Steve Smith Cricket - the Philadelphia story . . . Plum Warner's XI of 1897

The year 1897 was a huge step forward for Philadelphian cricket. The city of Philadelphia had been playing firstclass cricket since 1878. In those 19 years they had played a total of just 25 firstclass games, all of them at home. In 1897, over a time period of just four months, they played an additional 17 firstclass games. This included a tour of England where they played the firstclass counties, Oxford and Cambridge Universities and the MCC, 15 matches in total. During the tour of the UK a friendship had resulted between the future England captain Plum Warner and the Philadelphia captain George Stuart Patterson. As a result Warner agreed to organise an English XI to visit America two months after the Americans had returned from their tour of England. This book considers that tour, which concluded with two firstclass matches against the Gentlemen of Philadelphia, in what was to prove to be an exciting conclusion to that historic year. | Steve Smith Cricket - the Philadelphia story . . . Plum Warner's XI of 1897