The Cricket Statistician No 195

45 beginning with Mexico in the north, moving south through Central America and down the west coast of South America to Chile, before travelling up the eastern side through Argentina, Brazil and ending in Suriname and French Guiana. The geographical treatment is extended to each country which serves to illustrate one of the major difficulties of establishing cricket in the region, namely distance between the centres where the game was played. Even today, arranging matches in Colombia between clubs in Bogotá and Cali is a major logistical exercise and the situation in Brazil between São Paulo, Rio de Janeiro and Brasilia is even worse, making selection of a national side somewhat of a challenge. Within each country, cricket is set in its economic and social contexts, partly through simple descriptions of its history, but more tellingly through interviews with current players and the descendants of former ones. Since it deals with Latin America, a large number of murders and suicides receive mention. The characters of the game’s early history, many of whom have been forgotten, are highlighted. Hardly anyone in Mexico, for example, remembers Claude Butlin, yet he scored over 4,000 runs and took over 500 wickets in club cricket, was one of the country’s leading footballers, its men’s singles champion at lawn tennis and represented the country in the Davis Cup. There are many similar individuals in other countries. Coverage of present-day cricket is more limited with detail varying from country to country. Very little is made of the role of current players from the Indian sub-continent and, whether they will be more successful than the British in promoting cricket among the local population. Although it is not neglected, more could have been made of the rise of women’s cricket, particularly as the participation of the local population seems to be much higher for women than for men. Overall, this is a highly enjoyable book, the first to cover cricket in Latin America in a comprehensive way and a welcome addition to the literature on the game’s global history. Roy Morgan Do They Play Cricket in Ireland? By David Townsend, Pitch Publishing, pp349, £16.99, ISBN978178538405, e-book £9.99 David Townsend is as Irish as sushi, but it hasn’t stopped him becoming one of that country’s leading cricket writers. This book’s title is one of those ‘taxi-man lines’ that reporters are fond of using, but it could easily have been one of Townsend’s own in the early 1990s. Besides a vague memory of bowling the West Indies out for 25, his knowledge of Irish cricket was scant. But he took up a friend’s suggestion that he try to pick up a bit of freelance work at the ICC Trophy in Nairobi in 1994. It happened to be Ireland’s first appearance in that event and no Irish newspapers were sending reporters in those days. Townsend cashed in, enjoyed what he saw and decided to keep in touch. It led to further excursions around the world as Ireland began a slow climb into the game’s upper echelons. The book is strong on local colour but there is plenty of cricket too. His finest hour, and major contribution to his new friends, came in Windhoek in 2005.