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Sweet Summers: The Classic Cricket Writing of JM Kilburn scoops Wisden Book of the Year.

Sweet Summers brings together a collection of the best writings of Kilburn, who was born in Sheffield in 1909 and died in Harrogate in 1993. It was compiled and edited by Duncan Hamilton and published by Great Northern Books in July 2008. This is Hamilton's third book award - his first for a cricket book - having previously won the William Hill Sport Book of the Year in 2007 and Best Football Book at the British Sports Book Awards in 2008 for his memoir of Brian Clough, Provided You Don't Kiss Me.

In Sweet Summers, Hamilton describes Kilburn as "one of cricket's major romantic poets: the Coleridge to Neville Cardus' Wordsworth". It was Hamilton's admiration for Kilburn's writing, and his desire to bring his words to a wider audience, that led to the book. Hamilton's idea quickly won approval from some of the greatest names in cricket who enthusiastically contributed to the book with personal reminiscences of (Jim) Kilburn. Among them, Geoffrey Boycott, who provided the book's foreword in which he notes, in typical Boycott style: "Nowadays, I believe there are too many writers attached to cricket who know bugger all about it - Jim was different."

Sweet Summers also includes contributions from Dickie Bird, Richie Benaud, Richard Hutton, John Woodcock, Matthew Engel, Christopher Martin-Jenkins, Geoffrey Moorhouse, David Frith, Derek Hodgson, Brian Close, Ray Illingworth, Stephen Chalke, Harry Gration, Chris Waters, Bob Appleyard and Don Wilson. All of whom express admiration for the supreme clarity and lyricism of Kilburn's writing style.

In Sweet Summers, Kilburn's cultivated and authoritative essays capture the spirit and beauty of cricket and the legends gracing it, among them Don Bradman, Fred Trueman, Jack Hobbs, Keith Miller, Garry Sobers, Hedley Verity and Wally Hammond. His pure, vivid prose traps in ink and paper an era that will never return. He writes of the days when 8,000 people watched Yorkshire's County Championship matches; when he travelled by ship on an Ashes tour with his friend Len Hutton; and of a bygone but beautiful period when one-day matches, coloured clothing and rampant commercialism in cricket simply didn¹t exist.

In the 2009 edition of Wisden, Patrick Collins, writes, "Those of us who were shamefully unfamiliar with [Kilburn's] work are indebted to Duncan Hamilton for compiling and editing Sweet Summers, The Classic Cricket Writing of JM Kilburn. He wrote with technical awareness, shrewd insight and firm principles. He possessed the eye of a reporter and the soul of a poet. And his love for cricket shines through every elegant sentence. A game richly blessed with fine writers has rarely known his equal." In confirming Sweet Summers as the Wisden Book of the Year, Collins adds, "[Kilburn's] words carry a haunting resonance and his work deserves to be read for as long as cricket is played."

Duncan Hamilton said, "I thought that JM Kilburn had been sadly and unjustly neglected since his retirement. His cricket writing, in my view, was so good it demanded to be revitalised and brought to a new audience, and so Sweet Summers was born. I am delighted that the publishers, Great Northern Books, backed the idea and also that so many esteemed cricketers, writers and commentators gave their time willingly to contribute their thoughts and memories of the great writer. This accolade from Wisden is the icing on the cake. I'd love to think that Sweet Summers would encourage people to go out and discover Kilburn's earlier books."

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