B&D New book offers a fascinating insight into cricket's history in city

ORGANISED cricket is such a fundamental and essential part of today’s recreational landscape that it’s hard to imagine a time when it did not exist, but that’s the starting point for an absorbing new book that explores the development of the sport in the Bristol area.

- Steve HILL

Trevor Crouch, the president of the Bristol & District League, and Bristol United Banks stalwart Edwin Morris have teamed up to produce the 164-page tome.

And it’s a treasure trove of facts, figures and fascinating insights that takes readers on a journey from the first recorded match in the city in 1752 - on Durdham Down when a Bristol XI hosted a London XI - through to 1973 and the introduction of league cricket.

Hundreds of hours of painstaking research have put the spotlight back on a long list of personalities who played important roles in shaping the game we know today.

For starters, how about Charles Richardson, an apprentice engineer to Marc Brunel - Isambard’s father - on the building of the Thames Tunnel and who later worked with the great man himself on the Severn and Box Tunnels.

Richardson, described as “Bristol cricket's forgotten revolutionary” — came up with the idea of the modern bat as he designed the cane handle which he cut into the willow blade by a tapered splice.