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One Long and Beautiful Summer
- A Short Elegy for Red-Ball Cricket
- Narrated by: Mark Meadows
- Length: 6 hrs and 36 mins
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One Long and Beautiful Summer
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Summary
A multiple award-winning sports writer.
One of Duncan Hamilton's favourite writers on cricket, Edmund Blunden, wrote how he felt going to watch a game: 'You arrive early, earlier even than you meant...and you feel a little guilty at the thought of the day you propose to give up to sheer luxury.'
Following Neville Cardus' assertion that 'there can be no summer in this land without cricket', Hamilton plotted the games he would see in 2019 and wrote down reflectively on some of the cricket that blessed his own sight. It would be captured in the context of the coming season in case subsequent summers and the imminent arrival of the Hundred made that impossible. He would write in the belief that after this season the game might never be quite the same again.
He visits Welbeck Colliery Cricket Club to see Nottinghamshire play Hampshire at the tiny ground of Sookholme, gifted to the club by a local philanthropist who takes money on the gate, his village team at Menston in Yorkshire, the county ground at Hove; he watches Ben Stokes' heroics at Headingley, marvels at Jofra Archer's gift of speed in a Second XI fixture for Sussex against Gloucestershire in front of 74 people and three well-behaved dogs and realises when he reaches the last afternoon of the final county match of the season at Taunton, 'How blessed I am to have been born here. How I never want to live anywhere else. How much I love cricket.'
One Long and Beautiful Summer forms a companion volume to Hamilton's 2009 classic, A Last English Summer. It is sports writing at its most accomplished and evocative, confirming his reputation as the finest contemporary chronicler of the game.
Critic reviews
"Hamilton's book is a marvel.... I'm not sure he could write a dull sentence if he tried." (Spectator)
What listeners say about One Long and Beautiful Summer
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Overall5 out of 5 stars
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- yorkieboy
- 20-06-21
A Long and Strange Summer
As the author alludes to in his Afterword the long and beautiful summer became even more prophetic when not just the Hundred was on the horizon .
This is a homily to all that is good in the traditions of cricket,although I baulked somewhat at Surrey being held up as the paragons of virtue in their stance on protecting the current structure of the game
Easy to maintain, as the self proclaimed Manchester United of cricket are well cushioned by their bank balance and the hoovering up of many world class players.
However this is just a personal view which does not detract from the author’s ability to paint an alluring and nostalgic eulogy to the Summer game.
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- Carl S
- 13-05-23
Perfect line and length
Expertly written and read, really putting you in the various county grounds and moments, be they the mind blowingly exciting or the more beautifully mundane.
Mr Hamilton is just so right about the need to protect and invest in the longer forms of cricket against the proliferation of short format games.
A wonderful read/listen.
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- Phil james
- 16-09-22
Good listen
Didn’t agree entirely with the author’s thoughts on cricket going forward. Nonetheless it was an interesting listen, and will now go in search of Duncan’s previous works.
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- Prothwell1985
- 08-11-22
Beautifully written and read
This goes down as one of my favourite audiobooks of all time. Narration by Mark Meadows is fantastic. The book is a fantastic reminder of why we love County and Test cricket so much, from the grounds they are played at, to the crowds that attend. I listened to this book twice throughout the course of the summer, and I have no doubt that I will be listening to it every spring for the foreseeable future to stoke up the excitement for the approaching cricket season.
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2 people found this helpful
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- Mr D Bunting
- 17-07-21
An Fantastic Emotional Rollercoaster - Perfect!
probably the best cricket book I have read.
I don't intend to critique the book, suffice to say Duncan summed up my every thought, my every emotion, of this great game.
if I could write a book, it would be this.
( he also has similar feelings about county cricket and that blasted 100).
this has to be read by every cricket lover, and even those potentially attracted by its beauty.
thank you Duncan.
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- Michael
- 08-02-24
There can be no summer without Cricket
A marvellous book that leaves you dreaming about the County Championship, Test Matches and Cricket
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