My Book, "A War to the Knife" is finished and available from https://www.troubador.co.uk/bookshop/sport-hobbies/a-war-to-the-knife/   A WAR TO THE KNIFE tells the story of two test match series: England vs West Indies in 1933 and West Indies vs England in 1935.  The England team was one of the best to ever play the game, including Herbert Sutcliffe, Wally Hammond and Harold Larwood and captained by Douglas Jardine they had just crushed Don Bradman’s Australia in the infamous bodyline series. The West Indian side, made up from the populations of Britain’s scattered possessions in the Caribbean and divided by race as well as island loyalties, seemingly had little chance against Jardine’s juggernaut.  But cricket in the West Indies was more than just a game, it allowed the island’s multi - racial populations to compete as equals and the cricket that emerged was exciting and new, suffused with athletic excellence, passion and the desire for dignity and financial securit

A post providing some comparisons between the prestigious Bentley - Forbes Consulting rankings for  2017 - 2018 with the equally prestigious rankings for  2016 - 2017 . What I have done is to add up the figures for the 16 counties  surveyed for 2017 - 2018  (no Middlesex and Hampshire) and compared to the equivalent aggregates for 2016  - 2017, to provide a collective health check for all the counties. The good news is that in aggregate the financial position of county cricket improved.  In 2017 - 2018 the 16 counties had net assets in excess of liabilities of £67m compared to £57m in 2016 - 2017.  Better still, the £10m improvement in the position came about, mostly, due to a reduction in debt, rather than the asset side of the balance sheet increasing. The £10m improvement, is the profit for the period and can be split between an ongoing profit of roughly £4.5m and one off items of £5.5m.  The one off items are the fees for not staging test matches paid to Durham and