To the Wicket - Dudley Carew

“Mr Dudley Carew has not written too much for our gratitude,” wrote Mr Edmund Blunden some years ago, and this is only Mr Carew’s second cricket book, although his novel, “The Son of Grief,” had a professional cricketer as its hero.

Mr Carew, who from the early twenties until the outbreak of war travelled all over the country as a special correspondent of The Times, knows the game and the personalities in it. In this book he records something of the character of cricket in the years between the wars, recalls memorable matches, draws sketches of the players and generally shades in the cricketing map of England county by county.

His object is to catch the feel and flavour of the times, the savour of “the tent redolent of stale beer, trampled grass and hot canvas,” and to interpret the game going on outside. His prose is as far removed from the statistical text-book as from the esoteric essay and “To the Wicket” will find a permanent place in the literature of the game.

For this new edition of his book Mr Carew has written a new chapter entitled “What of the Future.”