The Tour: The Story of the England Cricket Team Overseas 1877-2023

by Simon Wilde

An England cricket tour is a unique phenomenon, with its own pressures, challenges and remarkable highlights. It presents its participants - shorn of the usual support networks they enjoy at home - with a prolonged test of skill, physical stamina and mental resilience. Now Simon Wilde, author of the acclaimed The Biography , examines in The Tour the delicate chemistry that makes for a successful tour and why others disintegrate so badly. Since the 19th century, England has been sending its cricket teams around the world to take on their rivals. Initially, these trips were undertaken by boat, meaning players could be away for many months, often in alien conditions. With air travel reducing journey time and facilities much improved, the challenges still homesickness, isolation, hostile crowds - not to mention an opposition determined to win at all costs. For some, the experience can be too much, while others thrive in the heat and dust of battle.The Tour looks at all aspects of the history of England's cricketers abroad, including the burden placed on the captain, who is expected to combine on-field acumen with the deft touch of an ambassador off it. There have been diplomatic incidents aplenty, from Douglas Jardine’s Bodyline tactics to Len Hutton’s tour of the Caribbean, as well as the special pressures of playing in countries such as India and Pakistan during periods of unrest. Touring has never lost its romance. There have been serious scrapes, from court cases to car crashes, but also much fun, whether joining in with the Barmy Army or David Gower famously taking a Tiger Moth for a spin. Wilde explains how this seemingly anachronistic activity has been adapted from an instrument of imperial soft power to a relentless cricket circus that never ends. Simon Wilde has once again created a masterpiece of insight, information and entertainment, an aspect of cricketing life that few will ever the tour.

Genres: Sports

592 pages, Hardcover

First published March 30, 2023

Reviews

[Eyejaybee · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a comprehensive history of the overseas tours by England’s cricket teams, stretching from 1878 up to the Ashes tour of Australia in the winter of 2021/22.

Simon Wilde has been reporting on cricket for decades and followed a lot of these tours himself. Obviously, the initial prospect of a tour to a warmer climate during the depths of the English winter is alluring, but Wilde’s account shows how arduous such tours can become.

In the early days, such tours were taken under the aegis of the Marylebone Cricket Club (MCC), rather than badged as England. Several weeks were required in which to cram in all the necessary games (which would include a full test series against the host country’s national team, strewn among a handful of other fixtures against local and regional teams, often of widely varying calibre, and on some unkempt, and occasionally downright hazardous, pitches. Indeed, up until the early 1960s, not only was a great swathe of time required to accommodate the various fixtures, but teams might find themselves spending several weeks on a boat sailing to and them from the host country.

Cricket tours encountered all sorts of problems, ranging from local political unrest and agitations against unpopular governments to full on demonstrations aimed at the cricketers themselves. Administrative and consular support was not always available, and shortage of money could often be a problem. Sometimes the host country had only sporadic provision of aspects of infrastructure taken for granted back home. Often the attitudes of the players or their managers provoked wider problems.

Wilde delve into all of these issues and more. Having been a passionate cricket fan for many years, I was engrossed by much of the content of this book. It is always nice to have distant memories of hitherto long forgotten incidents sparked into life. My own slight cavil was that the book would have benefited from a few more light-hearted anecdotes, which might have broken up hat occasionally felt like a turgid serving of Geoffrey Boycott’s batting of the deadest of dead pitches.

[Jonny Dean · Rating 3 out of 5]

Fair play because the research and knowledge of this is unreal. But many parts just didn't interest me too much and I found myself reading without taking it in quite a bit. Is it me or the book? A bit of both probably. I prefer recent modern history such as the tours under Cook, Strauss and Vaughan and then the 1970's, 80's, 90's. That stuff was very interesting and as we all know I'm a sucker for insights into England camps and players personal opinions and lives, not in a bad way I just find it interesting. This stuff is probably easier to research and document than the older stuff but still the older stuff didn't really interest me. The Bodyline series, sure, great consuming read but all the other old stuff just isn't really up my street. Take no credit away from the author as it really is a good effort just not to my personal taste. It picks up kind of at the back middle / back of the book as it discusses the fallings out, deaths, births and insights into England camps which I enjoy.

[Bob Bamber · Rating 5 out of 5]

A really enjoyable and detailed read about all things to do with English cricket tours overseas from the 1850s through to the present day (2023). It jumps around quite a bit, and it's very detailed (which I think adds more than it detracts from), but be prepared for a lot of footnotes, endnotes and some end of chapter sections that read more like an anthology than continous prose.

But there's a lot of great things in here, I particularly enjoyed the chapter relating to the outward travel, there's a pretty even spread of focus around all eras throughout the book but some lend themselves to the earlier England tours - the boat trips, the months long build up to first test matches and much more.

If you're like me, a sign of a good book is one that makes you want to read more around, and this definitely does that.

[Brian Harris · Rating 4 out of 5]

Very well researched and meticulous book about England cricket tours from 1877 . Very detailed with some very insightful examples of the challenges faced and not just on the cricket field - travelling, boredom, pressures on flying the Great\Britain flag Empire/ Commonwealth, stress, ill health, mental issues + of course the pressures of test cricket . A very thought provoking chapter on the mental well being of players with some good recent examples . Particularly poignant as a few days after finishing book Graham Thorpe died - Wilde had ghost written Thorpe's autobiography a few years earlier. S

[Brian Haining · Rating 4 out of 5]

I'd assumed the book would cover England tours in their entirety in chronological order. However, it's instead divided into elements of touring such as selection, travel, performance, etc, and then provides snippets across all tours within each chapter, and this works very well. The author has tremendous knowledge of the subject, and I constantly found interesting unknown facts. The only slight negative was because the book covers so many aspects of the game, over such a long period of time, it is rarely able to provide more than 'surface' information on these facts. Good read

[Jan · Rating 5 out of 5]

I'm not 100% sure how this stayed so compelling, with such high quality storytelling, and yet so detail-dense for almost 500 pages. Even the footnotes are a must-read goldmine- how many times have England played during a solar eclipse on tour? How on earth did Ray Illingworth's team go six whole tests without an LBW decision going their way in Australia? A rhetorical question, that one. And who is the only England bowler to take a wicket with their first ball of an away series? (probably also rhetorical - of course it's Jimmy).

[Max Deacon-Thomas · Rating 2 out of 5]

Was hoping for a book on some bizarre things to happen on tour over time. Instead this runs through some of the practical logistics of touring, without that much actually about the cricket matches themselves until quite a long way through.

[Tom · Rating 4 out of 5]

A good book but not what I was expecting

I was expecting a review of each tour in turn, however the book took a different approach by looking at the issues of touring and then going through how it effected touring for the last 160 years.

The analysis was good and showed the issues especially in the times of sailing to Australia, South Africa, the Caribbean or the sub continent. Despite this I felt the 21st century tours got a bit more of their fair share of analysis and the period from the First World War to the 90s less than their fair share.

Although a cricket fan, it didn’t engage me as much as I thought it would leading to the longer reading time.

[Derek Bell · Rating 2 out of 5]

Was looking forward to reading this but it turned into a bit of a trudge, like an interminable boat trip to Australia ☹️ An endless reeling of short stories skipping across tours meaning it lacked coherence