Catching up on my cricket reading with an excellent book written by Grenville Simons entitled 'Lillywhite's Legacy' which is a history of the Cheltenham cricket festival. I bought this book at the excellent second hand book shop at Durham's Riverside ground a couple of years ago and have only just got round to it.
The book provides a year by year summary of all the matches which have taken place during each festival season starting as far back as 1872. The title of the book remembers the man who started it all James Lillywhite. He had become cricket coach and groundsman at Cheltenham College as far back as 1855 and as his sports goods business developed he began to think about a cricket festival at the College ground to rival that of the Canterbury week in Kent.
So in 1872 with the great attraction of W.G. Grace, together with his two brothers, the first festival took place. W.G. was obviously the big attraction of the early years and continued to appear up to 1898. Possibly his greatest innings for Gloucestershire was that of 1876 against Yorkshire when he made 318 not out, which is still the highest ever score for the county. The Yorkshire fielders were described as totally demoralised.
One common theme throughout the book is how the Festival was regularly affected by bad weather during the month of August. There seems to be a succession of rain affected games throughout the whole history of the event. However the outstanding players continue to appear after the end of the W.G. Grace era. The batting of Gilbert Jessop and Walter Hammond is always to the fore as is the bowling of Charlie Parker and Tom Goddard.
After the Second World War, the enthusiasm for the Festival was as great as ever and there is a detailed report of the famous match between Gloucestershire and Middlesex which decided the County Championship in 1947. Indeed 60,000 people watched seven days of cricket as Gloucester failed at the last hurdle. They have still never won the Championship.
The big names keep on coming with the advent of overseas players such as Mike Proctor, the South African all rounder, Zaheer Abbas, the prolific Pakistani batsman and not least the wonderful Courtney Walsh, fast bowler from the West Indies. All have their places firmly fixed in the folk lore of the Festival.
The match reports detail all the famous visiting players over the generations and one gets the feeling that all the great names enjoyed the atmosphere of the festival and the social events which always surround it. The book ends with the 2003 season, the black and white pictures having turned into coloured ones and the financial success of the Festival has continued with the advent of such excellent corporate hospitality facilities in the various marquees.
From the left - Peter West, Matthew Engel, Graeme Wright, Nico Craven, Frank Keating and David Foot.
Several quotations from the prolific writer on Cheltenham Cricket, the late Nico Craven, who I had the pleasure of meeting on several occasions, are included in the book. In his many publications on cricket at Cheltenham and the surrounding villages of Gloucestershire he certainly was an excellent public relations man and is still sadly missed today.
All in all a very detailed book, with an awful lot of research going into it, and possibly the best bargain buy for some time at the purchase price of only £2.50!
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