For some years now I have been in the habit of beginning these half yearly overviews with a look at the titles I missed last time round, but which have been published in the last six months. It is a practice I have decided to drop as I am not convinced it adds a great deal, so from now on I shall not mention such titles if I have already reviewed them.

There is no doubt that 2025 was a vintage year for cricket literature, so it was never going to be likely that this year would match it, but there are nonetheless some interesting titles which, I have no doubt, will keep us entertained in the coming months.

To star with there are several titles due from Fairfield Books, as well as their regular offering of the 2026 Cricketer’s Who’s Who and the continued quarterly appearance of The Nightwatchman. Those apart the new book that the management seem most keen on is a collection of 40 poems by Ben Wyatt that capture the excitement of the 2005 Ashes series. It bears the title Ragged Splendour: My Summer on Fire. It is a book which, after recent events, England supporters who remember those heady days of two decades ago will turn to with a rheumy eye.

There are two titles due from Oliver Randall, a writer whose work I have to confess to not being familiar with, although I clearly will be by this time next year. The first, due in May, is The Literary Cricketers, sub-titled The untold story of a team that left a permanent legacy on English Culture. It concerns men like Arthur Conan Doyle, who played First Class cricket for MCC at the turn of the twentieth century. Primarily a batsman his best known cricketing achievement was however his single First Class wicket, that of WG Grace in 1900. Cricket lovers PG Wodehouse, JM Barrie, Jerome K Jerome and Evelyn Waugh will also feature.

Randall’s second book is due later in the year, but will be from a different genre. Lord’s and Maharajahs is an account of India’s first Test tour, to England in 1932. There was just a single Test, won by a Douglas Jardine led England, but not before fast bowler Mohammad Nissar had bowled both England openers on the first morning as the home side struggled to 19-3. The cloak and dagger story of the tourists captaincy will doubtless be the most interesting part of a story that was told at the time by just one writer, ‘Three Stumps’, in a slim book published in Madras that is, today, extremely difficult to find anywhere.

The best selling Fairfield title of 2026 will, in my view, be one of two, although I am sure that the third innings of Scott Oliver’s Sticky Dogs and Stardust: When the Legends Played in the Leagues will sell well. The two however are on the subject of Gloucestershire legends. One is a hero of not so long ago, Mark Alleyne, whose life story will be told by Stephen Chalke, and the other is the autobiography of a man from a generation further back, Zaheer Abbas, the release of which will coincide with the visit of the 2026 Pakistan tourists.

Nd there are two other important titles due from Fairfield. The first concerns the increasing troubling issue of state school cricket and what should be done to encourage it and ensure that recreational cricket exists for generation and that the state schools produce their share of top class cricketers. The other is a history of women’s cricket in Somerset. 2025 marked the first year that the county fielded a professional women’s cricket team. This, coming in its 150th anniversary, was a momentous occasion. However, the history of women’s cricket in the county of Somerset leading up to this point is vast, and largely undocumented. The book will seek to change that.

Moving towards the south coast Pitch have a number of books due next year. I shall start with what to me seems liklely to be the most interesting, albeit it is not actually due to the second half of the year. That is a new biography of Gubby Allen by Mark Peel. The book should be unnecessary because Allen has already been the subject of a full biography, Gubby Allen: Man of Cricket, by that eminent writer of the past EW ‘Jim’ Swanton.

The problem with Swanton’s book is that it is the worst sort of hagiography, in that it pretends to be something else. Hagiography is never a good thing, but at least if the writer acknowledges he is writing that sort of a book it is not quite so frustrating. When someone as pre-eminent as Swanton purports to write an objective account but comes nowhere near doing so then the result is a disservice to history. Allen had many flaws and I am confident that Peel’s book will, whilst acknowledging Allen’s achievements, give a full picture of the man.

Moving backwards the first Pitch book of 2026 will, I believe, be Mark Sands’ Stars on Sunday which is due at the end of March. It will certainly strike a chord with my contemporaries as it is a look back at the history of the old John Player League which, from 1969, allowed us all to watch county cricket on BBC2 every Sunday afternoon, back in the days when bowlers were limited to a 15 yard run up and a score of 200 in 40 overs was considered exceptional.

A Picture of England: Twenty Years Photographing the England Cricket Team Home and Away by Gareth Copley-Jones (the photographer) and Rory Dollard (the storyteller) will follow soon afterwards and will doubtless be a revealing portrait of the highs and lows of a period that has been something of a rollercoaster ride for followers of the England team.

And there are three more titles due from Pitch, two in June and one I know not when. The two are Women in White form Raf Nicholson, which is clearly a book about the women’s game and I hope the title aping that of the famous Wilkie Collins novel means it well delve back into the distant past. Tim Brooks’ The Englishman, on the other hand I know nothing at all about. The title suggests a biography, but Brooks’ track record does not. The third is a book from my childhood hero Frank Hayes which, I believe, is not exactly an autobiography, albeit a book something along those lines.

Max Books have three titles in the offing, one of those a limited edition of the aforementioned Frank Hayes book. The other two are another literary title, this one on William Blake and Cricket, from Malcolm Lorimer. The second is from Bob Hilton and deals with another aspect of the life of Neville Cardus, on this occasion his time as assistant cricket professional at Shrewsbury School, prior to the Great War and his subsequent life as a journalist.

Red Rose Books, whose output in recent months has been considerable, only have two titles they can confirm at this stage for 2026. The first is out later this month, and is certainly a niche publication from Stephen Musk. Cricket Back in Blighty: Taking a Break from the White Man’s Burden. The book puts in context ten cricket tours that took place between the wars and saw teams of expatriates from West Africa, so what is now Ghana and Nigeria, visit Musk’s home county and the source of a goodly propertion of his writings, Norfolk.

The second Red Rose title is also from Musk, and that one is from the other major source of his inspiration, North America. This one is a biography of a leading Philadelphian batsman. The title will be Hand in Glove; George Patterson and Philadelphia Cricket. Despite this I would however be very surprised if more books and monographs did not appear from Martin Tebay, as either publisher or author.

And we can also look forward to three more monographs from David Battersby, all on the subject of Pakistan cricket. The first will concern Pakistan’s visit to England in 1967, one that was disappointing overall for the visitors, but which did produce a memorable innings from Asif Iqbal at the Oval. Later in the year there will also be another monograph on England’s visit to Pakistan ten years later, and in between the two an appreciation of the eldest of the Mohammad brothers, Wazir, who passed away in October last year at the grand old age of 95.

Steve Smith, whose output in 2025 has been prodigious, intends to carry on with his program of publishing accounts of the tours made to Philadelphia during Victorian and Edwardian times. He also has the three somewhat better known tours of England by the Philadelphians to cover so we can expect regular offerings from him. In addition he is also contemplating a book on the subject of SF Barnes, and his cricketing achievements (of which there were many) after his fiftieth birthday.

The first half of 2026 will not be the busiest in terms of publishing for the ACS, but in addition to their usual statistical volumes; The First-Class Counties Second XI Annual 2026; the ACS International Cricket Yearbook 2026; and, as an online publication after last year’s hard copy experiment, ACS Women’s Yearbook 2026, all of which should be out before the new English season starts, they do have a couple more books due.

The first one is another book in the Lives in Cricket series, and comes with a copper bottomed guarantee of being excellent because the author is Max Bonnell. For those unfamiliar with the subject, Jack Walsh, he was a late starter and did not play serious competitive cricket until he was 20. He was 27 when he first played for New South Wales, and 33 when he signed his first professional contract with Leicestershire. Wartime robbed him of what should have been six prime years of his career, and yet he still captured 1,190 wickets in first-class cricket and won a reputation as one of the most entertaining players in the county ga...

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