Tom Cartwright

Author:

By Stephen Chalke

Format:

Hardback

Availability:

In print, usually dispatched within 5-7 days.

Price:

£16.00

Tagged with:

Cricket, Biography, Tom Cartwright, Warwickshire CCC, Somerset CCC

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Further Details

• Published: 31st Mar 2007
• ISBN: 0954488660
• Pages: 224

From the Publisher:

The flame of cricket has burned brightly in Tom Cartwright since, as a Coventry schoolboy, he was inspired by the enthusiasm of a dedicated teacher. At 16 he was taken onto the staff at Edgbaston, and there he fell under the influence of the coach Tiger Smith, whose playing days began in the Edwardian Age.

Tiger was a man before his time. Not only did he help Tom to become an outstanding cricketer but he also gave him insights that would set Tom on the path to becoming a great coach himself.

For 18 summers Tom played for Warwickshire, the outstanding medium-pace bowler of his generation, the only cricketer ever to score 10,000 runs and take 1,000 wickets for the county. Then he moved to Somerset where his first foray into coaching saw him working with the young Ian Botham and Viv Richards. Botham had returned from a spell on the ground staff at Lord's where they thought his bowling a joke. Tom quickly changed that. "Ian was one of the most receptive people I’ve ever worked with," he says.

For the last 30 years Tom has worked in Wales, becoming the first cricketer to be honoured by the National Coaching Federation's Hall of Fame.

A fiercely independent spirit, he has strong views on the game and the way it is being run. A proud man, loyal to the values of his working-class upbringing among the car factories of Coventry, he holds firmly to a vision of cricket as a people's game, rooted in communities and upholding high standards of craft skill and of behaviour. Not for him a game in thrall to accountants and television moguls.

As English cricket picks up the pieces from its disastrous winter in Australia, it could do worse than to listen to the voice of a man who, in the words of one contributor to this book, 'knows more about cricket than anyone I've ever met.'

Tom talks in this book about his life, about the changes he has seen in cricket, about his experience of South Africa and his part in the D'Oliveira affair. He is a perceptive companion, at times witty, at times angry, always passionate about the game to which he has given his life.

That flame still burns.