Herbert Sutcliffe

The metamorphosis of a cobbler's apprentice into the country gentleman at a Pudsey mansion is one of the many strands of this biography of a great Yorkshire and England batsman. Sutcliffe was orphaned at an early age and this chronicle charts his progress from humble origins to his inheritance of a cricket legacy bequeathed him by fellow townsmen, John Tunnicliffe and Major Booth, who both played for Yorkshire before World War I. Herbert Sutcliffe, with the looks of a matinee idol and a complex, often enigmatic personality, was a cricketer touched with genius. His career spanned the years between the wars and he performed with distinction in every one of those seasons. It is the success story with hardly a suspicion of failure. He scored 50, 138 first class runs, including 149 centuries and his remarkable Test average of 60.73 is the highest for an England batsman. In preparing this biography Alan Hill called upon the reminiscences of Bob Wyatt, Sir Donald Bradman, Len Hutton and Les Ames, among other illustrious contemporaries, to evoke the splendour of Sutcliffe's achievements, and his opening alliances with Jack Hobbs and Percy Holmes.