You Can’t Hurry Us: A History of Cricket in Suffolk

A new title from the Association of Cricket Statisticians and Historians

Sports stories in Suffolk have tended to focus on Ipswich Town or the speedway team, the Witches. Both have had their moments of glory, but the story of cricket in the county is longer. In the early years, Norfolk and Suffolk helped with the game’s development, but later both were too far from cricket’s centres of power. A county club took a long time to get going, while many early references to teams as ‘Suffolk’ were in fact no such thing. Multiple attempts at setting up a county club petered out before the present one was formed in 1932. Since then, Suffolk has won the Minor County Championship three times outright and shared it once.

You Can’t Hurry Us, Simon Sweetman’s new history of the game in Suffolk (available now from the ACS website), covers the background from the eighteenth century, through its progress from two- to three-day games, to the adoption of one-day and T20 cricket. It also covers the club scene, the dawn of league cricket and the history of women’s cricket in the county. Inevitably, it also covers the social environment and the backgrounds of those who played for and ran the county club.

The story includes the famous names who have turned out for the county, from WG Grace to a recent England captain’s brother, and how the county’s best signing played over 50 first-class matches without being on the winning side. But it also tells of how many good cricketers preferred the fun and games of country house cricket to the harder work of the minor county game.

This is one of the latest of around 600 books published by the Association of Cricket Statisticians and Historians (ACS). Founded in 1973 by a small group of keen statisticians, the Association now has members in 17 countries. It numbers among its members many of the world’s leading cricket statisticians and several of the most accomplished historians and biographers in the game, not to mention many scorers and a Test cricketer or two. It also includes hundreds of people who simply love cricket statistics and history. Membership is open to everyone, wherever they live and whatever type of cricket they follow.

Our principal purpose has long been ‘to promote and encourage research into the statistical and historical aspects of cricket throughout the world at all levels and to publish the findings.’ Contributing to ACS publications and research is important for many of our members. Others prefer to enjoy others’ research – by reading articles in our quarterly Journal, buying ACS books on a variety of cricket subjects or debating the issues of the day (or yesterday) on our members’ forum.