Silver in the Golden Age
Martin Chandler |Published: 2023
Pages: 146
Author: Cardwell, Ronald and Anderson, Nathan
Publisher: The Cricket Publishing Company
Rating: 3.5 stars
It is more than a century since the ‘Golden Age’ of cricket ended, yet the period’s fascination for researchers and, presumably, readers, shows no sign of abating. In December of 2023 alone we reviewed three new publications rooted in the period, and now we have our first for 2024.
Of the December three two concerned the great Lancastrian JT Tyldesley, a man who Ronald Cardwell and Nathan Anderson would doubtless concede was ‘Gold in the Golden Age’, which explains the very apt title of this one. It is a biography of the Australian batsman Harry Donnan, no Victor Trumper, but a man good enough to be selected for five Tests against England, even if he managed a total of just 75 runs in his ten visits to the crease.
So why a biography of Donnan after all these years? The answer to that one seems to lie in the identity of the authors. Ronald Cardwell has been digging around in obscure corners of the game for years, and Nathan Anderson, grandson of former Australian skipper Brian Booth, seems to share that interest so, Donnan having cropped up in earlier projects the two have worked on, a biography was a logical step.
As a subject Donnan was an excellent choice. He came from a large family and had helpful descendants who were able to give real assistance to the authors. Official and press records also provided much material and Donnan, whose wife was the sister of Syd Gregory, lived on into his 92nd year before departing this mortal coil in 1956.
Donnan played First Class cricket for 13 summers between 1887/88 and 1900/01, and Grade cricket for a few more years after that. He toured England once, in 1896 when, outside the Tests, he enjoyed some success, scoring 1,009 runs and making the highest score of his career, 167 against Derbyshire, the county from where his forebears hailed.
The two chapters that deal with the 1896 trip are, perhaps inevitably to English eyes, the most interesting in the book, particularly the story of a somewhat unusual single wicket match between Donnan and EM Grace. Also of interest is the account of how Donnan became the first man to score a century in the Sheffield Shield, the irony of which is that had Donnan not, during a partnership with Harry Moses, run one short thus meaning Moses was out for 99 rather than 100, he would have been the second.
An interesting character, Donnan does not seem to have been the easiest man to get on with and from interviews that he gave in retirement also seems to have held views that, in Australia in particular, would have proved unpopular at times. Foremost amongst those were the opinion he expressed during the Bodyline series that Harold Larwood had been crucified.
Silver in the Golden Age is, as is always the case with this publisher, a superb production, beautifully designed, well illustrated and with a statistical appendix and an index. Not strictly a limited edition all copies are nonetheless signed by both authors. The book can be purchased from Roger Page.
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