After he had been out of the side for ten years, playing only club and country house cricket, Yorkshire decided to give him, on merit, a regular place in his school vacation as a spin bowler of exceptional accuracy, in its mighty elevens on either side of the Great War. One August he took over the captaincy and steered the county home to the Championship. Selected for the 1920/21 tour of Australia, he upset the Australian crowd by writing for the Daily Express about a Test match he was playing in.
He was widely recognised as a leading authority on cricket and its heritage and helped to re-write the Laws of the game in 1947. He left much of his collection of cricketana to the Lord’s museum. His wit, laced with litotes and literary allusions, has been anthologised.
Few players of any era have matched the diversity of his contribution to the game. Martin Howe gives us a comprehensive account of a singular man of plural talents.
Martin Howe was born in Sheffield in 1936. After twelve years as a lecturer in economics at the Universities of Sheffield and Manchester, he joined the Civil Service where he held a number of senior posts. Since retiring from full-time employment in 1996, Martin has made a hobby of writing on Yorkshire cricket and cricketers.