Far from Lord's

Far from Lord's follows England's demanding overseas tours between 1953 and 1969, a period when cricketers - and the writers who shadowed them - spent months at a time far from home. These were politically fraught years. The weather could be punishing, the opposition fiercely competitive and the crowds sometime riotous. The story builds toward the dramatic 1969 tour of Pakistan, when two England batters fled as a mob surged on to the field, and the team escaped by air that night with the situation threatening war. Along the way we meet a rich cast of cricketing legends - Hutton, May, Cowdrey, Dexter - and the journalists who captured both the cricket and the cultures they encountered, including Alan Ross, Ian Peebles and Jim Swanton. Far from Lord's also explores the captaincy and selection, England's cautious tactical style, player behaviour and the management of long tours, the D'Oliveira affair, the toll of illness and injury, plus the heated debate over whether wives should accompany the team.