It is the only county cricket ground in the United Kingdom where you can both see the sea and feel the breeze coming off the adjoining estuary – the St Helen’s ground in Swansea where some memorable days in cricket history have thrilled the crowds shoe-horned into the tiered enclosures lining the boundaries at one of county cricket’s most idiosyncratic venues. It was at the Swansea ground where Glamorgan secured a dramatic two-day victory over the 1951 South Africans; where the guile and spin of Johnnie Clay confounded and becalmed Australian batting legend Don Bradman; where during the late 1940s, John Arlott sat in the BBC radio commentary box, alongside Swansea’s favourite son, the famed poet Dylan Thomas; where in 1976 West Indian legend Clive Lloyd struck the world’s fastest double-hundred; where Matthew Maynard struck an astonishing hundred on first-class debut in 1985; where Glamorgan defeated the Australians on successive tours in 1964 and 1968; and where – during the latter season – Garry Sobers became the first man in cricket history to hit six sixes in an over. This book is the fifth in the highly acclaimed Cricket Witness series and its publication, during the summer of 2018, celebrates the 50th anniversary of Sobers’ feat at the Swansea ground against the occasional spin of Malcolm Nash. Besides recounting all of these feats, and a number of other memorable occasions in cricket history at St Helen’s, this book also traces the creation during the second half of the 19th century of the ground – used by Swansea’s cricket and rugby teams – and its integral place in Welsh sporting history. Lavishly illustrated with many hitherto unpublished photographs, this book will appeal to local historians as well as aficionados of the summer game, besides showing how popular outgrounds and cricket festivals have been in the county cricket calendar.

This ambitious and fascinating history considers why, in the space of sixty years between 1850 and 1910, football grew from a marginal and unorganised activity to become the dominant winter entertainment for millions of people around the world. The book explores how the world’s football codes - soccer, rugby league, rugby union, American, Australian, Canadian and Gaelic - developed as part of the commercialised leisure industry in the nineteenth century. Football, however and wherever it was played, was a product of the second industrial revolution, the rise of the mass media, and the spirit of the age of the masses. Important reading for students of sports studies, history, sociology, development and management, this book is also a valuable resource for scholars and academics involved in the study of football in all its forms, as well as an engrossing read for anyone interested in the early history of football.