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Final Wicket: Test and First Class Cricketers Killed in the Great War
While cricket remains a national game today, at the beginning of the Twentieth Century, it was THE national game. Cricketers were the sporting icons of their age, as footballers are today.When the call to arms was made in 1914 and the years of war that followed, it was answered in droves by young men including Test and First Class cricketers. The machine guns and gas of the Western Front and other theaters did not discriminate and many hundreds of these star performers perished alongside their lesser known comrades. The author has researched the lives and deaths of over 200 top class cricketers who made the ultimate sacrifice. He includes not just British players but those from the Empire. The enormity of the horror and wholesale loss of life during The Great War is well demonstrated by these moving biographies.
480 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 2015
14 people want to read
About the author
Nigel McCrery
67 books55 followersNigel Colin McCrery was an English screenwriter, producer and writer. He was the creator of the long-running crime dramas Silent Witness (1996–present) and New Tricks (2003–2015).
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Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews
December 19, 2022
This is now the sixth book by Nigel McCrery I have read about sportsmen who died during the World Wars, and they are as expected from him as greatly researched and a great tribute to those fallen men.
He gives short biographies of the 275 men who played first-class cricket before the First World War, giving details about their family, schooling and cricketing career, and then their wartime service and death. Some men have more details than others, and some of the men have truly remarkable stories of which books could be written. Of these 275 first-class cricketers, there is included 12 Test players, of which the majority (7) were South Africans which was surprising for me. Most of the men were products of the British Public School system and either joined the military after school or went to Oxford or Cambridge, and most were officers, with the men from the Dominions mostly serving in the ranks. Most were in the army, with a few men in the Royal Navy, and even less in the RFC. And the men served in all theatres of the war.
Though there are a few cricketing legends in these pages, the majority of the men played less than 10 first-class matches, but each one brings something unique to the book. Most of the men are also a bit older than I expected, with quite a few being in their 30's and 40's, but this makes sense as the young men from the public schools would never have gotten a chance to play first-class cricket as the war ended the first-class competitions in most places.
Highly recommended reading to cricket fans, and again a book that makes me ask the question again, how different would the world have been had these bright young men not made the ultimate sacrfice.
PS: Goodreads gives book as 480 pages when it is in fact 888 pages.
He gives short biographies of the 275 men who played first-class cricket before the First World War, giving details about their family, schooling and cricketing career, and then their wartime service and death. Some men have more details than others, and some of the men have truly remarkable stories of which books could be written. Of these 275 first-class cricketers, there is included 12 Test players, of which the majority (7) were South Africans which was surprising for me. Most of the men were products of the British Public School system and either joined the military after school or went to Oxford or Cambridge, and most were officers, with the men from the Dominions mostly serving in the ranks. Most were in the army, with a few men in the Royal Navy, and even less in the RFC. And the men served in all theatres of the war.
Though there are a few cricketing legends in these pages, the majority of the men played less than 10 first-class matches, but each one brings something unique to the book. Most of the men are also a bit older than I expected, with quite a few being in their 30's and 40's, but this makes sense as the young men from the public schools would never have gotten a chance to play first-class cricket as the war ended the first-class competitions in most places.
Highly recommended reading to cricket fans, and again a book that makes me ask the question again, how different would the world have been had these bright young men not made the ultimate sacrfice.
PS: Goodreads gives book as 480 pages when it is in fact 888 pages.
October 1, 2015
Final Wicket – A Labour of Love
Final Wicket by Nigel McCrery follows on from his previous books In To Touch and The Final Season: The Footballers Who Fought and Died in the Great War. Final Wicket as it suggests is a book of those cricketers, from test and first class levels, who were killed during the Great War.
This is an excellently researched book with some interesting portraits of the players as well as their records. This book certainly has been a labour of love and we the reader are the lucky recipients, as we get a book that is packed with information and a pleasure to read.
Just after his preface before McCrery gets in to the guts of the book, he opens with a cricketer who never played a first class game, but holds a record that has not been broken. A. E. J. Collins, while at school, broke a batting record of 628 not out and on the centenary of that particular knock, Tim Rice wrote an article that appeared in the Daily Telegraph.
One thing that did strike me reading this book was how many of the cricketers were commissioned officers whether in the British or Empire Armies. What did strike me was the number killed from the Oxford and Cambridge teams that would have been some of the country’s brightest men and the future of not just cricket but of Britain also. My own county (Lancashire) lost 5 men, but there is not a country team that is unaffected.
Final Wicket is one of the nicest and best commemorative books I have read that covers the Great War and cricket. This book is so well researched and well written the book is an absolute pleasure to read and I cannot recommend this book highly enough.
Final Wicket by Nigel McCrery follows on from his previous books In To Touch and The Final Season: The Footballers Who Fought and Died in the Great War. Final Wicket as it suggests is a book of those cricketers, from test and first class levels, who were killed during the Great War.
This is an excellently researched book with some interesting portraits of the players as well as their records. This book certainly has been a labour of love and we the reader are the lucky recipients, as we get a book that is packed with information and a pleasure to read.
Just after his preface before McCrery gets in to the guts of the book, he opens with a cricketer who never played a first class game, but holds a record that has not been broken. A. E. J. Collins, while at school, broke a batting record of 628 not out and on the centenary of that particular knock, Tim Rice wrote an article that appeared in the Daily Telegraph.
One thing that did strike me reading this book was how many of the cricketers were commissioned officers whether in the British or Empire Armies. What did strike me was the number killed from the Oxford and Cambridge teams that would have been some of the country’s brightest men and the future of not just cricket but of Britain also. My own county (Lancashire) lost 5 men, but there is not a country team that is unaffected.
Final Wicket is one of the nicest and best commemorative books I have read that covers the Great War and cricket. This book is so well researched and well written the book is an absolute pleasure to read and I cannot recommend this book highly enough.
January 9, 2016
found this book very interesting looking all the deaths of first class and test players from around the world in ww1. very detailed and well researched
September 23, 2017
A weird book. A book about cricket players who remarked themselves by getting killed in the First World War. Sad. But dry. And quite irrelevant.
Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews