Teddington Town CC in London’s Bushy Park matches are frequently interrupted by incursions of deer; at Lyndhurst in the New Forest by wild ponies. At Kirkby Lonsdale CC in Cumbria the local fungus group found 20 species of waxcap on the outfield. For some reason hoopoes, spectacular orange and black crest birds from southern Europe, favour cricket grounds on their rare migrations to the UK.
This unique, funny, delightful cricket book from left field explores the relationship between cricket grounds and the natural world, from wildlife records to the Edwardian cricket writings of Edmund Blunden, and in many remarkable photos.
Graham Coster is the publisher of Safe Haven Books, on which list quirky cricket books are a speciality. He is the author of Snow Stopped Play: The Mysterious World of the Cricket Ground in Winter and The Flying Boat That Fell to Earth (both Safe Haven).
‘A wonderfully illustrated, jovially written and insightful piece of work that shows why the Gentleman’s Game was, and still is, the best sport of them all’, Country Life
‘Excellent’, Simon Burnton, Guardian
‘I feel that this book has been personally written for me,’ Tom Holland
‘A delightful tome that explores the link between the sport and its relationship with nature . . . After society’s re-discovery of the natural world in COVID-induced lockdowns the book is arguably being released at a timely juncture’, Yahoo over Cow Corner cricket blog
‘We are blessed with an abundance of excellent cricket books at present. This book is not only wonderfully niche, but it is also beautifully produced. The array of delightful photographs of cricket grounds is enough to brighten a dark winter. It is a book that plucks at my heart-strings and makes me feel both nostalgic and rueful . . . What this book does so well is to highlight that the cricket ground isn’t just a pitch; it matters how it looks, it matters how it encroaches into the natural world,’ Annie Chave, County Cricket Matters
‘“Delightful” [is] not an adequate word to apply to this wonderful book,’ The Cricket Statistician
‘A love letter to nature and how it interacts with the game . . . The pleasure of Graham Coster’s gem of a book is that he writes about the little things that are actually the big things. It is an appreciation of a game whose indulgence is time - something which gives players, and spectators, the chance to appreciate their natural surroundings, from the red clover underfoot to the red kite gliding above’, Tanya Aldred, Cricketer
August 2021
128pp
978 1 8384051 1 3
198 x 135mm
full-colour throughout
PLC hardback
Sport/Natural History
Photo; Hector Capelletti,
www.yahooovercowcorner.wordpress.com/2021/08/14/the-nature-of-cricket-book-review/