Thompson Harry Wallis Myers (1 results)

1st edition. Hardcover. Fine in fine dustwrapper, fractionally creased at spine ends. The story of a terrible assortment of amateur cricketers - the Captain Scott X1 - and its attempts to play in every continent bar Europe in one three-week period. Very funny, deserving to be ranked amongst the best cricketing writing in the game's literary history. The author died from cancer just after finishing the book. For extra fun, here also is an uncommon article disbound from The Strand Magazine of 1903 entitled 'Eccentric Cricket Matches'. The author, Mr Wallis Myers, gives some very amsuing accounts of several eccentric matches. including one at Lord's between Smokers and Non-Smokers, in Surrey between married and single ladies, in Cambridge between residents and undergraduates ('Mr Kirwan, of King's College, though only a youth weighing nine stone, was quite irresistible from his remarkable speed'), at Waterloo on the site of the battle, in Shanghai with a party of Chinese ('when the game began all the fielders were gathered together in a bunch, creating a defeaning noise as they shouted at each other'), a match on ice in the Arctic Ocean in 1822 between the crews of two of His Majesty's ships, and, my favourite, a single-wicket match where a one-armed man, with the assistance of his ten-year-old son, challenged Silas Quarterman, 'who kept the little inn on the borders of Streathham Common and had the assistance of his Newfoundland dog which had been trained to field the ball with almost human intelligence'. Wonderfully funny, both book and article, a unique pairing.