Herbert Sutcliffe

A national hero in his playing days, Herbert Sutcliffe belongs to a select band of all-time cricketing greats. Alan Hill's award-winning biography of the Yorkshire and England batsman charts his extraordinary transformation from cobbler's apprentice to urbane gentleman: one of the coolest, most determined and technically accomplished practitioners the game has ever known. Blessed with the looks of a matinee idol, Sutcliffe was a complex, often enigmatic, personality. As a cricketer, he was touched with genius. His career spanned exactly the years between the wars and he performed with distinction in every one of those seasons. He scored 50,138 first-class runs, including 149 centuries, and his remarkable Test average of 60.73 is the highest for an English batsman - higher than those of Hobbs, Hammond or Hutton. Herbert Sutcliffe: Cricket Maestro calls upon the reminiscences of Bob Wyatt, Sir Donald Bradman, Sir Len Hutton and Les Ames among other illustrious contemporaries, to evoke the splendour of Sutcliffe's achievements for Yorkshire and England, and to bring to life the vivacious story of one of the greatest batsmen ever.

Alan Hill was one of the foremost biographers of English cricketers. The Yorkshire-born writer and journalist also wrote highly acclaimed biographies of Herbert Sutcliffe, Hedley Verity, Johnny Wardle and Les Ames. He won the Cricket Society Literary Award on more than one occasion.