Stumps & Runs & Rock 'n' Roll is Tim Quelch's sixty-year account of growing up and growing older with cricket, spanning the period between Queen Elizabeth's accession to the throne in 1952 and the present day. Scandals and trends, unforgettable events and heroes come and go in English cricket just as in Quelch's vivid backdrop of cultural change, while the fortunes of the Test side oscillate as wildly as his ever-shifting soundtrack of popular music. The book features telling vignettes of famous and not-so-famous cricketers seen in action by the author throughout his life – including Freddie Trueman, Ted Dexter, Wes Hall, Derek Underwood, Alan Knott, John Snow, Geoffrey Boycott, Bob Willis, Michael Vaughan and Jimmy Anderson – whose lasting impressions merge with those of triumph and adversity, pop and politics. This is a life not so much measured by coffee spoons as by cricket scores, with many of its abiding memories impaled upon a particular melody or riff.
