Who Only Cricket Know tells the story of the second most
controversial tour in English cricket history after Bodyline
and has not been revisited since two tour books came out
in the immediate aftermath. The cricket is dramatic, the
key characters fascinating, and it is awash with incidents on and off the field, many of them involving race
and social class.
This was the first tour in which MCC travelled by plane (although they returned home on the boat) and the
first in they were captained by a professional player – Len Hutton. It was also Hutton’s Yorkshire teammate
Fred Trueman’s debut tour and for the opposition, the Three Ws were in their pomp and a young man called
Garfield Sobers made his international bow.
David Woodhouse has meticulously researched every aspect of the tour as well as carrying out a number of
interviews, retaining the nuances and subtleties of the different levels of the story. He takes us through the
lead-up to the tour, the warm-up games and the five Test matches, as well as the recriminations that took
place both at Lord’s and in the West Indies in the tour’s aftermath.