First of the Summer Wine

by Harry Pearson

The remarkable story of three Yorkshire cricketers from the Golden Age - George Hirst, Wilfred Rhodes and Schofield Haigh - who transformed their county's fortunes, inspired a generation of cricketers and left a unique legacy on the game.Between them, Hirst, Rhodes and Haigh scored over 77,000 runs and took almost 9000 wickets in a combined 2500 appearances, helping Yorkshire to seven County Championship triumphs. The records they set will never be beaten, yet the three men - known throughout England as The Triumvirate - were born in two small villages just outside Huddersfield, in Last of the Summer Wine country . Hirst pioneered and perfected the art of swing and seam bowling, Rhodes took more first-class wickets than anyone else in history, while the genial Haigh's achievements as a bowler at Yorkshire have been surpassed only by his two close friends; their influence would extend far beyond England, as they all went to India to coach, laying the foundations of cricket in the subcontinent. Pearson, whose biography of Learie Constantine, Connie , won the MCC Book of the Year Award, brings the characters and the age vividly to life, showing how these cricketing stars came to symbolise the essence of Yorkshire . This was a time when the gritty northern professionals from the White Rose county took on some of the most glittering amateurs of the age, including W.G.Grace, C.B.Fry, Prince Ranji and Gilbert Jessop , and when writers such as Neville Cardus and J.M.Kilburn were on hand to bring their achievements to a wider audience. The First of the Summer Wine is a celebration of a vanished age, but also reveals how the efforts of Hirst, Rhodes and Haigh helped create the modern era, too.

336 pages, Hardcover

First published July 7, 2022

Reviews

[Colin · Rating 4 out of 5]

I loved this affectionate portrait of three early stars of Yorkshire cricket. George Hirst, Schofield Haigh and Wilfred Rhodes were born within a few miles and a few years of each other in and around Kirkheaton, Huddersfield in the 1870s and formed such a close companionship on and off the field that they were known as the Triumvirate. Theirs was a golden age of good humour, good sportsmanship, incredible cricketing feats and joy in their friendship and achievements, before what Harry Pearson calls ‘the age of grim’, the YCC of the mid-late Twentieth Century (and which to some degree lingers still: ‘the surly-looking men, the glowerers who ‘didn’t play cricket for fun’ and, indeed, in the case of the worst of them gave the impression they didn’t do much else for fun either’. Any follower of English cricket can picture several of these dour Yorkshiremen. But Hirst, Haigh and Rhodes were cut from a different cloth, although age and an enormously long career (which stretched to such an extent that it saw him bowl to both W. G. Grace and Don Bradman) found Rhodes still playing at the beginning of the ‘grim’ era. The careers of all three of these exceptional players saw the embedding of regular test series into the cricket calendar and Pearson is particularly enlightening and entertaining in his account of what touring was like for players in the days before air travel. It was also of course an era of gentlemen and players and while Lord Hawke, the driving force of Yorkshire cricket was considerably more enlightened than many county presidents, class frustrations and irritations are rarely buried for long.

[Shaun Taylor · Rating 5 out of 5]

An interesting read

Enjoyed this account of some incredible Yorkshiremen and the effect they had on the cricketing world.
If you have an interest in Cricket or Yorkshire history give this book a reas

[Ipswichblade · Rating 5 out of 5]

Excellent, well researched book. Harry Pearson certainly knows his stuff!

[Phil Read · Rating 5 out of 5]

A lovely book to wallow in the statistics of the Golden age, when everyone seems to take 100 wickets and score 1000 runs before the end of May!

[Peter · Rating 4 out of 5]

Enjoyable story of the triumvirate of great Yorkshire cricketers in the years prior to the Kaiser’s war and beyond.