Cricket's Burning Passion

Authors:

By Scyld Berry, Rupert Peploe

Format:

Hardback

Availability:

In print, usually dispatched within 5-7 days.

Price:

£17.99 £15.99 (Save 11%)

Tagged with:

Cricket, History, Ivo Bligh, The Ashes, England, Australia

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Further Details

• Published: 26th Oct 2006
• ISBN: 0413776271
• Pages: 256
• Size: 234mm x 153mm

From the Publisher:

When English cricket 'died at the Oval on 29th August 1882', the mock obituary notice published in the Sporting Times added that 'the body will be cremated and the ashes taken to Australia'. Less than three weeks later the Hon. Ivo Bligh set sail for Australia on board the SS Peshawur with a single objective - to recover those ashes and restore pride to English cricket. By the time the Test series began on 30th December 1882, Bligh had set his heart on another prize as well - the hand of Florence Morphy, a young woman in the employ of Lady Janet Clarke, wife of Sir William and chatelaine of Rupertsville, a grand mansion near Melbourne.

On board the Peshawur, Bligh was accompanied by six members of his team and five others joined later when the ship reached Suez. The passage to Australia was anything but smooth. The Peshawur was involved in a collision and was compelled to return to Colombo. When the cricketers finally arrived in Australia, much later than planned, they were called upon to fulfil fixtures arranged against local opposition almost before they had unpacked. More cricket matches followed as did the inevitable round of social functions and at one of these Ivo Bligh met Florence Morphy for the first time. Within weeks he had written to his father Lord Darnley, seeking approval to marry.

Bligh and his team won the three match Test series against their hosts by 2-1. The margin was tight, but English pride was restored. A year later, in 1884, he and Florence were finally married.

Cricket's Burning Passion is an historic account of the very first Ashes tour and a love story involving England's aristocratic cricket captain and a young Australian piano teacher. Drawing on previously unseen diaries of Bligh and his wife as well as family memorabilia and hundreds of letters, Scyld Berry and Rupert Peploe have vividly captured the period, the cricket and the beginning of a human story that would endure for more than forty years.