Barley Cricket Club features in new cricket book

Still the Best Loved Game? surveys the state of English cricket through 17 matches in the 2018 season, including a match between Barley CC and Buntingford CC, to which the chapter on village cricket is devoted.   

The book also features cricket at every level, from Lord's Test and Roses Match to women's one-day international, Twenty20 cricket, and school and university games - making it the most wide-ranging appraisal of an English cricket season ever published.   

Still the Best Loved Game? takes its inspiration from Geoffrey Moorhouse's 1979 classic, The Best Loved Game. However, in the forty years since that book was published, much has changed in both English cricket and in society. With major challenges facing the game - the controversy over The Hundred, the lack of free-to-air television coverage leading to dwindling audiences and participation, the disappearance of cricket from many schools, and the almost complete absence of black cricketers in the county game - the time is right for a reappraisal of the state of English cricket, from grass roots to Test level.    

The book will be of interest to anyone who likes cricket, and especially to supporters of Barley Cricket Club. Still the Best Loved Game? is published by Two Hens Press at £7.99 (paperback). It is available from Amazon and through bookshops.