Stumps & Runs & Rock 'n' Roll

Stumps & Runs & Rock 'n' Roll is Tim Quelch's 60-year account of growing up and growing older with cricket, spanning the period between Queen Elizabeth's coronation in 1952 and the present day. Scandals and trends, unforgettable events, and heroes come and go in English cricket just as in Quelch's vivid backdrop of cultural change, while the fortunes of the Test side oscillate as wildly as his ever-shifting soundtrack of popular music. The book features telling vignettes of famous and not-so-famous cricketers seen in action by the author throughout his life—including Freddie Trueman, Wes Hall, Brian Statham, Graeme Pollock, John Snow, Peter Burge, and Jeff Thomson—whose lasting impressions merge with those of triumph and adversity, pop, and politics. This is a life not so much measured by coffee spoons as by cricket scores, with many of its abiding memories impaled upon a particular melody or riff.