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Test Cricket

A History (SUNDAY TIMES SPORTS BOOK OF THE YEAR 2025)

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Test Cricket

By: Tim Wigmore
Narrated by: Richard Atlee
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About this listen

 WILLIAM HILL SPORTS BOOK OF THE YEAR AWARD SHORTLISTED 2025

'Wonderfully wide-focused, unfailingly readable and laced with passages of insightful analysis, Tim Wigmore's history of test cricket is a true tour de force.' David Kynaston

'Much more than simply a history of Test cricket, this is a colourful, modern take on the sport's most treasured format. I've commentated on over 400 Tests and learned so much from this wonderful book. Wigmore lays bare the challenges Test cricket faces and the fight required to preserve it.' Jonathan Agnew, BBC Test Match Special

'Hugely informative and enjoyable - a fantastic achievement. A must-read for all cricket lovers.' - Peter Frankopan

'Excellent' Mike Atherton

'A vibrant, global history of the oldest form of cricket. Told across decades and vast spans of geography, using history, memoir, stats, science and the voices of greats living and gone, it is destined to be a classic . . . Monumental.' The Hindu

The first narrative history of Test cricket.

Test cricket is on the cusp of its 150th anniversary. For the first time, Test Cricket: A History tells the full, gripping story of the players and stories that have shaped the game's evolution since 1877.
Award-winning author Tim Wigmore brings to life both Test cricket on the pitch and the game's social significance around the world. This captivating tour is illuminated by dozens of exclusive interviews with the game's greatest players, including Sachin Tendulkar, Pat Cummins, Michael Holding, Muthiah Muralidaran, Kevin Pietersen, Ian Chappell, Dale Steyn and Rahul Dravid.

From Bodyline to Bazball, the golden age to the rise of West Indies, and Shane Warne to Ian Botham, readers will come to appreciate Test cricket's remarkable history like never before.©2025 Tim Wigmore Cricket Sports Sports History Game

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Critic reviews

This encyclopedic history, packed with famous incident and arresting analysis, should be in everyone's cricket library (Rahul Bhattacharya)
This exceptional blend of traditional history and journalistic research gives us a cricket history like no other (Scyld Berry, Daily Telegraph and author of Cricket: The Game of Life)
Wonderfully wide-focused, unfailingly readable and laced with passages of insightful analysis, Tim Wigmore's history of test cricket is a true tour de force (David Kynaston)
A riveting, authoritative, and passionate chronicle of cricket's greatest game: the Test (Joseph O'Neill, author of Netherland)
Much more than simply a history of Test cricket, this is a colourful, modern take on the sport's most treasured format. I've commentated on over 400 Tests and learned so much from this wonderful book. Wigmore lays bare the challenges Test cricket faces and the fight required to preserve it (Jonathan Agnew, BBC Test Match Special)
A vital and fresh history of the game's legacy format; most significantly, given it remains cricket's most exclusive format, it is an inclusive history. Wigmore meticulously charts the global forces that have shaped Test cricket (Osman Samiuddin, author of The Unquiet Ones: A History of Pakistan Cricket)
Tim Wigmore has established himself as one of cricket's most incisive analysts and writers, blending his engaging, innovative use of modern data with a deep knowledge of the game's history. These qualities come together in this compelling book (Andy Zaltzman, Test Match Special)
Hugely informative and enjoyable - a fantastic achievement. A must-read for all cricket lovers (Peter Frankopan)
Tim Wigmore's new book Test Cricket: a History charts a narrative history of the longest format with contributions from the game's biggest characters. A riveting and lovingly researched tome thrumming with detail, anecdote and incisive facts (The Guardian)
A great eye for fascinating details and the bizarre serendipities of history (New Statesman)
Above all the book shows why Test cricket matters (Yorkshire Post)
Tim Wigmore is possibly the finest current cricket writer for providing thoughtful analysis . . . [he] negotiates a huge field deftly and elegantly (Country Life)
Rich in anecdotes and the perfect accompaniment to the English cricketing summer (Choice)
Wigmore has written a splendid, comprehensive book full of good stories...sparkling and entertaining... (The Spectator)
All stars
Most relevant
What doesn’t it cover? Excellent overview. Good listen and narration also. Provides rich history up to the modern day.

Thorough and detailed

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A wonderful tale of the game through great teams and players. It's packed full of little details about every team.

A wonderful tale of the game through great teams and players

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What a superb book, would thoroughly recommend to anyone with even a passing interest in the topic. TW has researched the topic very thoroughly, and his account is filled with the beauty, character and general all round magnificence of the finest format of the finest physical manifestation of chess. Like with all of the best books, I only wish I could go back to a world in which I hadn’t read it. Thank you.

Brilliant in its breadth, depth and cold eyed love for the game.

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"In-depth" is certainly the appropriate phrase! It covers Test Matches since the beginning right up to 2024 sparing no detail.
If I had a couple of observations I would suggest that there was rather too much emphasis on the last 30 years, and the (presumably) useful accompanying pdf is unreadable.
Statistics are inevitable in any cricket history, but the writer doesn't rely too heavily on them.
All in all a good well-researched work on a perennially interesting subject

Excellent in-depth account

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Deals with some interesting subjects but reads like a series of articles stitched together . Adds nothing new. At times patronising and judgemental about behaviour and attitudes that were common place at the time. Sounds like it was written with the help of AI. In places factually inaccurate. Hansie Conje died on a plane departing Johberg not stellenbosch. And a whole chapter on Murri telling us what a great record he has without a single mention of the controversy over his action let alone an opinion from thd author

Very factual reads a bit like it was written by AI

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