STEPHEN CHALKE
Stephen Chalke was born in Salisbury in 1948 and now lives in Bath. He has written several books on cricket. Runs in the Memory and Caught in the Memory are portraits of county cricket in the 1950s and 1960s, One More Run – with the wonderfully funny Gloucester off-spinner ‘Bomber’ Wells – recreates a dramatic match at Cheltenham in 1957, while At the Heart of English Cricket – winner of the Cricket Society Book of the Year award for 2001 – is based on the life and memories of the former administrator Geoffrey Howard. Guess My Story has been written with the Northamptonshire and England wicket-keeper Keith Andrew. No Coward Soul – The Remarkable Story of Bob Appleyard was written in collaboration with Derek Hodgson. Written almost fifty years after the peak of the Yorkshire bowler’s career, it tells a gripping, previously untold tale of one man’s triumph over repeated adversity. It was chosen as the Wisden Book of the Year for 2003 by Barry Norman. Ken Taylor – Drawn to Sport takes him for the first time into the worlds of football and art while A Summer of Plenty delves deep into the past, to George Hirst’s remarkable summer of 1906. His latest book Tom Cartwright - The Flame Still Burns is a collaboration with the Warwickshire, Somerset and Glamorgan player and coach.
He writes a regular column The Way It Was for the Wisden Cricketer magazine and has contributed two series on great Ashes contests to The Times.
Now 59 years old, he is starting to wind down his own cricket. Playing on the third of Trowbridge’s four elevens, he began the summer of 2006 in style, taking seven wickets in the first match, but by mid-June he was hobbling about with a damaged achilles tendon, dreaming once more of unfulfilled batting ambitions. His highest score remains 84, made for his wandering side The Journeymen against the Derbyshire village of Baslow. His main memory of the innings was of surviving a fiery, short-pitched over from a fast bowler, who immediately left the field and drove away. The wicket-keeper provided the explanation: “He’s gone to conduct choral evensong.”