Description
Book Synopsis''A highly entertaining read, deftly melding social history with sporting memoir and travelogue'' Mail on Sunday
A history of Latin America through cricket
Cricket was the first sport played in almost every country of the Americas - earlier than football, rugby or baseball. In 1877, when England and Australia played the inaugural Test match at the MCG, Uruguay and Argentina were already ten years into their derby played across the River Plate.
The visionary cricket historian Rowland Bowen said that, during the highpoint of cricket in South America between the two World Wars, the continent could have provided the next Test nation. In Buenos Aires, where British engineers, merchants and meatpackers flocked to make their fortune, the standard of cricket was high: towering figures like Lord Hawke and Plum Warner took star-studded teams of Test cricketers to South America, only to be beaten by Argentina. A combined Argentine, Brazilian and Chilea
Trade Review
A highly entertaining read, deftly melding social history with sporting memoir and travelogue * Mail on Sunday *
Full of diverting titbits . . . Coyne and Abraham's dedication, meticulous research and humility before their subject . . . a serious social history, sprinkled with cliche-free travel writing * Spectator *
Electrifying . . . I urge this book on anyone who loves cricket, or Latin America, or travel, or history of all kinds, or storytelling * The Cricketer *
Captivating . . . absorbing . . . not only a cricket book but a treatise on history of Latin America through cricket with plenty of academic inputs extensively scholarly researched publication deserved a place on the household bookshelf * Wisden Cricket Monthly *
A masterpiece . . . it's going to be read in a hundred years' time * Peter Oborne *
The fascinating, largely untold, story of Latin America cricket * Choice *
