Alan Hill (1928 – 5 February 2021) was a prominent biographer of

cricket Cricket is a bat-and-ball game played between two teams of eleven players on a field at the centre of which is a pitch with a wicket at each end, each comprising two bails balanced on three stumps. The batting side scores runs by striki ...

ers.

Career

Hill grew up in Yorkshire, and worked as a journalist, first in Yorkshire, then in London, where he joined Hayter's Sports Agency. He won The Cricket Society/MCC Book of the Year award twice: in 1986 for ''

Hedley Verity Hedley Verity (18 May 1905 – 31 July 1943) was a professional cricketer who played for Yorkshire and England between 1930 and 1939. A slow left-arm orthodox bowler, he took 1,956 wickets in first-class cricket at an average of 14.90 ...

: A Portrait of a Cricketer'', and in 1991 for ''

Herbert Sutcliffe Herbert Sutcliffe (24 November 1894 – 22 January 1978) was an English professional cricketer who represented Yorkshire and England as an opening batsman. Apart from one match in 1945, his first-class career spanned the period between the tw ...

: Cricket Maestro''. Reviewing ''Herbert Sutcliffe'' in '' Wisden'', John Arlott called Hill's biographies "distinguished", "right in subject, treatment and content", and added: "Mr Hill's style is both balanced and unfussy; he knows when to state and when to quote ... he constantly leads the reader to think, thus heightening both his concentration and his interest." Reviewing ''Daring Young Men'' for

Cricinfo ESPN cricinfo (formerly known as Cricinfo or CricInfo) is a sports news website exclusively for the game of cricket. The site features news, articles, live coverage of cricket matches (including liveblogs and scorecards), and ''StatsGuru'', a d ...

, Rob Steen called Hill "a nostalgist of occasional elegance and vast industry". In ''Wisden'' in 2003 Frank Keating said, "Down the years, the diligent cuttings-librarian Hill has been a productive cottage industry, doing the game proud with a succession of fond and important studies". Alan Hill lived and worked in the

Mid Sussex Mid Sussex is an area in the central part of Sussex. It may refer to: * Mid Sussex District, a local government district in West Sussex * Mid Sussex (UK Parliament constituency) * Mid Sussex Football League * Mid Sussex Times, a local newspaper * A ...

village of Lindfield for the last 50 years of his life. He and his wife Betty, who predeceased him by seven days, had no children.

Books

* ''The Family Fortune: A Saga of Sussex Cricket'' (1978) * ''A Chain of Spin Wizards'' (1983) * ''Hedley Verity: A Portrait of a Cricketer'' (1986) * ''Johnny Wardle: Cricket Conjuror'' (1988) * ''Les Ames'' (1990) * ''Herbert Sutcliffe: Cricket Maestro'' (1991) * ''Bill Edrich: A Biography'' (1994) * ''Peter May: The Authorised Biography'' (1996) * ''Jim Laker: A Biography'' (1998) * ''The Bedsers: Twinning Triumphs'' (2001) * ''Brian Close: Cricket's Lionheart'' (2002) * ''Daring Young Men: The Story of England's Victorious Tour of Australia and New Zealand, 1954-55'' (2005) * ''Tony Lock: Aggressive Master of Spin'' (2008) * ''The Valiant Cricketer: The Biography of Trevor Bailey'' (2012)

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Hill, Alan 1928 births 2021 deaths Cricket historians and writers English sportswriters English biographers People from Lindfield, West Sussex