ABOUT US
One of the world’s oldest wandering cricket teams, the Authors were an Edwardian cricket team and an offshoot of the Authors Club, founded in 1891 for writers to meet and talk. PG Wodehouse, Arthur Conan Doyle and JM Barrie were regulars in the side, which would play the Actors and the Publishers each year at Lord’s. The last of these matches took place in 1912 and the side then dispersed.
A later incarnation of the Authors saw some of the greatest cricketers of all time including Denis Compton, Richie Benaud and Len Hutton play alongside the likes of Edmund Blunden and Neville Cardus at Vincent Square.
In 2012 the team was revived by Charlie Campbell and Nicholas Hogg. In their first season back they played over a dozen matches at some of England’s most historic grounds against a wide range of opposition and wrote a book about their season. That winter the Authors played a Rajasthan Royals XI to open the Jaipur literary festival, with the captains riding out for the toss on camels. They have since played the Vatican and the national teams of Iceland and Japan.