The Victorian Pioneers

About the Book

This is the story of a team of a dozen English cricketers that traveled to Canada and North America in 1859 to compete in the very first intercontinental sporting tour. It tells of the early origins of the game and provides an intimate insight into the lives of the characters, which influenced the early development of the Victorian game, including each of the players who bravely embarked on the perilous transatlantic journey. The book reveals comprehensive information about each of the matches played during the tour and subsequent developments that brought about radical changes in the governance of the game. It provides an absorbing and informative read for the cricket enthusiast and those with an interest in the early history of the English game.

About the Author

Roy Case was born in the village of Kirkby in Ashfield in the County of Nottinghamshire at the start of the Second World War. Educated at the Queen Elizabeth Grammar School in Mansfield, he left school and joined the Nottingham Forest Football Club, where he worked for a short while as a professional footballer, and later as a semi-professional musician in a dance band. Eventually, he was to join the National Coal Board and qualified as a mining surveyor, before later becoming the managing director of a large interior contracting company. At the age of fifty-five, he retired from work in order to devote his time to his true passion for sport, golf in particular. In 1982, while serving as the junior organizer at the Radcliffe-on-Trent Golf Club, he founded the McGregor Trophy, which was later adopted by England Golf (the governing body for amateur golf in England) as the English Boys Under Sixteen Open Amateur Stroke-play Championship. He served on several of England Golf’s committees, including more than a decade as Chairman of Junior Golf, before being elected as its President in 2008. He also served on the Great Britain and Ireland Boys Selection Committee of the Royal & Ancient Golf Club of St. Andrews for thirteen years, and was presented with the Gerald Micklem Award for outstanding service to amateur golf in the millennium year. For many years he was Chairman of Junior Golf for the Nottinghamshire Union of Golf Clubs before becoming its Honorary Secretary in 2003. A former Captain and President of the Radcliffe-on-Trent Golf Club, in recognition of his contribution to the sport of golf, he was elected an honorary lifetime member of the club in 2000. A keen follower of cricket, he is a member of the Nottinghamshire County Cricket Club and the Association of Cricket Statisticians and Historians. His late wife Jean, shared his love of sport. He has a daughter Sharon, and a son Shaun, who is a golf professional living in Austria. The eldest of his two grandsons, Adam, is a film animator living in Manchester, and his youngest, Tom, is a doctor in Philadelphia, USA. Other publications by the author include The McGregor Story: The First Thirty Years (2008).