New selection of cricketer Robert J Pope’s poetry

This is my first post for a while. The new cricket season has opened in New Zealand.

Over the past three months I’ve been putting in the hard hours on a new selection of Wellington club cricketer Robert J Pope’s poetry to be published in November 2012. The selection also contains his club cricket essay on his days as a cricketer for the Star Club from 1884/85 till 1888.

Pope played in the Senior Pearce Cup competition as an opening batsman. This was the leading club competition in his day. Star Club won the cup twice: 1883/84 and 1884/85 seasons. Pope later played for the Wellington Cricket Club and the Wairarapa Cricket Club and learnt his school boy cricket under J P Firth at Wellington College.

Members of Pope’s Star Club team included Wellington slow bowler Charlie Dryden as well as Harry Roberts and Sid Nicholls, the fathers of future All Black footballers (i.e. Teddie Roberts and the three Nicholls brothers, most notably Mark Nicholls of the Invincibles 1924/25 team).

The book is 192 pages in total.

I will post more details on the book’s release.