"10 for 10" named Book of the Year by the Cricket Writers' Club as Waters wins another award

Chris Waters, whose biography of Fred Trueman won three prestigious awards, has scored another hit with his excellent work on another Yorkshire cricketer, Hedley Verity.

10 for 10: Hedley Verity and the Story of Cricket’s Greatest Bowling Feat was named Book of the Year by the Cricket Writers’ Club at their annual members’ lunch at the Plaisterers’ Hall in London.

The judges were impressed with the skill with which Waters was able recreate the atmosphere around cricket in Verity’s era, the 1930s, and in particular the match against Nottinghamshire at Headingley in July 1932 in which he took all 10 wickets to fall in the visitors’ second innings at a cost of only 10 runs, a world record analysis in first-class cricket that remains unsurpassed.

While that great feat of bowling is the book’s centrepiece, Waters revisits Verity's past and takes the story on, beyond the outbreak of war that ended his career to his death in Italy in 1943 from wounds sustained in battle.  It is a story told with warmth and affection and highlights the author's talent as a writer.

In his day job, Waters is the cricket correspondent of the Yorkshire Post, the position notably occupied for more than four decades by the great cricket writer J M "Jim" Kilburn, who was appointed to the job during Verity's time and kept it until his retirement in 1976.  It remains the most prestigious position in provincial cricket journalism.

The award for Waters completed a Yorkshire hat-trick.  Members of the CWC named the county's opening batsmen, Adam Lyth and Alex Lees, as County Championship Cricketer of the Year and Young Cricketer of the Year respectively.

Buy 10 for 10: Hedley Verity and the Story of Cricket's Greatest Bowling Feat from Amazon, Waterstones or WHSmith.

Buy Fred Trueman: The Authorised Biography from Amazon, Waterstones or WHSmith.

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